Episodes

Almost no entry Katie Hubbard wrote during her final year of life captures her heart and highest values like the words from July 25, 2015. Only four words say so much. Katie characteristically addresses herself directly to the Lord, in gratitude that she was home from Mexico and together with the kids again. I imagine that she will say something like this to us all when we meet again. This week's podcast also features Tom Hubbard, our oldest son, reading and reflecting on a journal entry Katie ...

Katie Hubbard was undergoing alternative therapy and thinking about eternal life. She was not ready to die -- "far from it" -- but she was more than willing to face death and the life that is to come. Sitting in a hospital bed in Mexico, she asks powerfully and poignantly what it says about us that we are so reluctant to die.

Katie Hubbard was pursuing alternative cancer treatment but looking to the Lord for help. This was a hallmark of her journey through life with cancer. So much was uncertain ... even the ways of God. However, God's nearness, goodness, and power were Katie's constant source of help. You and I can trust God's character even when we cannot trace his ways.

Katie Hubbard had come to the end of chemotherapy options, but she was grateful (and sad!) to have an alternative cancer treatment option available. In early July 2015, we were planning to board a plane for Mexico to pursue another course of therapy. For some people, alternative therapy is a first choice. For Katie, it was a last resort. Her body simply couldn't tolerate any more chemo treatments. She wanted to satisfy herself that, for the sake her kids, she had done everything possible to bea...

As Katie looked back on an unconventional life that was rapidly headed toward an untimely death, she had no regrets. This blog post, written in 2015 for other women in vocational ministry, makes two things clear: she was grateful for her years in ministry, and she remained single-minded about her goal. As she put it, "I don’t want recognition, fame. I don’t want the big selling book, I don’t want a thousand people at Nav Nite…I want laborers." She knew that God had promised to reach the world t...

Katie Hubbard was running out of cancer treatment options but not faith that God could heal her if He wanted to. As she contemplated the prospect of alternative treatment in Mexico and meditated on Namaan's story from 2 Kings 5, she sincerely asked God again to heal her from cancer. She knew the road of right thinking was getting harder, the longer she lived with metastatic disease. She also felt like her grace to bear it was running out. So, she asked again in faith for God to heal her of cance...

At the halfway point of this first season of "There Are Good Things Here", Katie Hubbard reminds us all that God is the source of all the goodness we seek. This episode in not a re-broadcast—but it is a re-reading—of Katie's journal entry from June 18, 2015. The podcast began (actually, it was episode 2) with this entry because it represents Katie's perspective so well. She didn't hope to become famous and she didn't want to write things for personal glory. Rather, she found herself increasingly...

Katie Hubbard peppers the pages of her June journal with pithy questions like this, "What does God want to do with this life he bought?" She gives credit where it's due, to our friend and mentor Vic Black who said this in his book, Speak Lord. Katie also records her own proverbial observation, "The tradeoff to losing your youth is that (hopefully) you gain perspective." She certainly had lost the one and gained the other. That's what enabled her to live the answer to the question, "What does Go...

In characteristic fashion, Katie Hubbard explained the ups and downs of a "cancer straightaway" by saying, "I focus on what I have not what I have lost". This was her secret when the currents of life were tumultuous and when they were relatively calm. You and I can experience the same kind of life with God in Christ, but we can't simply will it into existence. We have to practice the same kind of Scripture meditation and deliberate thanksgiving she did. This will help us be able to say with gre...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard signs off her final journal entry for May 2015 with the words "after we have suffered, things will be made right." That conviction didn't come from observing her circumstances, but from observing the ways of God in the book of Genesis. Joseph suffered many things through his life, but God exalted him in time. If I can nudge a very powerful statement from Dr. King in a slighty more biblical direction, Katie understood that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but...

If you read the journals of Katie Hubbard without reference to the dates, you would think she was always seeing astonishing things from God's word. As was often the case, though, there had been a lapse of more than two weeks since Katie had last journaled. When she took up her pen again, it was to remark on her sorrow for a young man who had committed suicide and to marvel at the astonishing things from God's word

This week's episode features guest host, Rachel Hubbard, reading a letter that Katie wrote, encouraging her to smile at the future. Rachel, our third-born child, received this letter on her 8th grade retreat in 2015. Katie wrote to affirm and encourage her. There are some priceless memories from Rachel's early years, plus characteristic Katie-wisdom about life. Rachel also reads a letter that I wrote on the same occasion. Hearing these letters today brings tears to my eyes, but hearing Katie's w...

Katie Hubbard knew that her cancer was progressing, but she was able to face eternity with excitement. She also knew a thing or two about parenting through the ups and downs of life. This podcast will take you through two journal entries, one email update, and a blog entry that Katie wrote for moms in ministry. You'll find loads of Solomon-like wisdom from a well-seasoned mom living with cancer, and you'll discover secrets about how to face eternity with excitement.

Katie Hubbard knew how to spot God's providential care, not because her life was easy but because she kept looking toward him not her circumstances or herself. The title of this podcast, There Are Good Things Here, doesn't imply that life is easy but that God is good. God's providential care surrounds those who love him and have been called into his eternal, saving purposes. Katie asked for a huge miracle of healing. God didn't grant her that request. Along the way, though, she learned to keep ...

Through her journey with cancer, Katie Hubbard had to learn an art of stillness that deepened her faith in God. She believed that God himself was a strong rock that remained stable when all else was shifting or uncertain. From that place of stability, she offered one of her deepest prayers in her final year: "not my will but yours be done". Join Katie as she reflects on this prayer of Jesus: it's not resignation but total trust. So deep had her own faith taken her through hours of stillness on ...

What would you do with more time and mental space on your hands? Katie Hubbard lets you know where her heart was inclined when time was on her hands. She kept juggling many of the demands of life (Easter preparations, speaking at church, prom dress shopping), but when cancer forced her to slow down, she turned to Jesus. May this brief episode bless and challenge you. What would you do with more time and mental space?

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3) On Easter Sunday 2015, Katie Hubbard knew that she was dying. She also knew she had to stand in front of Twin City Bible Church (our home church in Illinois) and describe what it meant for her to have a living hope. She told about her cancer journey, pointed people to Jesus, and expressed ...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard talks about living life as a mom in ministry with no regrets. When you say 'yes' to Jesus, you often walk an unconventional road. However, as Katie makes clear in a journal entry and email, the way is filled with blessing. You will appreciate Katie's characteristic humor in this podcast, along with her down to earth account about the challenges of motherhood. More than that, I hope you'll be inspired to keep saying 'yes' to the Lord. There may be no greater joy th...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard simply ponders examples from Scripture where people express faith or disbelief in the face of fear and pain. “Where is your faith?” It was a question Jesus asked many people in his day, and Katie heard the divine challenge in her own. Her subsequent journal entry ends with an epigram, the kind she was known for: “I am trading my physical symptoms for mental ones. I must cling to what is true rather than what I feel.” Finally, I read from my own journal entry from...

In this episode, Katie Hubbard writes about the fruit of faith and the frustration of missed expectations in the struggle with cancer. “The fruit of faith. Hope. Courage. God is pleased. Fortitude. Stepping out. Encouragement for others.” She had no idea what kind of impact she was leaving behind when she wrote the words, “Without faith and belief, what do we have to offer others?” Her words are raw and powerful as she asks God what her own future will hold, as she tries to hold on to her faith...

Katie Hubbard was coming to grips with the extent of pain and suffering in the world as she waited for her own miracle. She also knew that the trials recorded in the Bible far outnumbered the miracles recorded. What is more, you can't minister to people in pain unless you've experienced it yourself. That was a lesson Katie learned well. She was waiting on a miracle herself in the face of her own pain and suffering. Yet her heart was growing softer toward a hurting world around her. That is a mi...

Katie Hubbard had struggled through the final week of February 2015, but she surged into a new season of faith and hope in the face of cancer when March rolled around. She identifies the source of the change in her first journal entry for the month. The first was practical, or circumstantial. We rearranged our bedroom to make it beautiful and functional for her when she didn't have the energy to go anywhere but didn't want to stay in bed. The second reason was deeper. She resolved to do the har...

In this special episode, I want to give you a chance to hear Katie Hubbard in prayer … not just her voice coming through as I read her journal entries … but her actual voice. I recorded a handful of prayer times we shared together in 2014 and 2015. There were not remarkable occasions, but I wanted to capture her heart and voice for the Lord so that others could hear her. (By this point in our lives, we knew she would not survive cancer without a miracle.) The recording you’re going to hear was ...

When Katie wrote the two entries featured on today's podcast, cancer treatment and pain medication had combined to leave her so low you can actually see it in her handwriting. If you only had her journal entries, you would assume that she was simply sitting in her bedroom trying to get over her fatigue and nausea. Far from it! Though she was not letting on to anyone (not even me!) how bad she felt, she was still opening up our home to international guests and visiting alumni. She was also welco...