Richard D. Phillips > Quotes

“Of all men, Christians should work especially hard, giving more than an honest day's work for a day's wage.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“Our calling in life really is this simple (although not therefore easy): We are to devote ourselves to working/building and keeping/protecting everything placed into our charge.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“A. W. Pink rightly says:
Humility is not the product of direct cultivation, rather it is a by-product. The more I try to be humble, the less shall I attain unto humility. But if I am truly occupied with that One who was "meek and lowly in heart," if I am constantly beholding His glory in the mirror of God's Word, then shall I be "changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).24”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“What, then, does submission and respect look like for a woman in a dating relationship? Here are some guidelines:
1. A woman should allow the man to initiate the relationship. This does not mean that she does nothing. She helps! If she thinks there is a good possibility for a relationship, she makes herself accessible to him and helps him to make conversation, putting
him at ease and encouraging him as opportunities arise (she does the opposite when she does not have interest in a relationship with a man). A godly woman will not try to manipulate the start of a relationship, but will respond to the interest and approaches of a man in a godly, encouraging way.
2. A godly woman should speak positively and respectfully about her boyfriend, both when with him and when apart.
3. She should give honest attention to his interests and respond to his attention and care by opening up her heart.
4. She should recognize the sexual temptations with which a single man will normally struggle. Knowing this, she will dress attractively but modestly, and will avoid potentially compromising situations. She must resist the temptation to encourage sexual liberties as a way to win his heart.
5. The Christian woman should build up the man with God's Word and give encouragement to godly leadership. She should allow and seek biblical encouragement from the man she is dating.
6. She should make "helping" and "respecting" the watchwords of her behavior toward a man. She should ask herself, "How can I encourage him, especially in his walk with God?" "How can I provide practical helps that are appropriate to the current place in our relationship?" She should share with him in a way that will enable him to care for her heart, asking, "What can I do or say that will help him to understand who I really am, and how can I participate in the things he cares about?"
7. She must remember that this is a brother in the Lord. She should not be afraid to end an unhealthy
relationship, but should seek to do so with charity and grace. Should the relationship not continue forward, the godly woman will ensure that her time with a man will have left him spiritually blessed.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating

“Believing in Christ is the world's great need, and our great obligation is to tell all people that they need to do so.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“Our witness must center not on our experience but on the facts of Christ's coming to this world.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“Our society tells young adult men to deprive themselves of God's provision for their physical, emotional, and sexual needs so they can remain as immature and self-absorbed as possible, for as long as possible. You know what the Bible says about this: it just is not good.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“Indeed, this is what modern and postmodern masculinity has been all about-men behaving like little boys forever, serving themselves in the name of self-discovery. (Can we imagine someone like Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill talking about going on a quest to find his masculine self? They were too busy changing the world.)”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“For our marriages to regain the love and unity God designed them to have, it is not merely a matter of wives submitting to their husbands in the Lord. Husbands, in fact, have the first and greatest responsibility. As we gain insight about our wives through our shared lives together and our attentive
and cherishing interest in the affairs of their hearts, we must nourish our wives with God's Word, and with our own encouraging and upbuilding words informed by Scripture.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“1. Commit to take the lead in the godliness of your relationship. Read the Bible's passages about how men and women and all Christians should treat one another. Especially take the lead in establishing boundaries that will keep you from sexual sin. Assume that this woman is going to be your wife or the wife of some other Christian brother (who might be currently dating your future wife). Treat her as the precious sister in Christ that she is.
2. Decide in advance whether or not you are willing to love a woman in the self-sacrificing, nurturing way the Bible describes. Until you are ready to faithfully hold a woman's heart in your hand, do not enter into a dating relationship.
3. Realizing that God wants you to learn to put her interests ahead of your own, ask her the kinds of things she likes to do and be eager to spend time doing them.
4. Be willing to talk about the relationship. Initiate honest dialogue about how you feel. Do not resent her desire to have the relationship defined, but protect her heart by making your level of commitment clear and thereby making clear the appropriate kind of intimacy to go along with that commitment.
5. Pay attention to her heart. Ask her about her burdens and cares. Seek ways to minister to her and to make her cares your own. Instead of being critical of her, speak words of encouragement and support.
6. Do not be shy in ministering the Word of God to her. Do not preach, but exhort her and call to mind
God's promises and God's love for her in Jesus Christ. Make it a primary goal that she will be spiritually stronger by having been in a relationship with you.
7. If something about her bothers you, think about how you can encourage her in that area. Realize that none of us is without flaws. Pray for her weakness and try to strengthen her in that area. If your concerns are enough to deter you from wanting to marry her, let her know in a forthright manner while being as considerate as possible.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating

“In our witness, we are to shine not our own light but Christ's light. Just as a lamp requires oil, we depend on our fellowship with Christ and the Holy Spirit's enlivening ministry through God's Word in order that Christ's light may shine through us.”
― Richard D. Phillips

“Christian men who are not yet called into formal church office should never complain that they have nothing to do. We all have much to do in our own hearts and lives, and the requirement for well-qualified men to serve as leaders in the church is always urgent and vital.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“To be clear, male leadership in marriage does not mean the husband does everything or even that he decides everything. Rather, it means he typically initiates and always leads those shared discussions with his wife by which the various aspects of marriage and family life are decided and planned. The wife's opinion is vitally important, and a godly couple should be a close-knit team. But there should be no area of family life in which the husband does not serve as leader, facilitator, and overseer.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“any Christian man who wants to serve the Lord, in any role and at any level, must begin by devoting himself to God's Word. A man who is weak in the Word of God will be of little use for service, for we cannot truly serve God effectively in our own knowledge and strength. But God's Word stirs up in us the faith and spiritual strength needed to serve Him.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“One of the striking testimonies of the truthfulness of the Bible as God’s revelation is its coherence. Authors separated by centuries of history and remarkably different cultures are all saying fundamentally the same message: God alone brings life to people caught up in death, and God alone brings life through a ransom paid, a ransom paid by a substitute so that the one whom God is bringing to life might live.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Precious Blood: The Atoning Work of Christ

“God's curse on the man draws him unwholesomely away from the woman, even as God's curse on the woman draws her unwholesomely toward the man. This is why most marital counseling sessions are some variation on this theme: Wife-"You don't pay any attention to me." Husband-"You are too demanding and nag too much." God has cursed the marriage relationship with a poisonous desire for control by the woman and a self-absorbed focus outside the relationship by the man.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“So what is true religion? What does real spirituality look like? First, it is a desire for God himself, for his pleasure and his glory; second, it is concerned with the inner realities of sin and righteousness and only then with consequences and external blessings; third, true spirituality is that which draws from God's Word, hearing and believing and doing according to what God has spoken in the Bible.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Zechariah

“John Calvin said: "It is the nature of faith that we want to bring others to share eternal life with us when we have become partakers of it. The knowledge of God cannot lie buried and inactive in our hearts and not be made known to men."6
We”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“think St. Augustine was right to associate the dove that descended on Jesus with the dove Noah sent out when the ark landed in the new world that had been cleansed by the flood. As the waters of God's wrath subsided, Noah sent out a dove, and when it returned with an olive leaf in its mouth, "Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth" (Gen. 8:11b). St. Augustine comments, "As a dove did at that time bring tidings of the abating of the water, so doth it now of the abating of the wrath of God upon the preaching of the Gospel. ,5 Moreover, as Noah's dove signaled the arrival of a world cleansed of sin, the dove of the Holy Spirit symbolizes the new creation in Christ, the life cleansed from sin that every Christian begins when he or she trusts in Jesus Christ.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“God's love never says, "I don't want to change you." Because God's love is holy, He intends to change us by loving means, so that we will become the holy people we were always meant to be.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“God took a part of Adam, so that the woman corresponded to him, but then God made her a little different, fashioning Adam’s rib into the woman. The word for “made” or “fashioned” indicates special artisanship, which we see in the beauty that women bring into men’s lives. Because God made the woman from man and then fashioned her to be different, she is precisely fitted as a helper for man, and beautifully so.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“For one who believes in Christ, death is a gateway into a new life that will never end.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“Only God can enlighten the mind and open the heart to His gospel. So”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“It is necessary to state up front that authoritative positions of leadership in the New Testament church are to be held only by men. Women can and should play leading roles in the church, for a church with a strong masculine presence will have a strong feminine beauty about it as well. But the positions of authority—the roles of teaching and ruling—are restricted to men. To become convinced of the truth and authority of Scripture, and then to read the plain words of the New Testament, is to come to this conclusion easily and naturally.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“Alexander Maclaren writes: "This man, before he was four-and-twenty hours a disciple, had made another. Some of you have been disciples for as many years, and have never even tried to make one."3”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“If God is my portion, if God is the true source of my joy, and if it is God who will fulfill me, then I am free to be a companion instead of a consumer. That is, because of what I receive from God I can give to another person instead of always taking; I can minister rather than manipulate because of the fulfillment I get from God.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating

“If we want to be the men God is calling us to be—men who are rightly admired and respected by those we love, men who faithfully fulfill our duty before God—then we will make as our motto and watchword the Masculine Mandate that we as men have received from God: We will work and keep.”
― Richard D. Phillips, The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men

“The truth of God's sovereignty . . . removes every ground for human boasting and instills the spirit of humility in its stead. It declares that salvation is of the Lord-of the Lord in its origination, in its operation, and in its consummation. . . . And all this is most humbling to the heart of man, who wants to contribute something to the price of his redemption and do that which will afford ground for boasting and self-satisfaction.'2”
― Richard D. Phillips, What's So Great About the Doctrines of Grace?

“Arthur W. Pink rightly warns: "The fact that a preacher has graduated with honors from some theological center is no proof that he is a man taught of the Holy Spirit. No dependence can be placed on human learning."' The”
― Richard D. Phillips, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to Share the Gospel from the Book of John

“At midnight, we look out over Egypt. It is darkness; there is no light anywhere; everyone is fast asleep. Suddenly, on the horizon we see a bright light descend from heaven, a destroying angel sent to pass through Egypt. We see the angel pausing at every house for just a moment, moving swiftly through, as Peter says, “as a thief in the night” (2 Pet. 3:10). Are you ready for that angel of death? Are you prepared? Or is death going to be the greatest shock of your life? In the darkness of midnight, the Lord smites all those who are not sheltering under the blood of Christ.”
― Richard D. Phillips, Precious Blood: The Atoning Work of Christ