My first prayer wasn't faith. It was a desperate bargain with a God I wasn't sure existed.
He kept His end. It took me fifteen years to keep mine.
Does God hear scared, imperfect prayers? If you’re facing a health battle, or watching someone you love go through one, this book is for you.
In February of 1993, I went from healthy to completely paralyzed in 48 hours.
I was 36, with two young boys at home and a career I had built from nothing. Suddenly I was in an ICU, unable to move anything below my neck, breathing through a machine, watching the medical team panic around an EKG machine while someone shouted "Fax it to the cardiologist!"
I had been raised by atheists. I had never prayed in my life, and I didn't even know if God existed.
But lying there with no control over anything, I ran out of other options, so I prayed. It went something like this:
"God, if you exist, please help me. Get me through this. And if you do, I'll tell people what you did, so others who need you can ask you for help."
I was a desperate man bargaining with a God I wasn't sure was listening.
Within two months, I was running five miles a day.
The Catch
After God kept His side of the bargain, I didn't keep mine, and I'm not proud of that.
I gave the credit to visualization, mental discipline, and self-help books. I even told the story at an all-company meeting and quietly edited God out of it.
For fifteen years, I built a career, moved my family around the world, and lived as if I had healed myself. God didn't forget, though, and He wasn't finished with me.
The Second Chapter
In 2020, I was diagnosed with throat cancer that had spread to my lymph nodes. I was facing thirty-four radiation treatments and a real possibility of never eating normally again.
By then I had been following Christ for over a decade, and I walked into treatment differently. I was still afraid, but this time I trusted Him, because I had learned who to give the fear to.
I am cancer-free today, with minimal lasting side effects. I had been warned the treatment could affect my ability to eat and swallow normally. It didn't. And I don't think that was luck.
Before You Read It
This book won't teach you positive thinking or a prosperity gospel, and it doesn't promise that God will heal you the way He healed me if you pray hard enough.
God doesn't always answer the way we ask. I know people who prayed with far more faith than I had in 1993 and who are no longer here. I don't pretend to have a neat answer for that.
What I can tell you is what I've learned across thirty years, two life-threatening illnesses, and a faith that grew from nothing:
God hears scared, imperfect prayers. I am the proof.
The quality of your faith is not what determines whether He hears you.
A relationship with Him changes how you face whatever comes, whether or not the outcome is what you hoped for.
Fear and faith can occupy the same room. The question is which one you give the floor to.
Who This Book Is For
This book is for you if:
You or someone you love is facing a serious health diagnosis and you don't know how to pray, or whether your prayers are good enough
You grew up without faith, or walked away from it, and you're not sure God would still listen to you
You've prayed for weeks or months and the healing hasn't come, and you're quietly wondering if that means something about you
You believe in God but you're not sure He's present in this: the fear, the waiting rooms, the uncertainty
You want an honest account from someone who went through the fire twice, not a polished version of it
What You'll Find Inside
Part 1: The Call
The full story of the 1993 paralysis: the 48-hour collapse, the ICU, the desperate prayer, the three unexpected certainties that came right after, the visualization, and the recovery that surprised the medical team. It also covers the promise I made and didn't keep.
Part 2: The Fulfillment
The fifteen years I gave the credit to myself, the corporate presentation where I edited God out, and the feeling that something was missing no matter how far the career went. Then how God used my teenage son to bring me back to the conversation I had started in that hospital bed.
Part 3: The Deepening
The cancer diagnosis in 2020, and the phone call from the church prayer team that came seconds before the doctor's call. It was God's way of saying I already know, and you're not walking through this alone. Then thirty-four radiation sessions in the "tunnel of doom," and what I learned about fear, faith, and talking to God in the middle of a treatment that frightens most people.
Part 4: The Calling
I look back across a lifetime with the eyes of faith and see God's protection in moments I once called coincidence. The book closes with a practical invitation for anyone who wants to reach out to Him, wherever they are starting from.
Get The Book
The Author
Guy Sohie was raised in Belgium by atheists who weren't hostile to religion.
God just wasn't part of the vocabulary at home. He spent his career as a senior executive in international business, moving his family around the world in pursuit of success that always felt slightly incomplete.
He came to faith at 52, through his teenage son Dylan, in a high school ministry at Saddleback Church in California.
He is now 69, cancer-free, and living in Arizona with his wife. He has six children and eleven grandchildren. He's an engineer, not a pastor or a theologian, who encountered God twice in ICU beds and spent thirty years figuring out what that meant.
The Desperate Bargain is his first book.
In Case You're Wondering
You can get the full book here as a PDF download for $9.99, and you'll have it within minutes.
If you're not ready to buy, start with the first chapter. Leave your name and email and I'll send it to you for free.
If you read it and it's not for you, that's fine. You don't owe anything. If it speaks to you, the rest of the book is waiting.
If you're reading this from a hospital bed, or from a chair next to someone else's hospital bed, I wrote this book for exactly where you are.
The God who heard a desperate prayer from a paralyzed atheist in 1993 is ready to hear from you today. He isn't put off by your fear, your doubt, your anger, or the fact that you're not sure He exists.
He heard mine before I believed He was there.
He's ready to hear from you today.
The Desperate Bargain: How God Healed My Body and Rescued My Soul
© 2025 Guy Sohie. All rights reserved.