There are seasons of life.\u00a0 As one gets older, the opportunity for losing good friends to the vicious enemy of death increases. I have experienced the death of five friends in the last year or so:\u00a0 Bill Quick, Patsy Hayes, Dick Engle, Rod Decker, Belva Donahue.\u00a0 Names on a page.\u00a0 Representing people that many of you reading this do not know.<\/p>\n
Bill Quick was a friend who had a complicated past and an interesting sense of humor.\u00a0 Part of our church, his testimony was that the Lord had changed him, but he, like all of us, worked through the issues of life.\u00a0 He served faithfully in our church on the Praise Team and the Lord used him.<\/p>\n
Patsy Hayes was a dear believer in my local church.\u00a0 She was in the hospital for around eleven months fighting some form of skin disorder and other issues.\u00a0 She eventually came out of it.\u00a0 We were excited about seeing her back on her feet again.\u00a0 She was a person full of energy and a heart who knew the Lord but wanted to know Him more deeply.\u00a0 However, he chose to help her go deeper by calling her home.\u00a0 She died of a heart attack when we thought things were going so well.<\/p>\n
Dr. Dick Engle was for many years one of the Old Testament and Hebrew professors at Baptist Bible Seminary.\u00a0 He was a man that never said a bad word about anybody in my presence.\u00a0 He was a kind, gentle spirit who loved deeply.\u00a0 He showed patience toward me as I tried to help him with his computer many times.\u00a0 And he loved the Bible, especially the First Testament as he called it.\u00a0 The Lord took him this past spring.<\/p>\n
Dr. Rod Decker was a close, personal friend.\u00a0 In fact, he preached the funeral of Dick Engle mentioned above.\u00a0 Recently (a few months ago), cancer took my friend Rod before his time.\u00a0 The loss stings me, although I am sure not as much as it hurts his own family.\u00a0 Rod was a great scholar and taught me much.\u00a0 I will always remember the conferences we attended together and the conversations as we traveled.\u00a0 He will be missed much.<\/p>\n
Belva Donahue is the one on the list that was closest to me.\u00a0 My mother-in-law.\u00a0 She feigned anger at my “mother-in-law” jokes from time to time, but the truth was she was the best mother-in-law the husband of a daughter could ever want.\u00a0 She was kind yet feisty.\u00a0 She had her opinions but did not hate.\u00a0 And she shared her faith in God to the end, when she passed away this summer at the age of 89.\u00a0 She will be remembered.<\/p>\n
All of these folks had put their trust in Christ as Savior.\u00a0 I will see them again when I get to heaven.\u00a0 Death, that great enemy the Bible tells us, has been conquered through Christ (1 Cor. 15:54-57).\u00a0 Its sting is only momentary.\u00a0 Its attack futile.\u00a0 The sorrow is only for a night.\u00a0 Eternity awaits…in glory and grandeur.\u00a0 The true believer has a special relationship to death.\u00a0 Dying is not our destiny (Rev. 21:4).<\/p>\n
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There are seasons of life.\u00a0 As one gets older, the opportunity for losing good friends to the vicious enemy of death increases. I have experienced the death of five friends in the last year or so:\u00a0 Bill Quick, Patsy Hayes, Dick Engle, Rod Decker, Belva Donahue.\u00a0 Names on a page.\u00a0 Representing people that many of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1315,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions\/1315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}