Rita Green never smoked. Not a cigarette. Not once. She lived a healthy life, took care of her body, and had no reason to think that her lungs would ever be the source of a crisis.
So when doctors found a tumour in her lung, the first question was: how?
The Diagnosis
Lung cancer in a non-smoker is one of those diagnoses that defies the usual explanations. When someone who smokes gets lung cancer, the connection is understood. When someone who has never smoked gets it, the medical community reaches for genetic factors, environmental exposure, radon, secondhand smoke — anything to explain the unexplainable.
For Rita, there was no clear explanation. The tumour was there. It was growing. It was cancer. And the fact that she had done nothing to invite it made the diagnosis feel even more unjust.
The Response
Rita did not crumble. She prayed. She did not pray politely or casually. She prayed with the kind of desperation that comes when you are facing something you cannot control and you know that the only person who can help is God.
Her family prayed. Her church prayed. She described the prayer not as a single event but as a sustained, daily practice — a continuous conversation with God about the thing that was growing in her body that had no right to be there.
Rita also felt God's presence during this season in a way she described as tangible. Not a vague sense that someone was watching. A real, personal, intimate awareness that God was with her in the room, in the doctor's office, in the waiting area between scans.
The Scan
When Rita went for her follow-up imaging, the medical team expected to see the tumour. They expected to plan the next phase of treatment based on its size and progression.
What they saw instead defied their expectations.
The tumour had shrunk.
They ran more tests. They repeated the imaging. And each time, the result was the same: the tumour was smaller than before. Significantly smaller. And then, on a subsequent scan — it was gone. Completely. There was nothing there. The lung was clear.
Rita's doctors were honest: they could not explain it. Spontaneous tumour regression in lung cancer is exceptionally rare. There was no medical rationale for what had happened. The tumour was there. Then it was not.
The Testimony
Rita shared her story on CBN's The 700 Club, reaching millions of viewers. She did not claim to understand the science. She did not offer a formula. She offered a fact: she had a tumour, she prayed, and the tumour disappeared.
"God healed me," she said. "There is no other answer."
The simplicity of her testimony was its power. No sensationalism. No dramatic performance. Just a woman who had cancer and now did not, telling the truth about what happened.
What This Means for You
If you are facing a diagnosis that does not make sense — a cancer that has no explanation, a disease you did nothing to deserve — Rita Green's story says: the same God who heals the obvious can heal the unexplainable.
You do not need to understand why you are sick for God to heal you. You do not need to earn your healing by living a perfect life. Rita never smoked. She still got lung cancer. And God healed her anyway — not because she was righteous, but because He is good.
Pray. Let others pray for you. And do not be surprised when the thing that made no sense going in makes no sense going out. God does not owe us explanations. He gives us results.
