Bible Verses for Cancer Patients: For Scan Week, the Chemo Chair and 3am

Psalm 56:3-4, for the waiting room

Bible Nudge's passage for fear is from David's prayer while in danger, a psalm that moves between fear and trust, shown here with the two verses before it:

1 Be merciful to me, God, for man wants to swallow me up. All day long, he attacks and oppresses me. 2 My enemies want to swallow me up all day long, for they are many who fight proudly against me. 3 When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. 4 In God, I praise his word. In God, I put my trust. I will not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?

If you feel guilty for being scared, look at verse 3. The speaker is afraid and trusting in the same sentence, and the psalm keeps both. Bible verses for health anxiety reads the same lines for the urge to check.

Before a scan or results, read verse 3 once, then answer one question, "What are you afraid of right now, if you say it plainly?" Say it aloud to the person beside you, or message it to one person who will read it today. One sentence is enough.

Why scan week is so hard

The NCCN defines distress in cancer as "a multifactorial, unpleasant, emotional experience" and names diagnosis, treatment, surveillance and recurrence as times it rises. Simard and colleagues' 2013 review of 19 studies calls fear of recurrence "among the most commonly reported problems" for survivors, and Bauml and colleagues, interviewing 30 US survivors in 2016, found waiting for scans and results associated with anxiety, which many patients call scanxiety. Scan dread is a commonly reported fear.

If your church is praying and you still feel unmet, that gap is common. In a 2007 study of 230 people with advanced cancer in the United States, Balboni and colleagues found 88 percent said religion was at least somewhat important, and 47 percent said a religious community supported their spiritual needs minimally or not at all. Telling a pastor or chaplain is a reasonable next step.

When the body is changing

Cancer Research UK describes cancer fatigue as feeling "very tired and lack energy all the time," and says it "can be physical, emotional and mental." It says hair loss "can be very upsetting." Paul, writing of his own suffering in ministry, of treasure "in clay vessels," says in 2 Corinthians 4:16:

Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.

The Reformed John Calvin and the Catholic NABRE notes read the outward man as the body and its frailty. The verse names the body wearing down in plain words, beside something renewed "day by day." Bible verses for stress reads verses 8 and 9.

Psalms from a sick bed

Some psalms are prayed from a sick bed, in the first person. Psalm 6:2 says, "Have mercy on me, Yahweh, for I am faint. Yahweh, heal me, for my bones are troubled." Psalm 41:3 says, "Yahweh will sustain him on his sickbed, and restore him from his bed of illness." Psalm 73:26 says, "My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 38 joins bodily pain to the speaker's confession; Matthew Henry calls it a penitential psalm and the NABRE notes an individual lament, one person's prayer about his own life.

They give you permission to describe your body honestly to God and ask for healing in so many words. Bible verses for mental exhaustion reads Psalm 6:6-7.

At 3am

Job, speaking in his own affliction, not his friends explaining it, says in Job 7:3-4, "wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, ‘When shall I arise, and the night be gone?’ I toss and turn until the dawning of the day." Isaiah 46:4, spoken to the house of Jacob, adds, "Even to old age I am he, and even to gray hairs I will carry you." Bible verses for nightmares reads Job 7:13-14.

If you are told to stay positive

One patient wrote on Reddit's r/cancer, "Sometimes 'staying positive' feels like work, so it feels like people saying this are telling us to do work," while another there wrote, "I’m a stage 4 cancer patient and I tell myself to stay positive." A third, in another r/cancer thread, wrote, "I am allowed to be sad or angry or grumpy or depressed."

In the UK, Semino and colleagues found 56 people with cancer writing online in both violence and travel metaphors. In US experiments, Hauser and Schwarz found enemy framing affected prevention intentions, and in 2015 Hauser told Cancer Today some of this language "may be detrimental and needs to be scaled back." Psalm 6 is in Scripture, so sadness can be prayed as it is.

People in Scripture who stayed ill

Paul wrote, "I left Trophimus at Miletus sick" (2 Timothy 4:20), and told Timothy to mind his "frequent infirmities" (1 Timothy 5:23). He preached to the Galatians "because of weakness in the flesh," and they received him "as an angel of God" (Galatians 4:13-14). Elisha "became sick with the illness of which he died" (2 Kings 13:14). Calvin reads Trophimus as showing the apostles' gifts were not used to remove every illness. The letters keep these people in them, loved, greeted and counted among the church's workers while ill.

The healing verses, in their setting

Isaiah 53:5, "by his wounds we are healed," is from a song about the Servant; Matthew 8:17 applies it to Jesus healing the sick, and 1 Peter 2:24 to sins. Jeremiah 30:17, "I will restore health to you," is spoken to Zion; Psalm 103:3, "who heals all your diseases," is a psalm of praise. Mark 11:24, "all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them," follows the withered fig tree, and James 5:14-15 asks the elders to anoint and pray.

The Catholic Catechism says Christ gives some "a special charism of healing" and that "even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses" (1508). The Assemblies of God, Pentecostal, teaches that healing is provided in Christ's atonement. B. B. Warfield, Reformed, argued in Counterfeit Miracles (1918) that the extraordinary gifts belonged to the apostles' time. Kate Bowler, who had stage IV cancer, titled a book No Cure for Being Human.

One patient wrote on Reddit's r/cancer, "Prayer does work," then, "But it's not true that everything happens for a reason." Another, in a separate r/cancer thread, wrote that "the amount of religious people who tell me that I can be cured by prayer is crazy." Every tradition here prays for the sick, and you can ask for healing in your own words. Bible verses for cancer caregivers reads James 5.

Doctors, and prayers for the sick

King Asa "didn’t seek Yahweh, but just the physicians" (2 Chronicles 16:12); Matthew Henry says the fault was "not that he sought to physicians, but that he sought not to the Lord," and the Catholic Haydock commentary agrees. Sirach 38, in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles and printed as Apocrypha in some Protestant ones, says "Honor a physician according to your need of him," and "in your sickness be not negligent; But pray to the Lord." Both leave room to pray and keep every appointment.

The Anointing of the Sick "is not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death," says the Catechism (1514), and through it the Church "commends those who are ill to the suffering and glorified Lord" (1499). The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese describes Holy Unction as a sacrament for healing of the sick and forgiveness of sins. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.pdf/458) (1979) prays "that his sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy," and the Jewish Mi Sheberach asks for "a healing of spirit and a healing of body." You can ask a priest, pastor or rabbi.

If you are sending a verse

One patient wrote on Reddit's r/cancer, "I just wish people would stop saying positive things and accept the reality of the situation for what it is." Our suggestion: send Psalm 73:26 or 2 Corinthians 4:16 with one ordinary thing you will do, "I'll drive you to treatment Thursday." Jeremiah 29:11 is Jeremiah's letter to exiles facing seventy years in Babylon, and Romans 8:28 sits in Paul's passage on groaning and hope. Isaiah 41:10 is on many cards; this site chose Psalm 56 for fear because it begins with the fear.

Support, and who to call

Support services: the American Cancer Society in the US, the Canadian Cancer Society, Macmillan Cancer Support in the UK, the Irish Cancer Society and Cancer Council in Australia. For a symptom during treatment, call your care team or advice line; the NHS says, "Call your care team now if you have" the signs it lists. When low mood stays, see your doctor.

If you are thinking of ending your life, reach a person now: 988 in the United States, 9-8-8 in Canada, and in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Elsewhere, Find A Helpline lists lines by country.

Where to go next

Before your next scan, read Psalm 56:3-4 with the verses around it in the waiting room. For anything else, Bible Nudge takes a line in your own words and returns one passage with what surrounds it. Find a passage.