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He battled with drug addition to pain killers, and had to do it in the glare of the public eye.
He lost his hearing, and but for the miracle of his cochlear implant would have lost his entire career.
On air, he certainly made his share of mistakes. Often went right up to the line. Occasionally went over.
But those things were symptoms. At his core, he was struggling with something deeper.
Raised in a wonderful Christian family in Cape Girardeau, Missouri – the heart of the American Midwest – he was steeped in Judeo-Christian values.
But from my vantage point – and I wasn’t nearly as close to him as everyone else on his team, nor am I claiming to have been – I believed he was struggling spiritually.
His younger brother, David, became a very devout follower of Jesus Christ in the 1990s. Indeed, David – a lawyer by training and profession – has gone on to write some amazing books about the Christian faith, apologetics, and the persecution of Christians.
But I worried that Rush was resisting a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Or perhaps too busy and too successful to focus on such a relationship.
He and I occasionally discussed matters of faith – mine, and his.
But again, to be perfectly honest, he was intimidating to me.
Not because he was mean or callous or uncaring. Not at all.
INCREDIBLY KIND
Rush was incredibly kind and generous – and not just to people in general, but to me and my family.
In the fall of 2002, he single-handedly turned my first political thriller into a #1 best-seller – and drove it onto the New York Times best-seller list for 11 straight weeks.
How?
He read it, loved it and broke all of his personal rules about not interviewing people on his program who were not the president of the United States or speaker of the House.
That’s right – he actually interviewed me and raved about my novel on air. I was absolutely stunned.
And it wasn’t just that one time. Many times over the years he would read and then enthusiastically endorse my books on his program.
This simply was not done in his world. He didn’t interview staff on air. He certainly didn’t interview staff for the very monthly newsletter that a staffer once worked for.
Yet he did it for me.
And I loved him for this and so many other reasons.
PRAYING FOR RUSH
That’s why I worried about him – and a specific Bible verse kept echoing in my heart.
Jesus once said, “What profits a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul?”
That’s what I feared for Rush.
Maybe that seems presumptuous. Maybe it was. But it came out of my love for him. No other reason.
So, I would talk with him about the Lord when I could. We would email about lots of things, and occasionally I’d share a Bible verse with him.
But mostly I prayed for him – for the past 28 years, I asked the Lord to bless him and draw Rush into the kingdom of heaven. And I asked the Lord to bring other strong believers into his life that would be far more credible in Rush’s life than little old me.
I was not the only one. I met Evangelicals all over America who, when they learned that I once worked for him, would tell me, “I love Rush and I’m praying for him every day.”
GOING TO SEE RUSH ONE LAST TIME
Last February, when I heard him share on the air his stunning diagnosis – having terminal, Stage IV cancer – I immediately wrote and asked if I could come see him.
He immediately wrote back and said yes, he would like that.
In the States already where I would speak at the AIPAC conference and begin a book tour, I rerouted to Palm Beach.
But when I got there, he was not doing well. Day after day, I waited in the hotel. And he would write to me and say he wanted to see me but didn’t have the strength. He was really struggling. I told him not to worry. I’d wait. No pressure.
But in the end, that week he couldn’t see anyone.
COVID was now sweeping the planet. The Israeli government told all Israeli citizens to return home immediately or risk the airports being closed. My book tour was canceled. And I had to head back to my family.THE GREATEST POSSIBLE NEWS
I never got to see Rush again in person.
And I worried that he was going to pass away without knowing for absolute certain that he was going to heaven. That grieved me.
But something happened on that trip that changed everything.
I learned the greatest possible news – that just the year before, in 2019, Rush had given his life wholly and completely to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Maybe he had made a decision to receive Christ by faith when he was much younger and had, like many of us, struggled to walk closely with Christ after that decision.
That, I cannot say.