Gary Jansen is a popular speaker and the author of several books, including The 15-Minute Prayer Solution, Station to Station, Life Everlasting, and the memoir Holy Ghosts. Jansen has appeared on A&amp;E, the Sundance Channel, the Travel Channel, Coast to Coast AM, CNN.com, and NPR. His writing has been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, Thrive Global, Angelus, and Religion Dispatches. Jansen worked at Penguin Random House for 25 years where he was the editor on several New York Times bestsellers. He is now the executive editor of acquisitions at Loyola Press.

Gary Jansen

<div class="text readable">Some years ago a dear friend of mine told me her beloved grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer. She was crying to me and at some point I said, “I’ll pray for your grandmother. She’s going to be alright.” My friend, who had given up on God years ago after a series of disappointments and setbacks, gave me a look like, “Yeah, right. Like that will do any good.” Well, I went home and prayed hard for my friend’s grandmother, asking God to heal this woman I had never met. For two weeks, I prayed night and day and would go to my local church and light candles for her during my lunch hour. At a certain point I stopped praying for no other reason than I got busy at work and home. But my friend called me a couple of days later to say that something amazing had happened. Doctors had done tests on her grandmother before her operation and they didn’t find a drop of cancer. They tested her twice and the results were the same. She was disease-free. My friend laughed and cried into the phone. “You were the only person that I know of who prayed for her. I think your prayers worked.” I have no idea if my prayers helped in this situation. Only God heals. I do know, though, that I prayed my heart out and that my friend who had given up on God has now found God again.</div>