In December 1981, Dodie Osteen received a diagnosis that was supposed to be the end of her story. Metastatic liver cancer. The cancer had spread. The doctors at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — one of the most respected cancer institutions in the world — examined her and delivered the verdict: she had weeks to live.
She was a mother of five. Her youngest son, Joel, was still a teenager. Her husband, John Osteen, was the pastor of Lakewood Church. The family was about to lose their mother.
The Diagnosis
Metastatic liver cancer in 1981 was even more devastating than it sounds today. Treatment options were limited. When cancer has spread to the liver and taken hold, the body's ability to fight is severely compromised. The liver is the body's filtration system — when it fails, everything fails.
The medical team was honest. They did not offer false hope. They told Dodie to go home and prepare. Weeks. Maybe less.
The Scriptures
Dodie Osteen went home. But she did not prepare to die. She prepared to fight — not with medicine, but with the Word of God.
She took index cards and wrote healing scriptures on them. Every verse in the Bible that spoke about healing, about God's power over sickness, about life overcoming death. She carried those cards with her everywhere. She read them out loud. She spoke them over her body. Every single day.
Psalm 118:17 became her anchor: "I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done."
This was not positive thinking. This was not denial. This was a woman who believed that God's Word was alive and active and sharper than any surgeon's scalpel. She treated those scriptures like medicine — taken daily, without missing a dose.
The Stand
Dodie's husband John stood with her. The church stood with her. But make no mistake — the stand was hers. She was the one lying in bed, feeling her body deteriorating, looking at the face of death, and choosing to open her mouth and declare scripture instead of accepting the prognosis.
Day after day. Week after week. Long past the timeline the doctors had given her.
She did not improve overnight. It was not a single dramatic moment. It was a slow, stubborn, scripture-soaked refusal to agree with the diagnosis. And somewhere in that process — in the daily, relentless, faith-filled speaking of God's Word — the cancer began to lose its grip.
The Healing
Dodie Osteen was completely healed. The metastatic liver cancer that was supposed to kill her in weeks disappeared from her body. Not partially. Not mostly. Completely.
And here is where this story separates itself from almost every other healing testimony you will ever read: Dodie Osteen is still alive. More than forty years later. The woman who was given weeks to live in 1981 has outlived the diagnosis by four decades and counting.
She went on to write a book called Healed of Cancer. She has stood on stages around the world telling her story. She has prayed for thousands of people facing their own diagnoses. And every year that passes is another year of proof that what happened in 1981 was not a temporary remission. It was a healing.
What This Means for You
Dodie Osteen's story is not about a denomination or a church or a famous family. It is about a woman who took God at His Word when her body was failing.
If you are facing a terminal diagnosis, if the doctors have used the word weeks or months, if you have been told to go home and prepare — you have every right to do exactly what Dodie did. Open the Bible. Find every scripture that speaks about healing. Write them down. Speak them out loud. Every day. Without stopping.
This is not about pretending the cancer does not exist. It is about choosing to believe that God's Word is more powerful than a scan result. Dodie Osteen believed that in 1981 when she was dying. She is still believing it in her nineties.
Forty years. That is not a remission. That is a testimony.
