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Please pray for Rich Beach

             Life-long friends: Bo Mitchell, Bob Beltz, and Rich Beach

How can I describe Richard Beach?  Anyone who knows Rich would probably tell you he is indescribable.  He really is one of the most remarkable human beings on the planet.  At the moment, he is also fighting an excruciating battle with cancer.  That is why I am asking you to pray for him.

 

Rich is my best friend.  Of course there are about five hundred other guys who feel exactly the same way.   I first met Rich in 1970.  I was a student at the University of Missouri and he was dating my old girlfriend from high school.   I was heavy into drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll, and he was heavy into Jesus.  I was trying to figure out if life made any sense and he was helping a ton of kids like me discover that it did.  He kind of adopted me.  Ironically, he was only twenty-seven at the time.  In retrospect, that seems totally crazy.

 

Over the years, Rich has been a mentor, friend, co-worker, surrogate-father-figure, teacher, leader, and sage to multitudes of young men and women.  I was fortunate to be his best friend and favorite protégé (a joke among about fifty of us that each are certain we are his #1!)  He also is a people-magnate with the most winsome personality since Jesus.  There are tens of thousands of men and women who have discovered how to have a relationship with God through Rich.  At last count, I think there are about four hundred of us who have gone on into some kind of full-time ministry because of his mentoring and coaching.

 

About fifteen years ago Rich was the recipient of a bona fide miracle of healing.  He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer several years earlier and had endured a radical prostatectomy, which at the time involved a procedure in which most of your internal organs were lifted out of a bowling ball sized cavity created by a massive incision running from the belly button to as far south as an incision could go in order to get to the prostate gland and remove it.  The doctors thought they got all the cancer, but it returned.  After more radical surgery and radiation they again thought they had it licked.  Again it returned, and this time the cancer had metastasized and created a nasty tumor on his spinal column.  This is never a good thing.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say thousands of people around the world who knew and loved Rich prayed for God to heal him, and God did.  The tumor disappeared, and even the docs were calling it a miracle.  Rich lived cancer free for the next fifteen years.  Then about two years ago, it returned with a vengeance.  Over the last two years Rich has been through numerous treatments and experimental protocols that seem to help for a brief period and then quit working.  The impact of the cancer and the treatment has taken its toll, and Rich is running on near-empty.  But he is running!  Throughout the entire ordeal he has had the most amazing attitude and has passionately worked to complete the camp for kids his ministry is building outside Kansas City.  None of us who know him and love him know how he does it.

 

So I’m writing this to ask you to pray for another miracle.  I should say that I am convinced that death from God’s point of view is much less of a problem than it is from ours.  Those who like the Apostle Paul have had a peek at the other side have verified that heaven is….well…heavenly!  I believe that one day we will understand in a way that we do not have the ability to understand on this side that death is inconceivably different than we imagine.  But I’ll tackle that at another time.  I know Rich knows that, but I also know he loves his wife and kids and grandkids and knows that there is a small mass of humanity that desperately would like to have him around for a while longer.  I’ve always marveled that Jesus hasn’t taken him sooner.  He is more fun to be around than any person I’ve ever known and my hunch is that Jesus is really looking forward to hanging out with him.  I’d just like to see Jesus hold off for a bit. 

 

So please, would you pray for Rich Beach?   And would you send this request to all your friends and ask them to send it to theirs.  Maybe if about a million of us pray, Rich will get another miracle.  I promise you, no one deserves it more.  Thanks!