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Death Is Not A Buzzkill, It’s a Tool That Makes Us Holy

*This is an excerpt from Kevin Peck’s main session talk at The Austin Stone Worship Conference. Click here to download audio and video from the conference.

If you knew your life was short, would you invest in others, or would you continue to clamor for your platform?

Would you care for people, or would you increase your platform? If you’re going to die, would you check your Twitter followers tonight? Would you care about your daughter, or your son, or your disciples, or your church? Would you care about those leaders, and what they were going to do after you were gone? And whether they were prepared to live after your leadership was gone? Or would you worry about retweets? Would you worry about your platform, or would you worry about your people?

Tweet This: If you were to die tonight, would you worry about your platform, or would you worry about your people? @_kpeck_

What would happen, if you were to die soon? Death is not a buzzkill. Death is a tool that makes us holy. And it makes us live with purpose, so that the end of our life, we don’t sit there and say, “Why, oh God, did I walk like a phantom?”

Tweet This: Death is not a buzzkill. Death is a tool that makes us holy. @_kpeck_ @asworship

Jonathan Edwards spoke often of his death. So many of his resolutions he talks about death, and you get this sense that this guy had this focus on his own mortality and I just wonder if that’s why he did more in his 52 years than I probably will do if I get 100.

Let me read you just three of his resolutions, and I wonder if you might resolve in your heart, today, to do the same.

Jonathan Edwards said this, “I resolve to think much, on all occasions, of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.” He goes to a whole other level. He doesn’t just talk about his death, he wants to think about his dying process. He said, “the common circumstances which attend death.” He wants to think about his fleeting strength, he wants to think about his mind going. He wants to think about his ability to comprehend new things vanishing before his eyes as he ages. He wants to think about those things. Why? So he won’t walk like a phantom. So he’ll keep acting as the people of God, rather than trying to be the leader of God’s people. He also said this, “I resolve never to do anything which I would be afraid to do, if it were my last hour of life.” Wow. He resolved never to do anything that he would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of his life. Would this change the way that you and I lived, if we made the same resolution? Do you start to see the power of thinking on your mortality? Lastly, I want to read you this one, “Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done, when I come to die.”

Tweet This: “Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done, when I come to die.” #jonathanedwards @_kpeck_ Tweet This: “I resolve never to do anything which I would be afraid to do, if it were my last hour of life.” @_kpeck_ Tweet This: “I resolve to think much, on all occasions, of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.”

That’s how I want to live. That’s how I want to live, that when the monitor’s beeping and is about to go flatline. I want to live where I say, “Jesus, take me home. I’m spent. I’m tired. I’m broke. I laid it out. Let’s go home.” That’s how I want to live, don’t you?

It comes from thinking often about your mortality. It comes not by ignoring the thought, but embracing the thought.