It started with an itch. A small sore on Mike Hoesch's chest that would not go away. He ignored it for a year — the way most people ignore things that scare them. If he did not look at it, it was not real.
When he finally went to the doctor, the diagnosis came fast. Emergency surgery was scheduled. His wife found the paperwork and saw the words: malignant skin tumour.
The Fear
Mike described what happened next with unflinching honesty: a spirit of fear instantly gripped him. Not worry. Not concern. Fear — the kind that wraps itself around your chest and squeezes until you cannot think straight.
His pastor told him not to make any decisions while he was afraid. So Mike cancelled the surgery until he could find peace. It was wise counsel. But the peace did not come quickly.
The Five-Year Descent
As Mike struggled with confusion and discouragement, the lesion changed. It became a tumour. It began growing at an alarming rate. Doctors warned it could metastasise throughout his entire body — and it began to do exactly that.
For the next five years, the cancer clung to him and, as he described it, sucked the life right out of him. He grew so weak that he had to quit his job. He gave up the business he had started. At his lowest point, he could barely hold his head up to eat.
Five years. Not five weeks. Five years of fear feeding the disease and the disease feeding the fear. A cycle that seemed impossible to break.
The Shift
Then a friend brought him a book about what God had already provided through the work of Jesus — specifically about healing. Mike had been a believer, but he had never understood healing as something already accomplished, already available, already his.
Something clicked. Not emotionally. Deeper than that. Mike received a revelation — the kind that settles into your bones and rewrites the way you see everything. He was not waiting for God to decide to heal him. The healing was already done. He just needed to receive it.
The Disappearance
"I noticed after about a month, the tumour got smaller," Mike said later. "I was not surprised, because I knew I was healed."
That is not denial. That is a man who had been afraid for five years and was not afraid anymore. The fear had broken. And when the fear broke, something else broke with it.
Within six months, the tumour was completely gone.
What This Means for You
Mike Hoesch's story is uncomfortable because it raises a question nobody wants to ask: what is fear doing to my body? Not as a guilt trip. Not as a blame game. But as an honest question about the relationship between what we carry in our spirit and what manifests in our flesh.
If you are terrified right now — of your diagnosis, of the treatment, of the outcome — you are not failing. Mike was terrified for five years. But his story says that the moment fear loses its grip, everything can change. Not because you generated enough positive thinking. Because you encountered a love strong enough to cast the fear out.
Perfect love casts out fear. Not perfect theology. Not perfect faith. Perfect love. And that love has a name.
