Podcast: 365 Christian Men

February 5. John Calvin. Born into a devout Catholic family, Calvin was sent off to study philosophy and law. By the time he was twenty-four, he embraced Protestantism and worked for changes in the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote The Institutes of the Christian Religion, a foundation of Protestant systematic theology. And he wrote commentaries on every book in the New Testament except Revelation and on most books of the Old Testament. He was thoroughly convinced of the majestic sovereignty of God. 

Some people have said that Calvin was cold, unapproachable, unemotional, and reluctant to speak, but those who knew him well understood that façade shielded a man who felt deeply and was especially anxious for the state of the world and of men’s souls. Calvin himself said, “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” 

Our physical weaknesses never have to limit our spiritual strength. 

Calvin’s body was failing him. It had been for a long while now. Even on his best youthful days, Calvin had always leaned toward the frail side. 

Now as an older gentleman closer to the sunset of life rather than the sunrise, just getting out of bed proved difficult. Migraines, lung hemorrhages, gout, and kidney stones had rendered Calvin’s physical condition bleak at best. But his mind was as strong as ever. 

Calvin had been working his way through the entire Bible. He was writing a commentary on nearly every book. When he was no longer able to write, he finished many of these by dictating to his assistants. Ministers throughout the city would come and visit with him with the intent of encouraging a dying leader, but they were often the ones who left inspired. 

When his body provided enough strength to sit up and go out, Calvin went to church in a chair carried by friends and students. But he wasn’t there to sit in the service. He was there to lead. His assistants would place Calvin in his chair behind the pulpit, where he would preach and even conduct baptisms. His faith and determination willed his body into work. 

“But if I say, ‘I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,’ then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it” (Jeremiah 20:9 NASB). 

His soon-to-be successor, Theodore Beza said, “It is true that not only ministers, but friends too, urged him not to wear himself out by coming and working like this. But he would make excuses and say that it did him good and that time would hang too heavily on his hands if he stayed indoors all the time.” 

When he was unable to go out to church, he would bring church to himself. Some days, Calvin’s bedroom filled to capacity while he lay in bed and read from the Bible and his notes. 

Even when it was clear that this simple act of reading aloud was deteriorating his condition, no one dared stop him. He was a man on a mission. 

On occasion, friends would voice their worries about the daily regimen’s effect on his health. But his response was always, “What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when He comes?” 

“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV). 

How can God use your weakness today to reveal His strength? Our physical weaknesses never have to limit our spiritual strength. 

Gordon, Bruce. Calvin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. 

Beza, Theodore. Life of Calvin. Lindenhurst, NY: Great Christian Books, 2012. 

Maseko, Achim Nkosi. Church Schism & Corruption: Book 3 Reformationists. Lulu, 2008. 

Story read by Daniel Carpenter 

February 2. Wilfrid Barbrooke Grubb. The biographer said that Grubb considered obstacles mere “straws to be brushed aside” and … “his appearance conveyed an impression of physical endurance and great strength of character.” 

As strong as his character was his desire for the good of his South American parish—the notorious Chaco region of Paraguay. There in the wild, Grubb established the first mission at a time the natives were deep into mere straws like ritual mutilation and cannibalism. 

Grubb worked with the Lengua people. His methods were quite individual. Grubb told how he won the respect of the natives, so he could give them the gospel. He said, “On arriving at a village, I insisted, as far as possible, upon all the people ministering to my comfort. I ordered one to prepare my resting-place, another to make a fire, a third to bring me water, and another to pull off my knee boots. When the heat was great or the flies troublesome, I made two sit by me with fans. When on foot, and having to cross a swampy patch, I made one of them carry me across.…” 

When one of the natives shot Grubb in the back with a poisoned arrow, he recovered, having avoided the people’s practice of burying people alive and despite that as he recovered, a “roving goat” would—from time to time—sit on Grubb’s chest. 

Another time, when one of the natives got angry, he strung an arrow on his bow and pressed the tip against Grubb’s chest. The missionary believed that if he showed fear, the people would lose all respect for him, but if he lived and ate and worked with them, he would find a place in their hearts. So, as the tip of the arrow pressed into his chest, he tossed back his head and roared with laughter. It must have worked, since he went on ministering to them for twenty years and past many, many mere straws. Listen to today’s story. 

When evil strikes, a man can hide, or he can expose the evil and drive it out. 

In October 1900, after twelve years of intense effort to help the tribes of Paraguay know who Jesus is, Grubb’s work finally thrived. He had established a missionary station and a school in the village in Eastern Paraguay. (The name of the village was twenty letters long.) 

Work was underway translating the Bible, and the Lengua Christians were enthusiastically helping Grubb. He was overjoyed at this success, especially when three young men were baptized. 

But the next day, the three boys, who had been christened John, Andrew, and Thomas, fell violently ill. John and Thomas recovered quickly, but Andrew only grew worse. 

Within two days, he had a high fever and could barely walk. Grubb and the villagers suspected it was the work of the village witch doctors, but before they could say a word, the witch doctors incited the people against Grubb: “You are killing him. You want to kill all our friends,” they said. 

The witch doctors took ten of their cronies and forced their way into the house where Andrew rested. They intended to take him away to treat him themselves. But the missionaries refused to let Andrew go. 

The crowd threatened violence, but the missionaries stood their ground, and the crowd eventually departed. 

But that night, Andrew died. Believing his spirit would be angry at his death, his family members fled the house. 

The following night, strange things happened. Ghosts appeared to terrify the villagers; roof tiles mysteriously flew off houses; people heard blood-chilling noises. 

Grubb had failed to help Andrew, and now it seemed that the forces of darkness were conspiring against him. 

He could have chosen to flee the village—to cut his losses and take his work elsewhere, but he chose to stay because he loved the Lengua people. He had committed his life to seeing them follow Jesus and turn away from witchcraft. 

Grubb took a deep breath and thought about what was really going on. The next morning, he leaped into action. 

After carefully interviewing the villages, he discovered the culprits. In front of their entire village, Grubb gathered them together and chewed them out. 

First, Grubb showed his Winchester rifle to one of the witch doctors. This witch doctor was the one who had thrown the roof tiles off the houses. Grubb promised that if he heard a roof tile fall off again, he would shoot in that direction. 

No more tiles were thrown. 

After this, Grubb turned to the other witch doctors. He pointed at them and laughed as loud as he could. “Just look at them. Who could possibly be afraid of them?” he said. “Look at their leader; he isn’t far from the grave; his friends will soon be getting it ready!” 

Ashamed, the witch doctors slunk away. 

In the evening, Grubb called the Lengua people together to decide how to punish the witch doctors. The tribe then forced the witch doctors to pay two sheep each as compensation for their evil acts. The witch doctors paid up, and the sheep were then sold, and the proceeds devoted to the village church. 

Grubb didn’t stop there. He knew that the witch doctors would try to assert their control again. And he desperately wanted the people to break free of their dependency on the witch doctors. From that moment on, Grubb took every opportunity to expose their fraud. 

The Lengua Christians enthusiastically supported Grubb, and within a few years, almost the entire village believed in Jesus, including most of the witch doctors themselves. 

“Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:17–18 NIV). 

Are you prepared to stand against evil in your own life? When evil strikes, a man can hide, or he can expose the evil and drive it out. 

Grubb, Wilfrid B. A Church in the Wildlands. London: Seeley, Services and Co. Limited, 1925. 

Davidson, Norman J. Barbrooke Grubb, Pathfinder. London: Seeley, Services and Co. Limited, 1924. 

Hunt, R. J. The Livingstone of South America: The Life & Adventures of W. Barbrooke Grubb among the wild tribes of the Gran Chaco in Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, the Falkland Islands & Tierra del Fuego. London: Seeley Service & Co. Limited, 1932. 

Bedford, C.T. Barbrooke Grubb of Paraguay. London: Seeley, Services and Co. Limited. 1932. 

Story read by Blake Mattocks 

February 1. Josh McDowell. For more than fifty years, Josh has brought instruction and encouragement to youth, families, churches, leaders, and individuals. He’s an everyday-language man, who helps prepare people for the life of faith and the work of the ministry. 

Josh has delivered about 27,200 talks to more than 25,200,000 people in 126 countries. On this date in 2016, Josh published The Beauty of Intolerance. In fact, he has also written or co-authored 151 books. World Magazine named Josh’s book Evidence That Demands a Verdict one of the twentieth century’s top 40 books. But Josh wasn’t always on the top. Here’s his story. 

A broken home isn’t the end of the story when we let God rewrite our futures. 

Josh stood facing the congregation. “Growing up, my father was the town drunk,” he said. “ … I’d go to school, and my friends would make jokes about my dad downtown in the gutter making a fool of himself.” Josh was telling how his father’s alcohol habit had wreaked havoc on his family throughout his entire childhood. 

“We lived on a farm, and I’d go out to the barn, and I’d see my mother whom I loved very much, lying in the manure in the gutter behind the cows, where my father had yanked the air-hose off of the pipelines and just beat my mother … until she was so weak and bloody that she couldn’t stand up.” 

Josh continued, describing the memory of his eight-year-old fists, balled up and pounding on his drunk father as hard as he could, as he shouted, “When I’m strong enough, I’ll kill you!” 

“All I ever wanted as a kid was for my father to quit hurting my mother, and I couldn’t stop it,” Josh said. 

He recalled arriving home one evening as a high school senior, whose graduation was just weeks away. As he stepped into the heaviness of their home, he could hear his mother weeping in her bedroom, and he ran to her bedside. 

She was lying in her bed, her head on a tear-stained pillow. “Son, your father has broken my heart.” Tears of despair rolled down her face. “I have lost the will to live. All I want to do is live until you graduate, and then I just want to die.” 

Sixty-one days later, Josh graduated from high school. And the following Friday his mother passed away. 

“My mother died of a broken heart, and my father broke it, and I hated him for it,” Josh told the congregation. After decades of tragedy, Josh slammed the door of his heart on God and hated his father for the indescribable pain he had caused. 

“Whether God existed or not, I couldn’t care less,” he said. 

But on December 19, 1959, God the Father broke into Josh’s bitter heart when a college friend told him about Jesus and what he was like. “It changed my life,” Josh said. “Within six months to a year, my entire life was transformed. 

Not long thereafter, Josh was in a serious car accident, and he had to stay with his father. The ambulance dropped him off and strapped him to his bed. His father walked into the room. 

“Every muscle in my body tightened,” Josh said. 

As Josh’s dad paced back and forth next to his bed, Josh noticed two things. His dad was sober, and he was crying. Two things Josh had never seen from his father his entire life. He leaned over Josh’s bed, tears of regret falling onto Josh’s face, and said, “Son, how can you love a father such as I?” 

“Dad, six months ago I hated you, I despised you. But I have come to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and I have learned one thing … that God became man, and his name is Jesus, and he is passionate about a personal relationship with you,” Josh replied. 

That night, at his son’s bedside, the town drunk became a fool for Christ. And over the remaining fourteen months of Josh’s father’s life, he introduced more than a hundred other people to Jesus. As Josh shared these words, the congregation erupted in applause. 

“Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion” (Psalms 103:2–4 NIV). 

Every family has an imperfect story. Is there anything in yours that God wants to heal? A broken home isn’t the end of the story when we let God rewrite our futures. 

McDowell, Josh. “Josh McDowell Testimony Part 1.” Published October 22, 2008. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=d5O5nD0pyPc&t=107s. 

McDowell, Josh. “Josh McDowell’s Story Updated.” Published January 29, 2013. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=WhJ9HkaR8Gg. 

“Why are Christians Leaving the Church – Josh McDowell interview.” Published August 1, 2018. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=l4Em1sdCUyo. 

McDowell, Josh. “Josh McDowell Testimony Part 3.” Published October 22, 2008. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ZLmLoCiIyJM. 

Story read by Chuck Stecker 

Story written by Shelli Mandeville, https://worthy.life/ 

January 31. John Bradford. Bradford worked hard and rose fast. He started in service to Sir John Harrington and became responsible for handling King Henry VIII’s money and went on to become Deputy Paymaster of Henry VIII’s forces when they besieged a city on the French coast of the English Channel. 

When Bradford became a Christian, he was ordained to be a travelling preacher. He sold all ‘his chains, rings, brooches, and jewels of gold” which he used to wear, so he could give the money to the poor and the ill. When he heard a sermon preached by Hugh Latimer teaching that if you’ve stolen, you must pay back what you’ve taken, he felt terrible about a fraud someone had committed and Bradford had covered up. He would not rest until the man confessed and paid the money back. Unfortunately, the man was Sir John Harrington. Nobody said doing what’s right would be easy. 

Soon Bradford faced a radical political change—Bloody Mary took the throne. But Bradford kept on speaking out about Jesus and injustice. No matter the injustice, Bradford continued until this date in 1555, when he was condemned to death for illegal preaching. Here’s his story. 

Some men have a way with words, but God’s Word has a way with men. 

Bradford had always been smart and talented and hard-working. And he was young when he had already worked his way up to the position of clerk to the King’s Treasurer. 

But God made Himself and His goodness known to Bradford. 

And everything changed. Bradford gave up his career and went to learn more about Jesus—who He is, what He does, and what’s required of men. Soon Bradford was prepared and began to tell people that a life with God was available to them now. 

Even the hardest of hearts softened from what Bradford said. 

Next he became King Edward’s chaplain and travelled throughout England and preached that the grace of God and faith in Jesus were the keys to authentic Christian living. 

He was a man at war against lies that held people captive and kept them from knowing the true God and how much He loved them. 

“The sacrifice God desires is a humble spirit—O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject” (Psalm 51:17 NET). 

This was a dream job—to present truth and fight evil everywhere he found it—but it didn’t last long. 

Fifteen-year-old King Edward fell ill, died, and was succeeded by his older half-sister Mary Tudor—who wanted to restore the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church. Mary Tudor called the Reformers “heretics” and strove to wipe them out. The heretics called her Bloody Mary. 

At a huge gathering of the public outside Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, Queen Mary’s chaplain was preaching from an outdoor pulpit. The audience—many of whom had come to know the love of God through the Reformers—got more and more agitated. 

Bradford and another man had been assigned to guard the chaplain, which they did. But someone in the crowd threw a dagger and narrowly missed the chaplain’s head. 

Of course, he ducked. But the crowd got more aggressive, so Bradford stepped up to the pulpit, rebuked the angry crowd, and managed to calm the uproar. When they did calm down, Bradford and the other men struggled to get the chaplain safely away. 

Then the bizarre happened. Queen Mary had Bradford arrested for illegal preaching and stirring up the rebellion. He had to stand before a council and defend himself. 

The accusers explained their reasoning—someone had thrown a dagger at the chaplain’s head, and the crowd was about to overrun and trample him. Bradford had the audacity to stand at the pulpit and calm them down—saving the chaplain’s life. He had no permission to do that. And since he had the power to calm them, that was proof he had started the riot. 

He refused to denounce his beliefs, so they condemned him and locked him up. 

As always Bradford took the setback in stride—and saw what happened as something God had allowed. To Bradford it was an opportunity to serve. 

In prison, he regularly held religious meetings and preached twice a day unless he was sick, and nobody stopped him. He was so trusted by the guards that in the evenings, he would leave the jail to minister to the sick—with only the promise he would return. The jailers knew he would come back, and he always did. 

Imprisoned for two years, Bradford briefly shared a cell with three other well-known Reformers. As it got close to the time he would be executed, he wrote to them, “Oh! dear fathers … I am about to leave my flesh in a world where I received it; but I go to a better world.… God grant it may make my persecutors better men.” 

He told them good-bye, “trusting shortly to see you where, having finished our warfare, we shall associate with all those who have faithfully followed the banner of the Captain of our salvation, made perfect through suffering, and never again be called to the field.” 

When the day of Bradford’s execution came, he was chained to the stake with another young Reformer. Publicly, Bradford asked forgiveness of anyone he had wronged, and he freely forgave all who had wronged him. Then before they lit the fire, he said to the young man, “Be of good comfort brother; for we shall have a merry supper with the Lord this night!” 

Who could you talk to today? Some men have a way with words, but God’s Word has a way with men. 

Mayhew, Richard A. “John Bradford (1510—1555): ‘O England, England, Repent!’” Crich Baptist Church – Derbyshire, UK. Accessed September 19, 2020. https://​www.crichbaptist.org/​articles/​john-bradford/. [intro] 

Tracy Borman, The Private Lives of the Tudors. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2016. p. 240. 

Andrews, William. “St. Paul’s Cross.” from Old Church Lore. London: The Hull Press, 1891. pp.120–127. http://​elfinspell.com/​AndrewsCross.html.  

Story written by: Paula Moldenhauer, http://paulamoldenhauer.com/ 

January 28. Segaran Tan. Segaran is a missionary, a mechanic, and a family man—a man in a country far from his home. On this date in 1997, Segaran moved his family to Malaysia. 

He grew up in a culture that treasured family connections, and the younger brother’s respect for the older brother became a driving force in Segaran’s life. 

Today’s story is about a time in Segaran’s life when the troubles piled high, and Segaran had to find a way to hang onto his self-respect. Here’s how it happened. 

It is not ours to fix every problem, but it is ours to surrender every problem to God. 

In Malaysia, Segaran’s older brother Vela was the general manager of an enormous oil-palm production business, and he managed about a dozen oil-palm plantations, which comprised 75,000 acres. When the company needed two new 45-foot cruisers, and revenue depended on it, Vela couldn’t saunter over to the yacht dealership and pick out a couple of boats. 

They had to be built there in Borneo. And fortunately for Vela, a friend recommended a likable European named Marcus to build the boats. 

This Marcus had let it be known that he was a “master boat builder,” and he lived on a boat moored at a local yacht club with a female companion. They were “sailing around the world,” Marcus said, which is how they happened to be in Malaysia. 

Vela asked his brother, 43-year-old Segaran, to help in the boat-building project, and Seg agreed. He would donate his labor. He loved the Lord, and he loved his brother, and he had a host of practical skills. He would be happy to give his time and talent. 

Somehow, the boat project expanded to include the construction of three boats, including one for a lawyer 300 miles away and two for the oil-palm plantations. Vela arranged with Seg to work out of an auto shop on Vela’s land. 

As sudden as the flu sweeps through a tight family, problems appeared. Marcus and his skills did not live up to expectations, and the description “master boat builder” turned out to be quite an exaggeration—at best. And Segaran was left feeling obligated to learn how to build the boats himself. 

Though Segaran was willing to follow through with the project, he realized that his older brother’s powerful influence over him made him feel duty-bound. 

Vela grew more and more impatient. Because of the business, he felt pressured to get boats into the water. And that pressure cascaded onto Segaran’s shoulders. 

Then, the friend who had introduced Marcus called to say his boat had vanished from its mooring at the yacht club—along with Marcus. Worse, the next day when Seg inventoried the building materials, he discovered they were missing. Gone too was the project’s money—about $100,000. 

These funds belonged to the lawyer and the oil-palm plantations, which meant Vela had to replace the money, and that did little to restore Segaran’s peace of mind. 

He paced the floor at night and muttered, “I have got to get some boats in the water,” and then he stared at his manuals in a daze. He appeared to be taking on the burden of completing the entire project alone, a project he would not even be paid for—all because he felt driven to follow through and be the hero for his older brother. 

For weeks, Segaran wrestled with the problem himself, but he made no headway—until one day he remembered how that when he had been the mechanic for a missionary organization years before, God had answered prayers in miraculous ways. 

This gave him courage to surrender the whole boat mess to the Lord. If God could answer prayer yesterday, God could certainly answer prayer today. Segaran threw himself upon the Lord and pleaded for help and mercy. 

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 CSB). 

After that, Segaran was able to negotiate with the lawyer; he took his boat half-finished. Then Segaran contacted the boat company in Australia for advice. Incredibly, they had a boat builder familiar with the same model. He was between jobs and happy to come to Borneo to help finish the boats! 

What is your style of handling troubles? Do you jump in and try to solve the problem? Or do you go to God for help first? It is not ours to fix every problem, but it is ours to surrender every problem to God. 

This story is based on a written interview with Nancy Tan.  

Story written by: Toni M Babcock, https://www.facebook.com/toni.babcock.1 

January 27. Andy McQuitty. Andy earned a Doctor of Ministry Degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and received awards in personal evangelism, outstanding scholarship, and effective ministry. For more than thirty years, he pastored the believers at Irving Bible Church in Texas. On this date in 2019, he retired. 

But well before he ever retired, Andy faced a severe challenge. It hit him by surprise between doing his job and time to tee off. You know, a challenge could surprise any one of us at any time. Let’s see how Andy handled it. 

Sometimes we fight fierce battles of faith, not for the outcome, but for the journey. 

One typical Tuesday afternoon, Pastor Andy McQuitty sat at his desk, minding his church business and looking forward to his Saturday golf game, when the phone rang. 

It was his doctor. 

“Andy, you have a massive tumor that has broken through the wall of your colon. It’s cancer. It’s serious. Get in here now.” 

“The next moment, my business had changed from leading a church to battling cancer, and I wound up not playing golf, but donating twelve inches of my colon to medical science,” said Andy. “That was a triple bogey I had not anticipated.” 

At first, “Why me?” was at the top of the long list of questions Andy had for the Almighty. “Why this? Why now? Was it something I did? Something I failed to do …?” 

As Andy faced the reality of an eight-percent chance of survival—uncertainty, anger, and misery became his familiar acquaintances. “My prayers were brutally honest.” Andy said, “They contained a whole lot less about what I knew—‘God is great, God is good’—and a whole lot more of what I felt—‘God is deaf, God is gone.’” Wrestling with fear and his questions, Andy learned how important it was for a man to lament. That’s to lament—verb—to mourn, to express grief or sorrow. Like Job. 

Andy discovered that honesty-with-pain and honesty-with-God were vital parts of his journey. 

He discovered that we can allow ourselves to ask the tough questions. God doesn’t mind our honesty. In fact, this kind of honesty leads us to trust God’s purposes for our lives. Andy said, “When we ask the question honestly and authentically, I believe we are given the grace to be able to change the question from ‘Why me?’ to ‘Why not me?’” 

Andy began to understand his unfolding story: that a walk with Christ is not ultimately about our happiness and comfort. “The purpose of life for a Christ follower is ultimately not to never die but rather to fulfill completely His purposes for us,” Andy said. 

As he discovered that God was still with him in the journey, that God hadn’t abandoned him in this crisis, Andy was able to see beyond his own feelings about his suffering. He was able to embrace the reality that God had a greater purpose for this unexpected disaster. 

Every word he had preached from the pulpit for years was suddenly on trial. And as a temporary resident of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, he found what he had preached to be as true as ever. God hadn’t changed. Truth hadn’t changed. Only Andy’s circumstances had changed. 

“So, since Christ suffered in the flesh, you also arm yourselves with the same attitude, because the one who has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin, in that he spends the rest of his time on earth concerned about the will of God and not human desires” (1 Peter 4:1–2 NET). 

On the other side of the battle, Andy could say, “Suffering in and of itself is a gnarly unattractive business. But dedicated to God, it produces good and beautiful things.” 

How can you reframe your crisis that would help you to think more like Jesus and pursue His purposes for your life? Sometimes we fight fierce battles of faith, not for the outcome, but for the journey. 

McQuitty, Andy. Notes from the Valley: A Spiritual Travelogue through Cancer. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2015, p.14. 

McQuitty, E. Andrew. “Point of View Radio Talk Show.” YouTube video, 1:51:16. Published April 16, 2015. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch? v=WwrO2BHNkfw. 

Story written by: Shelli Mandeville, https://worthy.life/