Defending The Faith Series

It’s the end of June of 2023. Crazy, isn’t it? Well I guess not really - that’s how time works. But, May 1st of this year marked half a decade that I’ve been here at New Hope, and in fact, this month, although it’s almost over, marks exactly 2 full years since I’ve started preaching here. Kind of a fun thing that I noticed while looking back on these dates, is that after these next two weeks I’ll have had the honor of preaching here and sharing with you for 22 sermons. That’s like 5.5 months. Pretty cool, and again - really just an incredible honor to even be able to say that.

But you know what else I’ve noticed? A lot has happened in the last 2-3 years in my life. Both good and bad.

And now, I don’t recommended that you go home and make a list of the major things that have “gone wrong” in your life since COVID, but I did!

So, I figured what better way to start off a brand new series coming out of Job, than to just go ahead and share that list. Really just dwell on it. I’m kidding, it all has a purpose, I promise.

Here we go - and just to clarify, these are things that have all happened since COVID.

Cassy’s first dog that she owned basically just on her own - her dog - Cooper had surgery to treat a pretty insanely aggressive form of cancer that he had.

Then his cancer returned.

My first dog I ever owned, Kida, I was standing in the kitchen one morning making breakfast, and I look over near the backdoor where Kida was - and she threw up. But instead of just throwing up, it was only blood. I ran over to her, opened the back door, and she went outside and same thing. Again. And then again. And then again. I was told at the emergency vet that had I not got her there when I did, she probably would have passed away in about half an hour. So she’s in the emergency vet, and they’re keeping her overnight. I’d called my parents to let them know, talked to my mom and about it, and my dad about it.

The next day I’m in a staff meeting at the church, and my mom calls. And calls. And calls. And texts me to pick up the phone, so I step out of the staff meeting, call her back, and find out that my dad is in a coma in the hospital and we don’t know why. Again, the doctors said he was probably about 30 minutes from death when they got him there.

Luckily, Kida ends up recovering - my dad ends up recovering. But it made for an incredibly stressful few days.

But because of his hospital visit, and the scans they were doing on my dad to try to figure out what was going on, he ended up getting diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer - which he still battles to this day.

Then Cassy’s grandpa, pretty much without warning, passes away.

Then Cassy was in a car wreck - a hit and run, in which they never found the other driver.

Then we found out we had bad pex piping in our house, leading to a massive slab leak in which our entire kitchen, downstairs flooring, and all of that had to be replaced.

Then my Jeep Wrangler’s engine blew a head gasket cracking the engine block that had to be rebuilt and replaced.

Then, Cooper, the dog that we had the surgery for - passed away from the aggressive cancer that returned.

Then a car changed lanes into Cassy as she was driving, nearly flipping her car. At least this time the person stayed and everything was worked out as it should have been.

As I’m driving to pick up Cassy from a house sitting one evening, a deer ran out in front of my car, which I barely clipped (I think the deer was fine) but it ended up cracking part of the front grill on the car.

Then after the slab leak is all taken care of, and we’re in the restoration process, all of a sudden one morning after waking up, I feel water coming up from the carpet in our master bedroom. The air conditioner’s PVC pipe in the wall in our Master Bedroom had started leaking, which luckily we caught early on and got it all fixed without any crazy damage.

Then Cassy’s mom was diagnosed with breast cancer - again.

Because of this, Cassy had to get tested for the BRCA gene, and we found out that she has it - increasing the chance for breast cancer something like 80%, and getting to deal with insurance almost on a daily basis because since she’s under 45 they don’t want to cover anything treatment wise.