My mom was a hard case. My mom, when I first got saved, her first thing that she said to me when I got saved and started to live,
I remember I called her the day I got saved, said, Mom, I got saved. She said, Well, I'm proud of you.
You know, and I didn't grow up in a Christian home. I mean, I was running around being wild, doing all that stupid stuff,
and I was making a mess out of my life and everybody knew it. So I called her and said, Hey, Mom, I got saved.
They said, Well, that's great, honey. Good for you. You know, she was being nice about it.
Then I started getting a little bit more serious about the things of God, trying to start to clean up my life and things like that.
And then it was like, baby, you need to see a psychiatrist. So she told me, you know, because the change was so dramatic.
You know, when we first get saved, we're earning Salas maybe too much. You know, we're trying to get everybody else saved.
And we're, you know, trying to, you know, push our own beliefs maybe a little too much while we believe.
And I think that's kind of what I did. She says, Look, you know, I think you have some issues here.
But after time, you know, I stayed faithful and it took years. And over that time, my mom, I mean, I can remember conversations where she mocked God.
She mocked Him. And I feared for it. You know, and I tried, you know, at that time, I really didn't know how to give the gospel.
I wasn't, you know, unfortunately. But it wasn't long after that, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, breast cancer.
And she went through years of fighting that. She went through, had a double mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, you know, you name it.
She went through a lot of that stuff. And she developed fibromyalgia, I believe at the end, where even just the shirt touching her arm was causing her pain.
Still hadn't gotten saved. But around this time, what had started to happen was my mom would come to church with me every so often to the Baptist Church I was going to.
I would ask her to come to church with me and she would go. You know, she'd appease me. She was glad.
At this time, I'd kind of, you know, I'd kind of even my keel a little bit with spiritual things.
I was just trying to be a light to them, be a testimony, let them see my good works before men, that they would glorify my father, that kind of thing.
And it started to work. You know, they were glad that, you know, I was saved and gotten out of the lifestyle I was living, you know, partying and all that.
So they were glad for that. So she'd come along and she'd go to church and she'd listen to the preaching.
And other ladies in the church would come and try to preach her the gospel and talk to her about Christ and things like that.
And she'd listen to them. But she started doing that when she'd gotten sick.
And, you know, it got to the point with her arm that she was actually considering having it removed.
That they were actually going to take her arm off. They were going to remove it. And it had gotten that bad.
So I just kind of watched my mom for, you know, literally years, just this disease just taking her piece at a time, piece at a time, piece at a time.
It was really hard to watch. But, you know, eventually it got to the point where she just couldn't fight anymore.
You know, it's a hard thing to fight. And decided she was just going to let it take over.
And it went to her brain. She got brain cancer. And I'll never forget, she was a hard case.
I'm sharing this because I don't want anybody else to think you can give up on a hard case or that you should.
She was in her she was in her bed on her on her dying bed. We put her in that bed that she was going through hospice at home.
And I remember the first night she was in such a strange thing to put somebody in a bed that, you know, they're never going to get out of.
But she was in that bed. And the first night she was just restless.
I mean, she's just kept trying to get up. Me and my my stepdad was there and we were trying to, you know,
Mom, you got to stay in the bed, you know, you're going to hurt yourself.
And she said, I got to go. I got to go. I said, Mom, where are you going to go?
And she reached out and she grabbed me by the shirt and she looked me and she said, I'm going to go to hell.
Like that. I mean, that intense grabbing me. I'm going to go to hell.
You know, and that's when I knew that that snare was finally getting loose.
That that disease had run its course. And now she's ready to receive. She's ready to be set free.
So, you know, I had to pack because, of course, that time I didn't know anything about soul.
And so I had my pastor come over and he prayed with her. And I believe she got saved.
You know, as far as I know, she got saved the next day and she's in heaven.
But my mom was a hard case, you know, and I don't want anyone in this room to ever think that there's somebody in your life that's beyond salvation.
Just because they've rejected you. Just because they've said, you know what, I don't need your religion.
Don't put your religion on me. You know, I don't care about what your church is saying.
You know, they reject you. They reject the Bible. You just let life work on that person.
You just look at them like asosthenes. You know, maybe you have to shake your raiment a little bit.
And you let God work. And you let man work. And you let life work on them and beat them down a little bit.
And they'll come a day when that hard case, they'll reach out and grab you.
Then they'll say, you tell me what it is I need to know.