Chris Cole, broadcaster and businessman, shares a powerful and deeply personal testimony in this talk, Walking Through Job, recorded LIVE on Zoom.
After being diagnosed with incurable blood cancer (myeloma) and facing months in hospital, severe pain, and life-threatening complications, Chris reflects on how God met him in the midst of suffering. Drawing from the Book of Job, he shares how trials can become a place where faith is refined and where God brings unexpected healing both spiritually and physically.
Chris opens up about his past, his journey to faith, the challenges of family life and ministry, and the profound moment when God revealed a hidden wound of rejection that had shaped his life for decades. In this honest and moving testimony, Chris explores how God works through hardship, the mystery of suffering, and the transforming power of truth, prayer, and God’s love.
In this talk, you’ll discover:
- How Chris encountered God and was delivered from a life of ‘sex, drugs, and rock n roll’.
- How he left everything behind to start over, with a vision to reach people for Christ.
- What it means to “walk through Job” during seasons of suffering.
- His battle with incurable cancer and the miraculous changes that followed.
- How hidden wounds like rejection can shape our lives and how God heals them.
- Why trials can become part of God’s purpose to refine our faith.
This testimony will encourage anyone facing illness, hardship or questions about why God allows suffering. “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” (Revelation 12:11)
Edited transcript of Chris’ testimony about walking through Job
I’m humbled by the past few years, by the people who have visited me in hospital, shared with us, and prayed. Thank you ever so much. It’s so wonderful to recognise that we’re part of a global family. We’re brothers and sisters in Christ, and these are very exciting times.
I’ll just open in prayer. Father, thank You that You are the author and perfecter of our faith. I pray today, Lord God, Your Word in Romans 8:28 that says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” This s such a great promise. And we think of those today who are really going through challenging times, but we thank You Father, that even in the challenging times, You continue to work, to disciple and to mature us in faith. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
I want to quote two scriptures to start.
Revelation 12:11: “They triumphed over him, Satan, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”
And something that was very relevant to me: in 2022, God downloaded two things to me. One I didn’t understand at the time, which was that He was going to take care of my three daughters. I didn’t know what that meant. And also, that He wanted me to read the Book of Job. So I just thought I’d open up with Job 1:6–12:
One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming through the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have You not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out Your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face.”
The Lord said to Satan, “Very well then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
I’ve been studying at Plymouth University and part of this was looking at the Persecuted Church. Now that we have such an ability through social media to see what’s happening in the world, something happens in Iran and within 30 seconds it’s on our news feeds. Daniel 11 into 12 mentions that, towards the End Times, there will be an increase in communication and knowledge. And we’re in that season where we’re able to experience an awful lot, including the incredible reality of what our Persecuted brothers and sisters are experiencing.
Now, this is my opinion, but when we look at the global Church, we kind of think, wow, in the West we have been blessed. But sometimes, I would say, we have a little bit of what I would call Christian consumerism: “What’s in it for me?” And that doesn’t mean that God isn’t a beautiful Father and blesses us. But sometimes, without a doubt, we go through trials and tribulations. And often we get hit with certain doctrines, especially in America, that if you’re not well, you’re in sin. And to be honest, the reason Job is so good is because bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. It’s the mystery, the mystery of God.
But today I just want to share a testimony of how God really took me through a challenging time. So, a recap from 2022: God spoke to me about my three girls. I didn’t know what that meant. And He also told me to read the Book of Job. So I really got into it.
Then, in October 2023, I was at a three-day conference where I collapsed. They took me to a hospital in Windsor and couldn’t detect anything. I left the conference, drove back to Cornwall, and a week later I collapsed at home and I was rushed to hospital. There, I was diagnosed with myeloma, which is a blood cancer.
It’s an incurable cancer that impacts the proteins in the marrow and I was in hospital for three and a half months with three cases of sepsis, massive hemorrhaging from my nose that they couldn’t stop, and two large kidney stones in each kidney. And in the end, I couldn’t walk.
I used to have an NHS towel that I used to crunch on, because every time I moved my pain level was ten. So I was really drugged up with a lot of liquid morphine. And I would, at this time, also say how your loved ones go through this as much as you do. And I just really want to honour my wife, Kerry who took care of me for that couple of years, and she was absolutely wonderful. And my one daughter came over from Australia to help take care of me.
When I was released from hospital, it was very hard not being able to walk. However, I had a militant physiotherapist, a sergeant-major lady, who I wrestled with, who made sure I got out of bed and started to walk!
God gave me a word whilst I was in hospital. He said, “Chris, you do not believe you’re lovable.” And I thought to myself, oh, that’s interesting, because of my backstory.
I was born in ’52 in London. My father never knew his father, he was born in 1929 out of wedlock, as they used to say at the time, illegitimate. My mother couldn’t wait to get away from the Cornish family that she’d grown up in. And I have memories of being quite detached. I don’t have family memories of Mum and Dad reading books to me. That’s nothing in my memories. And my sister, who is 16 years younger, has the same issue: no memories.
It’s important how we’re brought up in families, and all of it is messy. I’ve never met anybody with the perfect family background, even within the Church. In fact, within the Church it can be even more complicated sometimes. But I share that because my folks divorced when I was 16, and I took it very personally.
It absolutely broke my heart, and I apologised to my father and mother for being the cause. I felt I was the reason for their breakup. When this happened I went off by myself into a bed-sit at 16 and worked a number of jobs, ended up deejaying, got married, that fell apart, and ended up in Belgiium in the early ’70s, where I was a successful DJ. I introduced disco onto the scene in Brussels and ended up partnering with Heineken Breweries to open a large discotheque called The Cuckoo’s Nest. And I partnered with an American businessman who had a restaurant called the Hard Rock Café, which was a very successful restaurant, and I also did some radio work.
But my life was just licentious — sex, drugs, rock and roll. I’m of a generation that really said, “I’d never want to get married because my parents are divorced. I’m never going to have children.”
Whilst I was on the radio, a group from the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International came into the station and said, “We’d like to share the good news of Jesus.” I noticed that these men were quite different, very different, and I was interested in them. They invited me to a meeting at a hotel. And I had a word from them. I didn’t know it was a prophetic word but the word was very strong: about “the powers that come against you.”
I didn’t know what a prophetic word was. I’d been confirmed into the Episcopalian Church in New York. My parents had emigrated in ’59, and I’d grown up in Canada and New York. So I didn’t know what a prophetic word was, but it really touched my soul.
And on December 6th, 1981, at 11:30 p.m., in my apartment, I had a real conviction of sin. I’d hurt a young lady emotionally, very badly, who’d fallen in love with me, and I didn’t reciprocate that. She was really quite devastated. I was sensitive enough to know I hurt her. My heart broke in the apartment and I realised I was a sinner and said, “Lord, I’m so sorry.” And the Lord walked behind me, touched me on the top of my head, and I felt the most incredible peace and awe. And I was just blown away by the fact that I’d met God.
A couple of weeks later, I’m in a church, nobody there and I have a vision of an abyss. And the devil absolutely tempted me. He said, “Chris, if you give up your conversion, I will give you everything that your soul wants.”
And I had been in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and it was a very powerful temptation. And I believe that was the word that I was given at the Full Gospel Businessmen’s meeting about being strong against the powers that come against you. So I resisted them.
And I was standing on this abyss in the vision, and it was an abyss of insanity. I would have preferred to have gone insane than give in to that temptation of the devil. And underneath that, as I was falling into the abyss, the Lord came up from the bottom of that and put me back on the step. And that was the first time that I really experienced the dying experience.
A couple of months after that I received a word that I would reach thousands and millions for Christ through broadcast media. And over the last 40 years God has done that. At the end of the day, He is the author and perfecter of your faith. You can start a journey, but you really don’t know where that journey is going. And that’s the beauty of God being the author and perfecter of your faith.
If we think we’re in control, actually we’re not. And that’s the beauty of that revelation: “they did not love their lives even unto death.” When I came over to Plymouth after being saved, I left everything that I had in Brussels. I had shares in the discotheque and in the restaurant, but God said, “Come back to Plymouth.”
I came back with nothing, and God rebuilt me from nothing. And I’ve got to say, we were totally blessed in those 40 years. Despite going through a whole bunch of difficult stuff, including with my middle daughter getting thyroid cancer, at the age of ten.
So I just share that because we’ve all got backstories, and the backstory of this is very important to the real healing that I’ve gone through, both physically and spiritually. And it’s more the spiritual healing that I’ve gone through. God has really done something very powerful in my life spiritually.
So there I am in hospital in February 2024. My daughter has come over from Australia to take care of us, And i had the most beautiful time with the girls because I was able to share with them that I’d had this experience in hospital about not believing I was lovable.
Now, imy family would say we’re a very truthful family. I think it’s the truth that sets us free, and I think there’s a lot of healing God wants to do in families. That’s the one area that we can all pray into. That’s probably our big battleground area.
And it’s lovely when we think that God puts the broken into families. But the girls and Kerry had always identified that there was something in my life that I couldn’t participate very easily in birthdays. And it’s not that I didn’t take the girls all over the place, but I was rather detached in this area, and gave everything that I had to the Lord.
As we had a chat about things, my youngest daughter, who leads worship in an Anglican church in Newquay, suggested, “Let’s do the Myers-Briggs personality thing,” which was excellent. And the family kind of felt that I was a bit like Mr Banks in the film Saving Mr Banks. All the kids wanted to do was fly a kite, and Mr Banks was preoccupied on keeping the house together and providing and protecting.
I said, “That’s interesting,” because if you watch the film, which focuses on the story of PL Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, Mr Banks is based on the author’s father. who was a good family man, but died of alcoholism because there weren’t any real values in the family.
So we had a beautiful time, and I’m talking to my girls, and I’m sort of really vulnerable and crying, and we’re having a good truthful discussion.
And I began to really meditate upon the Book of Job, which I was excited about because, as I say, as a broadcaster I have every week broadcast the good news of Jesus Christ on the radio or GOD. TV. I’ve done a lot of media, and I exist just to promote the good news of Jesus through media.
And probably being slightly detached and focused has been good for that, because I haven’t deviated from that. But when I studied people like Billy Graham, AW Tozer, etc, they were very strong on the ministry side, but the family side was not always easy. There are two sides of the coin: how to be a father in the home and relate to your kids, and at the same time how to be faithful and follow what God is calling you to do.
God is the head of Christ, Christ the head of man, and man and woman, it is not a dominance, but men need to be able to bring into their family the value of Christ.
So what happened coming out of hospital is I had a fractured spine with the myeloma. It’s incurable. I’m on constant chemo. God was very gracious because I wasn’t overly sick with the chemo.
Myeloma is an incurable disease, which means that at the end of the day it can go into remission, which my myeloma went into remission. And I spoke to a haematologist about this, who’s a Christian at my daughter’s church and he was amazed because in December — and I shared this testimony at the church — I woke up one morning and to the left of me, for about a second, I witnessed a ten-foot entity full of colour. I really believe it was an angel.
It was only for a second. I probably convinced myself it was still part of the meds. But that night I went to sleep. Now, I hadn’t slept for two and a half years because of the pain in my back, and the fact that I used to dread going to bed because I was up every hour and a half. I just went to bed out of discipline, but because of the pain I couldn’t sleep on my side. I had to sleep in one position because of the pain.
But that night, after I saw this angelic entity, I slept for the first time for six hours straight. And when I woke up, I woke up with no pain in my back.
So my back had been fractured. The myeloma in the marrow had worked its way through into the spine, and I’d had a fractured spine. And so I thought, oh, this is amazing.
And then I thought, oh, I’m going to test this. So normally Kerry and I would go for a walk with my walking stick in a lovely field near where we live in Cornwall. And as I walked, normally the spine would exacerbate in pain because it’s just the effort. But this time there was no pain. Over the following couple of days I went for a longer walk, and slowly but surely I began to realise that the pain had completely gone.
Now, as I say, myeloma is a hard disease, an incurable disease. The proof that it’s gone is because it’s in remission. What the chemo does is keep the paraproteins, which are the negative hostile proteins, out of the blood. It’s like having a lovely lawn and occasionally you get the weeds of the myeloma come up, and the chemo keeps the weeds off the lawn.
So every month I have a blood test at the hospital. But I really thought, oh, really, God’s doing something here.
But the main thing for me was the word that He gave me about, “Chris, you don’t believe you’re lovable.”
So as I began to pray, and with Kerry, like I said, a very truthful family, we had a discussion about this. And then Kerry and I prayed, and I was released from an inherited spirit of rejection that came through my family line. After that I radically changed. I felt colour coming into the day. I really began to enjoy things more. It completely revolutionised my life.
And I’m excited about this because I think when I got saved in the ’80s, the doctrine at the time was, well, you’re saved now, you just have to read the Word and keep going. And God’s done it all, which technically He has. But there’s enough Scripture about working out our salvation with fear and trembling, and the fact that the gift of faith that God gives you has a purpose.
This is why I quote Romans 8:28: “everything works for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.” Because it’s in that purpose that God refines you, that changes you in the purposes of faith.
