life

A Tale of Two Deaths

Nearly eight years ago (1/16/2018), my mom died of a massive heart attack. Last night (1/9/2026), my dad died sitting in his recliner at his apartment. In those eight years, my dad grieved, faced depression, moved from Kentucky to Millers Creek, faced surgeries, falls, and a multiple myeloma diagnosis.

My mom’s health journey was long and difficult with many health issues she could not control, but her death was sudden and unexpected. My dad’s health journey has been long and difficult, and his death while sudden was expected. When I left him yesterday afternoon, I didn’t expect it to be last night, but we knew it was on the way.

Death is a horrible enemy. It is relentless. A number of years ago, I preached through Psalm 23. In that most famous psalm, David penned these words, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). Several things stood out for me as I studied this verse.

First, the Shepherd who leads through green valleys and still waters is still leading through the valley of the shadow of death. In my mom’s sudden death, we saw the Lord leading and showing grace given the many other health challenges she faced. In my dad’s journey these past several years, the Shepherd was leading as well. Even in sorrow and illness, my dad was not alone.

Second, the valley of the shadow of death casts a long shadow. We are trained to think of death as a moment in time when one’s heart stops beating. But the imagery of Psalm 23 indicates that David viewed death as an enemy with tentacles reaching into life to entangle the living. Dad experienced death in this way over the past few years. From depression that began with my mom’s death to the isolation brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, to chronic health issues from life choices to the incurable multiple myeloma diagnosis a couple of years ago, death’s shadow reached my dad long ago. The moment of death was last night, but the moments of death have been many and varied over the past few years.

Third, death is a real enemy but not an ultimate one. David ends the Psalm, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 23:6). David’s testimony reminds us that the believer may die, but lives on forever. Death took my dad last night, but my dad is alive in the presence of the LORD forever. He’s with the LORD, many of his loved ones who have already passed, and with my mom, the love of his life.

My dad’s suffering and death have taught me some things about the goodness and mercy of the LORD. Sometimes stubbornness is a gift to the living. My aunt was talking to me earlier about how my dad got some of his stubbornness honestly from his mom and his grandfather. And boy did he. He was stubborn, strong-willed, and just didn’t listen to much of what I told him these past several years. I’ll never forget him raising his arm, looking at me and the hospice nurses and declaring in that commanding tone I was so familiar with as his son, “I’m ready to die, and I would just as soon die sitting right here in this chair.” My dad’s stubborn will to live and to die in his chair was granted. He lived as long as he did because of his stubborn refusal to give up.

Sometimes God’s goodness and mercy is shrouded in unlikely clothing. There have been many times over the last few years that I struggled to see the goodness and mercy of God in my dad’s circumstances and my responsibility to care for him. My dad struggled with pain, cognitive decline, weakness, and his attitudes reflected these difficulties. As a caregiver, at times I’ve been angry, resentful, frustrated, argumentative, and plain difficult to be around. But even in these challenging days, God’s goodness and mercy chased us.

From his Home Instead caregiver to his deacons at church to church members who brought him meals and doughnuts, God reminded him and me of his goodness and love.

  • God showed his goodness and mercy through my wife’s practical, problem solving advice. In my frustrations and complaints, she was always quick to find and offer solutions. Nearly every major help my dad received traces back to an idea or suggestion she made.
  • God showed his goodness and mercy through cancer nurses and steroids. My dad was always at his best behavior when we went to his cancer infusions at the hospital. I think it was because the cancer nurses coddled him and treated him so well. I’m deeply grateful for the doctors and nurses that helped him battle the cancer and encouraged him along the way. Dad, my siblings, and I made the decision to stop his cancer treatments last spring due to weakness, loss of appetite, and other side effects. At that time, none of us thought he would make it through the summer much less the rest of 2025. But a steroid and moving off of cancer medications restored his appetite and gave him several months of quality living.
  • God showed his goodness and mercy through hospice care. I’m thankful for Mountain Valley Hospice who provided guidance for this season of my dad’s life.
  • God showed his goodness and mercy through many friends, prayers, encouragements, and moments even when I had trouble seeing it.
  • God showed his goodness and mercy through a family in our church who showed up at my dad’s apartment to sing Christmas carols. They sent me a video of him listening and even singing along.

My dad and mom are no longer with us. I deeply miss my mom’s prayers and even the stories she would tell over and over again. I miss my dad always asking about my sons even when his memory wasn’t great. I even miss his ornery orders that he would give me nearly every time I went to care for him. From now on, January will always be the month of two deaths. The tales of my parent’s deaths are much like the stories of so many friends, family, and church members that I’ve gotten to know. But their tales don’t end in January 2018 and 2026. For the death that our LORD died some 2,000 years ago means that my parents are more alive now than ever before. The death that our LORD died means that however I go through the valley one day in the future, I know that I will live forever in the presence of the LORD.

Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash

How Can You Know You Are Saved?

Over the last couple of Sundays at our church,we’ve worked through Hebrews 6. This chapter has been notoriously difficult to interpret for scholars, commentators, and preachers. If you wonder what I mean, take a few minutes and read through the chapter.

A variety of interpretive solutions have been suggested. I landed in the camp that believes the audience are genuine believers who if they “fall away”from Christ would lose rewards in heaven and spiritual blessings on earth. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the service and sermon on the subject. I may be wrong about my interpretation of the text, but here is commentator David Allen making a case for this view:

Three things seem clear in the New Testament. First, genuine believers are eternally secure in their salvation. The sheer weight of evidence in Hebrews and the entire New Testament supporting this doctrine is unavoidable. A key text is 1 John 2:19: “they went out from us because they were never of us.” Speaking about this verse, D. A. Carson correctly stated, “genuine faith, by definition, perseveres; where there is no perseverance, by definition the faith cannot be genuine.” Second, there is no question that apparent believers who are not yet genuine believers can commit apostasy. This too is taught in the New Testament. It is just not taught in Heb 6:6. True apostasy is reserved for the unsaved. However, believers can “fall away.” It is unhelpful and confusing to use the word “apostasy” to describe what genuine believers do when they rebel against the Lord and commit sin due to the technical meaning the term has developed. Third, Christians can commit serious sin without being disqualified from eternal life. Part of the problem with some interpretations of Hebrews 6 is a failure to distinguish between totally renouncing Jesus and/or faith in Jesus by those who were never genuinely converted and failing Jesus on the part of those who are genuinely saved. People who call themselves Christians and yet sin without regret or desire to change show that they have never been genuinely converted. Christians sometimes do commit serious sins without being disqualified from eternal life. Examples include David, Peter, and some of the Corinthian Christians at the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17–22). First Corinthians 3:1–3 affirms that carnal believers exist. Such immaturity and carnality is challenged by Paul with stern language. However, Paul does not question their salvation. He rather addresses them throughout as genuine believers. Carnal Christians are poor examples of Christians, but they are Christians. Likewise, the author of Hebrews addresses his readers as genuine believers, but they were immature spiritually (Heb 6:1). He warns them to press on to maturity, but even in the harsh words of Heb 6:4–6, he does not indicate they are not genuine believers. Hebrews 6:4–6 does not teach apostasy, in the technical theological sense of ultimately denying Christ, on the part of believers (the Arminian position) or apostasy on the part of those who are not genuine believers (the Calvinist position). Hebrews 6:1–8 is not a soteriological passage; it is a sanctification passage, as is made clear from the context.

David Allen, Hebrews: The New American Commentary, 389-90.

Whether you agree with me and Allen above, Hebrews 6 does address the security of the believer. The writer of Hebrews goes on to state that he “feels sure of better things–things that belong to salvation” for his readers (6:9). Any reading of Hebrews 6 invites readers to examine their lives and consider the significance of the warning. Hebrews is full of warnings about: drifting away (2:1-4), continuing in unbelief and falling away (3:12-13), falling into disobedience (4:11), becoming dull of hearing and falling away (5:11-6:4-8), neglecting to gather regularly and deliberately sinning (10:24-31), and rejecting the warning about judgment and heaven (12:25-29). The validity of these warnings should motivate believers toward self-examination and intentionally reorienting our eyes and life on Christ.

So, as we read these warnings and consider our salvation, how can we be sure we are saved?

I would commend to you passages like John 10 and the letter of 1 John for a more in depth, biblical treatment of assurance. In short, since it is God’s work through Christ that earns our salvation, our labors or lack thereof cannot bring about the loss of what God made possible through Christ. I believe the Bible teaches that genuine faith perseveres (see Allen’s quote of D.A. Carson above).

But the perseverance of our faith and the assurance of our faith are not necessarily the same. John the Baptist doubted Jesus’ identity after Herod imprisoned him (Matthew 11:2-19). Charles Spurgeon, famed pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London in the 1800s suffered periods where he doubted his salvation.

So how do we experience assurance? Author and pastor Greg Gilbert in his book Assured, encourages his readers to seek assurance of salvation in the following 4 ways. The first two he defines as the driving sources of assurance: the gospel of Jesus Christ and the promises of God. The third is the supernatural source of assurance: the witness of the Holy Spirit. And the fourth is the one we go to most often, but is only a confirming source: the fruits of obedience in our Christian lives. Gilbert’s book is helpful, and if you or someone you know is struggling with assurance, I would commend it.

Practically, Gilbert reminds us of the importance of focusing on God and Christ rather than on ourselves.

The more trustworthy and faithful you learn God to be, the more you will trust him and the more certain you will be in that trust. What this means, in the most practical terms, is that you need to take specific action to remove your eyes from yourself and plant them on God. Read books about God, about theology, about who God is and what he has done, and read them for God’s own sake—to know him and love him and stand in awe of him—not just for the sake of figuring out what ‘applicational nugget’ you can walk away with. Meditate on God’s trinitarian nature, even if you can’t see an immediate application. Dwell on the intricacies of sacrifices and atonement, even if those details don’t seem ‘relevant.’ As you broaden your vision of God, you will find your love and awe of him deepening. And the result will be that you will trust him more. Your certainty that he will move heaven and earth to keep his promises will solidify. Even more, make sure you are a vital contributing member of a local church. Gather with brothers and sisters who are themselves engaged in the fight, sing hymns of praise to God, hear his Word read and preached, lift up your voice with them in prayer. What you will find is that fellowship with other believers will remind you of God’s promises, spiritually stabilize you, and reinvigorate you to continue the fight. Often the very best way to deepen our assurance of salvation is to peel our eyes off ourselves and put them on God and his people.

Greg Gilbert, Assured, 142-3.

We can know we are saved by believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ, trusting the promises of God, and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Gilbert is correct to connect assurance to the concrete rather than the subjective. When Jesus confronted John the Baptist’s doubt, he told John’s messengers, “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matthew 11:5). He didn’t tell John to remember the day when he announced Jesus or to reflect on his “coming to faith.” He told John to reflect on the concrete miracles. Have a re-read of Hebrews 6. The writer feels sure of better things because God is not unjust and will not overlook the love and service of the church to one another (Hebrews 6:10).

Have more questions? Read through 1 John. Buy and read a copy of Assured by Greg Gilbert. Talk to a pastor or church leader who can help you discern the gospel of Jesus Christ and the promises of God.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash