In a recent Veterans Day interview with Charisma Media, Pastor David Friend, a Vietnam War veteran and host of the Quality Christian Living podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, reflects on his faith, service and the healing he received at the hands of God.
During the conversation, Friend shared his personal testimony of miraculous healing, recounting how the Lord delivered him from cancer, which he attributes to exposure to Agent Orange during his military service. Friend explained that his battle with cancer tested and strengthened his faith, leading him to rely on God’s promises for healing and restoration.
But it faith wasn’t always at the forefront of Friend’s life. As a young man sent off to fight the war in Vietnam, Friend had never actually made the decision to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior even though he had grown up in a Southern Baptist household.
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“I was raised in a Southern Baptist home… my Mom and Dad we were Southern Baptists but none of us were Christians,” Friend shares. “we just went through the process, go to church, go home, go to church, go home… don’t know why but that’s what you did.”
It was not until the hellish conditions of the jungles in Vietnam that Friend had to look death in the face and decide what exactly it was that he believed in.
“I went into the military, served my time there. I was not a Christian. [I] went to Vietnam and that, God saved my life,” Friend recounts. “I used to pray, ‘God, if You’re real, if You’re up there, could You get me through this?’ I’m going to be here, in the middle of the night, people shooting at me, and sniper fire coming in and I would say ‘God, would You do this?’ and I didn’t really know how to pray but I knew there was God.”
During Friend’s time in the war, the toxic herbicide Agent Orange was used extensively to clear out the jungle. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Over 300,000 U.S. veterans…died from exposure to Agent Orange from 1962 to 1971.” The effects of this poison continue today as Vietnam veterans suffer from a myriad conditions caused by Agent Orange to include various cancers, Parkinson’s Disease, peripheral neuropathy and much more.
Friend was one of those who suffered from the long-term affects of the chemical in the worst of ways.
“I went through my life thinking ‘I’m just fine. Everything’s great.’ For about 40 years, and then all of a sudden at about 40 to 45 years, I started developing something called cancer and I had my first battle with cancer in 2001 and I lost my right kidney to it and the doctor said it was caused from Agent Orange,” Friend says.
After surgery seemed to clear up the cancer that cost Friend his kidney, 15 years went by and a new form of sickness tried to take his life: myeloma, a for of blood cancer that develops in bone marrow.
When Friend was told he had six months to live, he decided to lean on his faith as well as following treatment procedures, because fighting is what you do when facing the enemy.
Within eight months, and after much prayer, doctors delivered the most incredible news to Friend: his readings came back and he was clear from the cancer. The doctor in charge of his treatment could only come up with one word to describe what had happened: miracle.
“This is the doctor that told me at first he was doubtful. He said ‘well, there’s only really one word to describe what just happened to you.’ He said it’s a miracle, and he took his pen and he wrote across
the file and wrote the word ‘this is a miracle,'” shares Friend.
Friend’s life is a testament to the power of faith, the resilience of the human spirit and the miraculous ways the Lord can work, even in the midst of the most challenging circumstances, proving that our God is the God of miracles.
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James Lasher is staff writer for Charisma Media.
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