Recommendations, Christian Living, Faith, Fear
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Let me dwell in your tent forever: Wes Bredenhof explains how to understand David’s cry  in Psalm 61:4, “Let me dwell in your tent forever!” “Now here’s an important detail about the tabernacle:  no one was allowed to dwell in it.  It was God’s dwelling and God alone.  By God’s command, the High Priest came into the Most Holy Place once per year.”

  2. The body keeps score. But the mind and heart do too: Beth Claes says, “Being a Christian doesn’t prevent trauma or eliminate body-mind responses to it. But recognizing that God created us with an interconnected body, mind, and heart informs how we understand trauma

This Week's Recommendations
Church, Leadership, Religion, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom
John Beeson
Strange Questions for Your Future Pastor

So, you’re looking for a church.  

I hope you’ve prayerfully considered why you’ve left your former church (I’ve written about the ten reasons to leave a church here). You’ve already watched a service online, read the church’s doctrinal statement, and visited the church. What comes next?

You will, of course, want to understand the church’s doctrine and affiliation. If you have kids, you will definitely ask, “Are the children’s and students’ ministries biblically grounded, safe, and engaging?” You might want to know about their outreach strategy.

What if I told you that while these issues are important, there might be a different set of questions

Strange Questions for Your Future Pastor
Christian Living, Faith, Parenting, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Destructive Play

Any parent knows that before a child learns to build, he learns to tear down. Our children are two years apart. I still remember our eldest, Camille, running into our room with tears when she was four years old. Her little brother, Soren, had just knocked down her latest block creation.

Psychologists describe this stage as destructive play. Before toddlers can construct something with intention, they are learning cause and effect, physics, spatial reasoning, and fine motor control. Every parent remembers the stage when their toddler begins throwing the spoon, fork, or bowl onto the floor, watching with fascination as gravity does its work.

Destructive Play
Recommendations, Faith, Family, History, Leadership
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Why so many of us claim to be ‘not very happy’: Jen Oshman says, “Herein lies the fundamental reason happiness feels out of reach: We tend to aim for the wrong kind of happiness. Most Americans aim for happiness, which, unbeknownst to them, can be shaken or taken.”

  2. Three ways to lead your boss: Simple advice Eric Geiger draws from Nehemiah’s story, “If you want more credibility with your leader, don’t be the perpetually sad person, care about what your leader cares about, and be really clear.”

This Week's Recommendations
Family, Leadership, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
How To Spiritually Lead Your Family

‍Our kids are 22 and 20. Our daughter, Camille, just graduated from college, and our son, Soren, is engaged and preparing for his wedding in December. This has been a season of reflection for Angel and I as parents.

I have experienced ebbs and flows of successes and failures as the spiritual leader of our family. By God’s grace, our kids are faithfully following Christ and vibrantly living out spiritual lives. Angel and I give God all the credit and glory for the ways in which we have been able to encourage Camille and Soren’s spiritual development;

How To Spiritually Lead Your Family

Christian Living

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Let me dwell in your tent forever: Wes Bredenhof explains how to understand David’s cry  in Psalm 61:4, “Let me dwell in your tent forever!” “Now here’s an important detail about the tabernacle:  no one was allowed to dwell in it.  It was God’s dwelling and God alone.  By God’s command, the High Priest came into the Most Holy Place once per year.”

  2. The body keeps score. But the mind and heart do too: Beth Claes says, “Being a Christian doesn’t prevent trauma or eliminate body-mind responses to it. But recognizing that God created us with an interconnected body, mind, and heart informs how we understand trauma

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Destructive Play

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Destructive Play

Any parent knows that before a child learns to build, he learns to tear down. Our children are two years apart. I still remember our eldest, Camille, running into our room with tears when she was four years old. Her little brother, Soren, had just knocked down her latest block creation.

Psychologists describe this stage as destructive play. Before toddlers can construct something with intention, they are learning cause and effect, physics, spatial reasoning, and fine motor control. Every parent remembers the stage when their toddler begins throwing the spoon, fork, or bowl onto the floor, watching with fascination as gravity does its work.

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Remember Not

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Remember Not

As we wrapped up our five-day jaunt in a cozy extended-stay just inside Scottsdale suburbia I was on the verge of mental and physical collapse, whereas the boys, as the Energizer Bunny proffered, just kept going and going and going. I couldn't keep up. In fact I didn't. Their enthusiasm met my exhaustion. I raised my voice at the boys, and in an instant, their elation turned to fear and shame.  

Scientists argue that our brains have adopted a defense mechanism called the 'negativity bias' to help us avoid danger or avoid repeating past blunders.

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The Threat of Passivity

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The Threat of Passivity

Everyone loves a great reveal.

If you saw it, you likely haven’t forgotten the penultimate scene in The Sixth Sense, when everything you thought you understood was suddenly turned upside down. Or the final scene in The Usual Suspects, when the mystery of Keyser Soze turns out to be right in front of you the whole time.

Genesis 3 contains one of the most devastating reveals in all of Scripture. As the passage unfolds, Moses forces us to reread the whole scene with new eyes.

The scene opens with the serpent: “Now the serpent was more crafty…”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Jesus is awkwardly exclusive, radically inclusive, and stubbornly objective: Rebecca McLaughlin says, “Jesus never ruled an empire, raised an army, or even wrote a book. Most of his followers were poor. They weren’t the power brokers of their day. And yet, the Christian movement spread like wildfire after Jesus’s death, and it’s been growing ever since.”

  2. It’s not about you: Laura Story says, “We have to admit that oftentimes our spiritual lives tend to be self-centered rather than God-centered… If God answered every one of your prayers, would it change the world or simply change your world?”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Why so many Christians never grow up: Christopher Cook says, “Sound doctrine without obedience leads to intellectual pride. Obedience without truth leads to misguided zeal. Community without truth becomes sentimentality. Truth without love becomes harshness. But when truth, obedience, and love converge under the authority of Christ, something remarkable begins to happen: believers begin to grow up.”

  2. Spaghetti again: Andrea Sanborn reflects on the faithful life in the mundane. S

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The Madman

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The Madman

Has religion disappointed you? Has God let you down?

How do we make sense of God and the world when we feel so hurt by them? Doesn’t the world make more sense without a God who would allow the evil that we see and experience?

Friedrich Nietzsche, a prophet ahead of his time, saw the allure of the modern rejection of God. But he also recognized the serious consequences of such a conclusion. If Soren Kierkegaard demanded the Christian to take a “leap of faith” toward God, Nietzsche demanded that the atheist take a leap of faith into the abyss.

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Pest Control and the Human Heart

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Pest Control and the Human Heart

I never thought much about the pest control industry—until that Saturday. As we prayer-walked the neighborhood adjacent to our church, I found myself chuckling at how many residents apparently worked for pest control companies. I began noticing and counting the trucks parked in driveways: Truly Nolen, Northwest, Greenshield, Responsible, Action, Western, Aptive, SOS. Eight pest control companies represented in a single neighborhood.

There are more than 34,000 pest control businesses in the United States employing over 167,000 specialists. Together, they generate upwards of $22 billion in annual revenue, and the industry is projected to grow steadily at a 5.7% rate annually. 

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Happy wife, happy life? Cindy Pickett takes on a popular adage, “On the surface, this common saying sounds harmless—perhaps endearing. But dig a little deeper, and the message is clear: A husband’s job is to keep his wife happy to avoid trouble. Is this what Adam thought when he stood by and let Eve take the fall?”

  2. How do you counsel someone who feels stuck in sin? Pat Quinn says, “A basic principle of biblical counseling is that gospel indicatives (statements of what God has done through Christ to save sinners by grace) motivate and empower gospel imperatives (commands to respond obediently to gospel grace).”

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AI Isn't Your Mentor

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AI Isn't Your Mentor

…

more and more people have begun turning to AI as a stand in for God when they want comfort, guidance, or even something that feels like prayer.

But let me say this gently and clearly: please don’t pray to AI. Claude is not God, and it cannot take his place.  No matter how advanced it seems, the ‘A’ in AI still stands for “artificial.”

For many, AI has become a conversation partner. It is reported that 75% of teens  use AI companions, and for some, those AI companions are beginning to function like mentors

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