By Simon Baker, student news writer, Office of University Communications
CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. – Dr. Micah Spicer, the senior pastor at Third Baptist Church in Owensboro Ky., spoke at Campbellsville University’s Ransdell Chapel about having a quiet and thoughtful Thanksgiving during the university’s Thanksgiving chapel service Nov. 16.
Spicer said at the end of the first chapter of Mark’s gospel Jesus heals a leper who approaches Jesus by faith. The leper asks Jesus to heal him, and Jesus indicates that it is His will that this person is cured of his leprosy.
Spicer said Jesus instructs the leper not to tell anyone what has occurred, but the leper is so excited that Christ transformed him and healed him that he goes into the world and sings the praises of Jesus.
“Jesus invited this man to have a quiet Thanksgiving, but instead, he chose to be loud and boisterous in his bragging,” he said.
Spicer continued by saying in Luke 17, ten lepers approached Jesus at a distance, asked Jesus to heal them, and in faith, Jesus heals them and tells them to go and reveal themselves to the priests.
He said, “Nine of the lepers go away, we don’t know where they went or what they did or whom they told, but we know that one of the lepers whom Jesus identifies as a Samaritan comes back and thanks Jesus for the transformation that is incurred because of Jesus’s touch.”
Spicer said he has experienced numerous challenges and hardships as a pastor.
One of the hardest challenges he has faced in Ministry is “trying to understand why bad things happen to good people.”
“I had two parishioners who were both deacons in my church, Allen and Gayle, faithful people and close personal friends. Allen was diagnosed with an aggressive form of malignant melanoma,” Spicer said.
“Allen had already had a daughter die of cancer years earlier as a teenager, and here he was, looking in the mirror and asking if he was going to live. But, Allen is still alive to this day now.”
Spicer said Gayle got colon cancer shortly after Allen found out he had melanoma.
“Not too much time later, Gayle got a diagnosis,” Spicer said. “His was that of colon cancer, which was supposed to be treatable, and the prognosis was more favorable. But, Gayle found out it had spread to his bones within weeks and died only a few months later.”
He said, “I was wrestling with the reality that we face in our faith, and that is the truth and the hope and the faith that we have recognizing that God is a God of miracles and of healing and who performs miracles and heals people.”
Spicer said he saw Allen “Every day get on his knees, and thank God for what He has done for him, but you know what Allen didn’t do? He didn’t make a public spectacle about the healing that God had given him.”
Spicer encouraged students to “direct their thanks to God this season of Thanksgiving.”
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