Once saved ALWAYS saved

I own many Bibles, but one of my favorites is my brother’s Bible. My brother lived a tortured existence. He agonized over his five year old son’s death from a brain tumor and then my mother’s premature death from a brain tumor two years later for many years. He seemed to like women who were as nutty as a fruitcake and his various marriages were terrible. He was forced into retirement before he wanted to retire and replaced by a younger person. He was good looking, very smart and gifted in many ways and was as witty as anyone I have ever met, but he had a dark side that could be wicked and when in those moods no one would want to be around him.

He tried many things to escape the pain of life including drugs, women, parties, playing in a band, numerous hobbies, his career; they did not work. One time he called me and asked me the secret to my success. I was happy. I had a great marriage, happy successful kids, and a career that I loved. He felt that his life was just the opposite of mine. He told me that we came out of the same womb and were raised by the same parents and yet here we were years later and we had turned out diametrically opposite of each other; he was miserable and I was exceedingly happy.

He asked me during a phone conversation one day, “What is the difference?” I answered rather simply, “I have God in my life and you do not.” Not long after that he called me and he was exceedingly distraught. His third wife and he had a big fight and she had tried to commit suicide and he and his little boy had found her just in the nick of time to save her life. While still in the hospital she vowed to leave him as soon as she got out of the hospital and take his little boy, (the pride of his life and the replacement for the other little boy that he lost to brain cancer), with her. I think that he felt that he had reached the absolute bottom. His problems were serious and seemingly unsolvable. He called me and was crying and he told me he just did not know where to go or what to do.

I told him to go to the airport and a ticket would be waiting for him and to get on a plane to Atlanta and that I would pick him up at the airport. He did as I asked and he spent the next several weeks with me. I talked to him long and hard about his relationship with the Lord and even took him to see our pastor who did likewise. He asked Jesus to come into his life and vowed to follow Him. I took him down to Borders and he bought the Bible that I mentioned in the opening paragraph. He began to read it and study it. One of the reasons that I love it is because I enjoy looking at all of the passages that he underlined as he tried to understand various things about how God will help us survive and even thrive in this mean old world. As I look at his comments and underlined passages, I try to imagine what he was thinking about at the time and how God was comforting him.

My brother went back home and reunited with his wife and later he, his wife, and young son were all baptized together. He attended church and studied his Bible and miraculously his entire life turned around on a dime and he was happy for the first time in decades. I would like to say that he rode into the sunset and lived happily thereafter; however time moved on and he and his family began to start missing church. I would call him and ask him if he was going to church and studying his Bible and he would sheepishly tell me that he knew that he needed to, but as of late he had been backsliding. I warned him that he needed God in his life and he was in danger of losing all of the progress that he had gained if he regressed. He told me that he realized that and vowed to do better. Not long after that he got to the point whereby he did not want to hear me “preaching” to him and he would not accept my calls at all and I would get his message machine when I called.

It was around midnight on a cold, blustery, snowy morning and I was in a Chicago airport trying to get a plane to Atlanta. They had cancelled numerous flights because of the foul weather and I was waiting for the lone remaining flight to Atlanta when I got a call from my wife and she was crying; my brother had killed himself. I did get on that last and final flight out of Chicago around 3:00 AM that morning and after six or seven de-icings we took off into the dark night and I made the sad trip home. I will never forget that long ride and all of the thoughts and “what if’s” that went through my mind. “What if” I had gone back down to New Orleans and pleaded with him to get back in church? What if? What if? What if?

I take solace in the fact that I know in my heart that he accepted the Lord as his Savior for sure when he was in Atlanta and that satan and his hordes can never take that away from him as attested to in the Bible by Jesus Christ Himself. Yes he sinned, but we all sin and that is the miraculous thing about God’s grace and His unbelievable love for us, those sins are forgiven and he is as innocent now as a newborn baby. His sins are hidden by the precious blood of Christ. I know my brother has finally found the peace that eluded him on this earth and now he is in paradise with Jesus and reunited with his son and our mother and that is what helps me to bear the pain. Words cannot adequately express how much I miss him and the terrible emptiness and sorrow that I feel to this very day, but God comforts me partially through reading his personal Bible that I helped him pick out at Borders and it greatly helps in that effort.

The verse below was very heavily highlighted by my brother in his Bible. I opened my Bible to it this morning and it was as if God was telling me not to worry, my brother is in safe hands… I type this with tears streaming down my face and share it in the hopes that if you know someone who is struggling with inner demons in this life that you go the extra mile with them and share the gospel of Christ.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that He gave
His only Son, that whoever believes
In Him shall not perish but have eternal life.