"Why didn’t God heal her?" - new Chichester autobiography

Ello Duck is a new book charting the life journey of Chichester’s Mike Davis, from living in Britain just after World War Two until 2019.
Mike DavisMike Davis
Mike Davis

After leaving school with no qualifications, Mike eventually became a top salesman for one of the largest companies in the United Kingdom.

But the real discovery in his life was discovering his faith in Christ just at the moment he was likely to be sucked into serious drug use. It is a faith which has also helped him navigate the death of his wife Jennifer, aged 61, from liver cancer a couple of years ago.

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Mike will be signing copies of his new autobiography at Living Word (Christian bookshop) in Bognor Regis on Saturday, November 23 between 11am and 1pm – a chance to travel with Mike as he goes through a near death experience and encounters superstition and the occult before finding his faith.

The book, self-published and available from Amazon, came about after promptings from family and friends.

“When I was having a dinner party, I would start telling some of my stories, especially with my family, and they would say I should be writing them down.

“And in the end, I said OK.

“I was in Spain at the beginning of the year for three months, and I was in a place without a TV. I thought ‘How am I going to fill the time in the evenings?’

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“I got my laptop out and I just starting writing as if I was speaking. It came easily. I was ready to put it all down.

“My life has been very interesting.

“Lots of people go on about education, but I was far more interested in The Beatles and The Stones when I was 12 or 14. I went to the concerts, and it was very exciting. I didn’t really pay much attention to school.”

Mike trained as a butcher and took up a job at Sainsbury’s in Crawley where he started talking to a guy about Christianity.

“I went along to a few meetings to see what it was all about, but I was in a band and I was about to go on drugs. I had tried marijuana and drinking, and they didn’t satisfy me. I was in the band and a few of them were on heroin. I found out later that they were going to try to persuade me to go on heroin too

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“But I went to see my friend and I wanted to find out the truth so that I could say that the Gospel was a load of rubbish or whatever, so that I could go out drinking and so on.”

But his friend read a verse from John to him: “And I felt the presence of God come into that room, and I realised I was turning my back on the one who loved me the most. I realised I was turning my back on Jesus, and so I gave my life to him, and it completely transformed my life going from one direction to another.

“Everybody said ‘Oh, Mike has gone all religious!’ but it wasn’t that. I just knew that Jesus really was alive.”

Two years ago, Mike lost his wife to cancer: “And you ask why didn’t God heal her. We believed in healing. We believed in miracles.

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“We went to several big healing meetings, and lots of people were healed… but my wife was not healed.”

For Mike, solace came in his belief in the sovereignty of God: “God is sovereign, and we just don’t know the answer. I don’t know why he accepts some people and not others.

“He is the potter, and we are the clay. One day he makes something one way and then another day he does it completely differently.”