Pastor Tim Keller released an update about his cancer treatment and requested for prayers.
On social media, captured by The Christian Post, Keller expressed his gratitude and shared about the development on his fight with the illness.
"Thank you so much for your continued prayers for my cancer treatment. We are well aware of your prayers and their power in holding us up to God and holding us together as we navigate treatment, isolation, and covid," he began.
He went on to say that he was allowed to go on a "chemo holiday" and was able to take a vacation for a few weeks. When he returned to the hospital last month, the scan showed that the primary tumor did not progress. However, a "mystery lump" had developed which was then removed.
As a safety precaution, his doctor increased his treatment which will have more side effects but is expected to be "more therapeutic."
"Pancreatic cancer is able to learn how to evade medication, so it is only God's power that we look to for complete healing," he added.
The minister concluded by asking for prayers that he may be able to continue his activities and for the treatment to be effective.
"Please do pray that I will be able to fulfill my teaching and other obligations, and that the neuropathy and other side effects will be minimal while the medication will be effective against the cancer, and that we will run the race God has set before us with joy."
In his article on The Atlantic, Keller revealed that the pancreatic cancer was discovered after he developed an intestinal infection when he returned home from a conference in Kuala Lumpur last year.
That moment, he just released a book, "On Death," which discusses about faith in the face of death. But he disclosed that when he was researching about the survival statistics of his disease and saw his book, he did not even dare to read it.
He was not prepared to die.
The diagnosis left him and his wife "in tears and disbelief" because at their age, both turning 70 at the time, they still have a lot of plans and were expecting that such illness will emerge when they are way much older.
"One of the first things I learned was that religious faith does not automatically provide solace in times of crisis. A belief in God and an afterlife does not become spontaneously comforting and existentially strengthening. Despite my rational, conscious acknowledgment that I would die someday, the shattering reality of a fatal diagnosis provoked a remarkably strong psychological denial of mortality," the author wrote.
However, he said that a person can face and prepare for his own death without fear, as well as spend his remaining time "growing into greater grace, love and wisdom," through "head work" and "heart work."
"...rational conviction and experience might change [the] mind, but the shift would not be complete until it took root in [the] heart," the minister explained.
Keller is the founding pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and chairman of Redeemer City to City, a movement that plants and strengthens churches.
