On Jesus’ last day, we see that He spent time with God and with those He loved. The Gospel of John describes his conversation (John 13-18). Jesus spent the day in meaningful conversation with the disciples, as well as spending much time in prayer. While with His disciples, He washed their feet and ate with them. He still was teaching them throughout the day. Jesus talked about heaven, life, glorifying God, and loving others. 

I recently have been thinking through the question, What would I do if I only had one day to live? Maybe this has crossed your mind at some point, too. Many other questions swirled in my mind as I considered this question. What would I talk about? Who would I talk to? What would I do? What would be important to me? Have you ever considered this question or these questions?
Two people come to mind when I begin to contemplate this. First, my friend Jack Drury. I remember receiving the phone call from the hospital. It was during the COVID pandemic. Because of the news they had given to him, the hospital allowed my brother and I to go see him. When we arrived, he told us with a smile on his face, “I’m going to heaven.” His medical doctors had explained to him that a recent bout with COVID had left his lungs in terrible shape. And, although he looked great sitting there in the bed, he was very sick. They anticipated he would die, possibly that day. He had only his church family nearby. Throughout the rest of the day, Pastor Craig and I, alongside his wife and adopted church daughter, sat with him. We listened to him; we talked to him. In a situation like this, you wonder what the conversation would be. Well, on this day, it was all about heaven and the Bible. He couldn’t have been more excited about going to heaven. Even with death staring him in the face, I have never had a more sweeter time than those hours spent together reflecting on the Bible and heaven, plus a few more topics of interest. As I walked away from that day and since, I have wondered what I would have talked about, thought about, or done.
Another friend also comes to mind. Near the time of Jack’s death, I had another close friend die. Beth Adams enjoyed a perfect day. She served others with her morning, supported a grandchild with her afternoon, enjoyed supper with her husband, and was headed to go serve at her church when it happened. A twenty-year-old man running from the police blew through a stop sign in a stolen box truck and crashed into my friend’s small SUV. She died immediately. Shock rocked all of us as we tried to wrestle with what had happened.
Read More
Related Posts:

Our witness before our neighbours matters. That is not just walking with integrity before them personally (though that surely matters too). But it means walking in such a way that we inevitably do good to them because of the gospel. It means serving our neighbours in real and practical ways so that, when they see the good works we do, we can point them to the gospel and they may give thanks to the true and living God who, because of his Son and in the power of his Spirit, we are compelled to do them.

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. – Matthew 5:16

I have argued before that the current context in which we broadly find ourselves in the Western World means that the church can no longer rely on being seen as an inherently good thing. Time was, people thought the church was inherently good, even if they themselves weren’t overly interested in it. They might send their kids for a bit of good morals, or spiritual formation, because the church was essentially alright, just not of interest to them in particular.
That clearly is not the situation we are in anymore. These days, we are not seen as a basically good thing. Indeed, we are no longer even seen as an essentially harmless thing. Now we are broadly seen as a bad, problematic thing. The world now sees itself as the good and the church as opposing what it stands for. We are, at best, viewed with a large degree of scepticism by many.
I say that not in any sort of despairing way. Just as a point of fact. Most people don’t actively hate us, they broadly nothing us. But what they do know about us, or think they know about us, is often not positive. Which means we are starting from behind with many people. They aren’t chomping at the bit to hear our gospel message of salvation. Some think they’ve heard it all before (but we know they haven’t) or think they know what we’re about already and aren’t that keen.
This matters because, if we are starting from behind and cannot assume people will view us as an unmitigated community good, we have to show them before they engage with us that it is so. I am minded to think many churches who sit in their buildings and do very little in their communities but run the occasional outreach event are rightly viewed as not being much of a community good.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Richard D. Phillips |
Saturday, December 9, 2023
What a difference it will make if Christian men will check out of the self-centered grid paraded around us in secular society and instead embrace God’s calling to work and keep — to till the soil of hearts and stand guard over God’s treasured ones. Christian men will spend our lifetimes learning what it means to serve sacrificially so that others may abound in life and to guard vigilantly so that our wives, children, communities, and church are kept safe. But what a difference such biblical manhood makes.

I come from a cavalry family — as in horse soldiers. My grandfather commanded the US Army’s last cavalry regiment, until we shifted to tanks together with the rest of the twentieth century. Given this background, I am steeped in the old cavalry movies, the greatest of which is John Wayne’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Portraying Captain Nathan Briddles, a grizzled Civil War veteran facing the end of his career, this cavalry classic unleashes a torrent of manly quips. According to Captain Briddles, true manliness can be summed up in two words: Never apologize.
When I became a Christian, I learned that not every manly saying in John Wayne movies should be adopted. “Never apologize” sounds great in theory, but in practice it may combine with a man’s sin nature to make him overbearing and arrogant. Yet it turns out that the biblical ideal of manhood may also be summed up in two words. They are found in Genesis 2:15, which contain the Lord’s calling to the first man, Adam, for his life in the Garden of Eden.
The creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 supplies a wealth of information regarding God’s design for human society, including men. Genesis 1:27 states that “God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them,” stating that God created two sexes of equal value and dignity. Genesis 2:7 says that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground,” showing that mankind is specially created by God and not the product of evolution. Moreover, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” so that man is a spiritual being designed for covenant union with God through faith and obedience.
Armed with all this useful information, Genesis 2:15 goes on to provide the how of biblical manhood: how is the distinctive male calling lived out? I have called this verse the “Masculine Mandate,” because it establishes the architecture of biblical manhood in a way that is confirmed throughout Scripture. It is blessedly direct and to the point: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). At the heart of this calling are two words that shape the biblical view of manhood: work and keep.
A Man’s Work
God’s first calling to men directs us to work. It is commonly realized that men were made to be productive. Yet the idea here is not simply labor, but specifically the work of cultivating. We gain this insight from the context in which Adam was to work: as the cultivator of God’s garden. The man was called by God to till the soil and cultivate living things so that they would grow and bear beautiful fruit.
What does a gardener do to make his garden grow? The answer is that he tends the garden. He plants seeds and prunes branches. The gardener digs and fertilizes.
Read More
Related Posts: