CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (BP) – As far as David and Marilyn Killian are concerned, God sent Cameron Lowe to save David’s life so David could help save Cameron’s.
An HVAC repair worker, Cameron is trained to get compressors and blowers back up and running – not human hearts. But that’s exactly what he had to do one Thursday last month.
David had made an appointment with North Georgia Heating and Air weeks earlier to get some work done on his central air conditioning unit. The appointment had been rescheduled once. Then that day, Sept. 5, David was mowing his neighbor’s yard, while his wife Marilyn was volunteering at church. Cameron was supposed to be there in the afternoon, but he called and said he was running early and would it be OK to go ahead and come.
“I said sure,” David said. “I’ll see you when you drive by, and I’ll come over to the house and get you started.”
Soon Cameron arrived and went to work. As he worked, David began to feel ill.
“I started to feel dizzy and just really sweating profusely. So I shut the mower off and sat down on a swing in the backyard trying to figure out.”
Cameron was nearby working on the unit, and when he finished, he turned to talk to David and knew something was wrong.
“I was not breathing,” David said. “I was making a gurgling sound. And he realized what was going on, and he grabbed me in a bear hug – and he’s maybe half my size – he grabbed me in a bear hug and got me on the ground and called 911.”
The operator asked Cameron if he knew CPR, and he said no. She told him to put his phone on speaker and she would talk him through it.
Following the operator’s instructions, Cameron performed CPR for 11 minutes until paramedics arrived. He thought he’d been unsuccessful, as David was still unresponsive.
But in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, David revived. The paramedic began to quiz him on basic facts – his name, his wife’s name, his address, etc.
“And then he got right in my face and he told me, ‘I want you to understand how blessed you are,’” David recalled. The man said he’d never seen someone who was out as long as David was wake up so quickly and with no lasting damage.
Coming back
The event was David’s second heart attack. The first was 15 years ago. Doctors believe this one was triggered by an allergic reaction to anchovies in some barbecue sauce David had eaten at a church event the Sunday prior. That reaction caused inflammation which loosened plaque in David’s arteries, causing the heart attack days later.
His first few hours in the hospital, David said different nurses kept coming into his room. He asked one of them why.
“And she said, ‘You have no idea how rare you are,’” David recalled. “’We have never seen anyone come back the way you did.’ I mean, two hours after I was in ICU, I got up and went to the restroom on my own.”
One of the phone calls he received during his three-day hospital stay was from Cameron, who was still shaken by the whole ordeal.
“He couldn’t wait to hug David,” said Marilyn. “He said he’d been praying for me. He was so concerned, you know, and so he couldn’t wait to see him. We had him out for supper the same day that David got home from the hospital.”
That night at supper, Marilyn asked Cameron to tell her about himself. He told her of growing up in church and even being baptized.
“I said, ‘Oh, are you saved?’ Marilyn recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m still working on that part.’”
They also learned that night that during those tense 11 minutes while Cameron was working on David, he cried out, “God, I’ll do whatever you want me to do to save this man’s life.”
The following Sunday, the Killians invited Cameron to their church, Red Bank Baptist in Chattanooga, where he heard a sermon that seemed to be tailor-made for him.
Urgencies and emergencies
That morning, Red Bank Pastor Sam Greer preached a message titled “Gospel Urgency is an Ongoing Emergency.” He asked the congregation if they’d ever been in an emergency situation in which they had to respond with urgency.
The text that morning was from Luke 9:60, in which Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
“It’s just amazing how God set this up,” Greer said later. “I shared a story at the end of the message. I wasn’t going to share the story. I thought about it all week, and I decided, you know what? I’m going to share it. And so I did.”
Greer’s father died in a car accident when Greer was 10 years old. The whole family – Greer, his parents and 6-year-old brother – were in the car. His dad died instantly, and he, his brother and mother were injured and spent time in the hospital.
They were still in the hospital when his dad’s funeral was held. None of them were able to go.
“I was talking (in the sermon) about having a lack of closure,” Greer told Baptist Press. “You know, all throughout my life I’ve had crazy dreams about my dad being here one minute and gone the next. …
“Did he abandon us? Did he walk away? Did he … what happened? Where’d he go?”
Greer then shared his testimony with the congregation – how he came to faith in Christ at 21 and how the Gospel changed his life.
“The fulfillment Jesus has given me as His follower far outweighs the lack of closure surrounding my dad’s death,” he preached. “… The peace of knowing Christ far outweighs any pain. … Stop putting Jesus off and start putting Jesus first.”
Your story, my story
After the service, the Killians brought their new friend Cameron to meet the pastor. Greer recounted the conversation:
“You know, when you were sharing that story, you were sharing my story,” Cameron told him.
“I said, ‘What do you mean I was sharing your story?’”
“He said, ‘My dad died when I was 10.’
“And I said, ‘My dad died when I was 10 too. And then I got saved when I was 21.’
“And he looked at me, and he said, ‘I’m 21.’”
The young man asked Greer where he found peace after such a loss, and Greer shared the Gospel with him.
It wasn’t the first time Cameron had heard it. His grandfather was a Baptist preacher. And his boss at the HVAC company had been sharing with him and had taken him to church a few times.
“I said, ‘Well, here’s what I think’s going on, Cameron,’” Greer recalled. “’Here’s what I know is going on. Just like God used you to save David’s life physically. All of this has led up to now all of us standing here. The Lord wants to save you spiritually. And you can do that right now.’”
Marilyn calls the whole thing “such a God story.”
“It was so beautiful. It choked me up,” she said of the conversation after church that day. “We got to witness it, you know, it was just their dialogue back and forth. Sam just gently led him to the Lord.
“It was just, it was so beautiful.”
Greer, who has been pastor at Red Bank since 2012, said he often stresses to his people the importance of being ready to share the Gospel at any time, the way David and Marilyn were.
“The reason we exist is to point people to Jesus, one conversation at a time,” Greer told BP. “That’s our vision statement. We’ve taken the Great Commission and boiled it down to that. We want to point people to Jesus one conversation at a time.”
