It was Thanksgiving morning, 2009. Matt Chandler was thirty-five years old, the lead pastor of The Village Church in Highland Village, Texas — one of the fastest-growing churches in America. He was healthy. He was strong. He had a wife and three young children. Everything was full speed ahead.
Then he collapsed in his living room. A seizure. Out of nowhere. No warning signs. No history. One moment he was preparing for a family holiday. The next, he was on the floor while his wife, Lauren, called an ambulance.
The Diagnosis
The MRI at the hospital revealed a mass in his right frontal lobe. Anaplastic oligodendroglioma — a malignant brain tumour. The kind of word that takes doctors years to learn how to pronounce, and patients seconds to understand means their life has just changed forever.
Matt later described it as the first time in his life where things went "worst-case scenario." He was a pastor. He had walked with hundreds of people through crises. He had preached sermons about the sovereignty of God in suffering. He had the theology. But now the theology was being tested by his own MRI.
The Fear
There were moments of raw terror. Matt describes at least three meetings with his doctors early on where he "felt like he got punched in the soul." The scans kept revealing more. The conversations kept getting harder. The prognosis kept narrowing.
In those moments — when everything felt like it was spinning out of control — something happened that Matt could not manufacture and his wife could not explain.
The Encounter
The Holy Spirit showed up. Not in a dramatic vision. Not in an audible voice. In a quiet, steady reminder that cut through the panic: "He is good and He does good."
Matt describes it as theology becoming a lifeline. The verses he had memorised for sermons became the words that held him together in hospital corridors. Romans 8. Hebrews 11. The passages about God working all things for good — they stopped being sermon notes and became oxygen.
His wife Lauren described it with a simplicity that carried more weight than any theological treatise: "As far as the brain surgery goes, up until he had the surgery, there wasn't fear. I can only attribute that to the Holy Spirit."
That is not bravery. That is not denial. That is something from outside entering a situation that should have been defined by terror — and replacing it with a peace so thick you could almost touch it.
The Healing
Matt underwent surgery, followed by eighteen months of radiation and chemotherapy. The treatment was gruelling. The side effects were severe. But at the end of it, he was given a clean bill of health.
He returned to his pulpit. He continued pastoring. But something had shifted. The man who had preached about God's goodness now testified about it from the inside. His sermons carried a weight that only comes from someone who has been to the edge and found that the ground held.
What This Means for You
If you have just received a diagnosis that feels like a punch to the soul — if the words are still ringing in your ears and you do not know how to process them — Matt Chandler has been exactly where you are.
The fear is real. He felt it. It hit him like a physical blow. But he also found something stronger than the fear. A peace that did not come from his own courage, his own theology, or his own ability to cope. It came from outside. From the Holy Spirit. From a God who does not explain everything but who shows up in the MRI waiting room and says: I am good. I do good. Trust me here.
You do not need to have all the answers before the surgery. You just need to know that the One who does is already in the room with you.
