Sunday, December 6, 2015

HGTV home renovation show hosted by Tarek El Moussa



From Afar

Ryan likes to watch Flip or Flop, the HGTV home renovation show hosted by Tarek El Moussa.  So when HGTV ran a marathon of the show one day in 2013, she watched a few episodes.  That’s when she saw something that caught her attention.

Ryan is a registered nurse.  From her training in the medical field, she saw something about El Moussa that concerned her: she noticed a lump in his throat.  “Halfway through an episode during a marathon, I saw it,” Ryan reported.  “I stopped the TV, rewound it, watched it again. [I] watched a few more episodes...”   Ryan believed that it was something about which El Moussa needed to see a doctor.  She decided to email the show’s producers.  She struggled about how to share her concerns; she didn’t want to sound like “a crazy fan.”

“We got the email and I had a bad feeling about it, and just made the first doctor's appointment we could," El Moussa recounted.  Subsequent tests revealed that El Moussa had thyroid cancer.  The cancer had even spread to his lymph nodes.  His doctors ordered thyroid radioactive iodine therapy.

Two years after his initial diagnosis, El Moussa’s cancer is in remission.  On November 23, 2015, he appeared on the television show, The Doctors, where he was asked to share his experience with thyroid cancer and how it came to be diagnosed.  After he told the audience about his experience, the hosts of The Doctors brought Ryan onto the set.  El Moussa had never met her before that time.  El Moussa and his wife Christina tearfully but cheerfully embraced Ryan, thanking her for her timely assistance.

“If it wasn't for TV or her noticing this huge lump on my neck, I would still be moving forward with my life with cancer in my body and never doing anything about it,” El Moussa said. *

Another diagnosis has come “from afar” concerning EACH of us.  God has revealed in His Word that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  Don’t be deceived; His diagnosis is accurate and sin is deadly (Romans 6:23).

But the Great Physician loves each of us very much.  He loves us so much that He has provided a Remedy for our sin problem.  That Remedy came at a great cost.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

God has promised to save those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of their sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

The promise of salvation and eternal life through Christ is "to you and to your children, and to all who are AFAR OFF, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39).  He’s calling each of us through the Good News (the Gospel) of Jesus (2 Thessalonians 2:14).  In Christ Jesus, those who are “far off” are brought “near” to God through the blood of Jesus (Ephesians 2:13).

Won’t YOU answer His call through your trusting obedience?

* “HGTV's Tarek El Moussa Meets the Live-Saving Fan Who Spotted His Cancer on TV and Urged Him to See a Doctor” by  Lindsay Kimble, www.people.com

David A. Sargent

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