(Originally published 1/2/20). I recently completed my first book,How Cancer Cured Me!
The idea and formation of this book began soon after my diagnosis with stage four lung cancer on September 11, 2017. It started with personal journal entries and blogposts. After a few months, I recognized a common thread running through all my writing– God using my cancer experience to cure me – and God gave me a vision for this book and a mission to write it.
After more than two years of writing including the last six or seven months, devoted to writing full time, the book is finished.
How Cancer Cured Me is about how God used my first two years of living with cancer and waiting for physical healing to bring healing into every dimension of my life. It’s as if Jesus, the Great Physician, said, “While I’m here, let me attend to all the other broken places in your life.” The book is about holistic healing which in the end included physical healing. Even if physical healing hadn’t come, God had used cancer for my good and God’s glory.
In How Cancer Cured Me, I explore fifteen points of healing I experienced during the first two years of having cancer. For example, I write about becoming more courageous as I faced the fearsomeness of cancer and many other fears in my life. I write about how this change and many others positively impacted my most important relationships. The ways God used cancer to strengthen and bless my marriage is a major component of my story. I love my wife now more than ever!
I’m not writing to get attention for myself. I’m writing to draw attention to the One, the God, who did this great work in me! I’m writing so that others will believe that God can do the same in their life.
My book is intended to be a witness to God and provide a hope-filled vision for those in the darkness of cancer. With God cancer is never hopeless and never the end. With God, we can not only survive cancer but thrive with cancer. Cancer doesn’t have to be the end of life as we know it, it can be the beginning of a new and better life. Yes, cancer is a cruel and deadly disease. It is not of God, but God can use your cancer experience to heal every dimension of your life. In the end, the physical healing, which can and does happen, will be the icing on the cake! With God, nothing is impossible!
First and foremost, my book is for cancer patients, survivors, and their loved ones. It’s for the many millions of people impacted and inflicted by this dreaded disease. I know how hard this can be from personal experience, losing my beloved mother in law to cancer after a long battle. As a pastor, I’ve ministered to many inflicted and impacted by cancer. Now I have the personal experience of being diagnosed, living with, and surving cancer. Most importantly I have seen God show up and show off in the midst of cancer. God used everything for my good and God's glory. God can do all of this an infinitely more in your life.
With that having been said, this book isn’t just for those affected by cancer. It’s for those affected by life. It’s for people longing to be healed of their dis-ease, whatever that might be, and to have God heal all the other brokenness in their lives. It’s for those who believe or want to believe God really can make all things work together for our good and want to imagine what it might look like.
Please stayed tuned and pass the word. How Cancer Cured Me is coming. I hope to have the book published within the next few months. Currently I am am reviewing a publishing contract. Please keep me in prayer. I’ll keep you posted!
Michael David Gira, Jr.
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:19a
Originally posted at david-gira.blogspot.comon 1/2/2020