Christian Living, Leadership, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Living Sacrifices Given to Christ...and the ...

“Are you all in?” It’s a question that was echoed by many youth pastors and speakers in many venues of my teenage years. It’s still a great question.

 

I know some of my peers had poor experiences growing up in 90s youth groups. For the most part, my time in the church was not only good, but significant to the trajectory of my life and formative for my calling to ministry. If “Are you all in?” was the most important question of my teenage years, Romans 12:1-2 was the most important passage. Paul urges the church at Rome,

Living Sacrifices Given to Christ...and the Church
Christian Living, Christmas, Leadership, Recommendations, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Best Books to Gift This Christmas

Few gifts are more meaningful than a thoughtfully chosen book. It’s a gift that can offer hope, wisdom, and even fun. As you consider your Christmas gift, here are a few books you might want to consider for loved ones.

Best Books to Gift This Christmas
Gratitude, Prayer, Spiritual Growth, Suffering
John Beeson
Thankful in 2024

Have you had hard 2024? Are you looking forward to the page turning to a new year? I think of dear people in our family at New Life who have lost loved ones, who are battling cancer, mental illness, whose marriages ended, or who have lost jobs. I’m so sorry if 2024 was a hard year for you.

May I invite James to one of the open seats at your Thanksgiving table? Let me warn you, though, James is the uncle who shoots straight. You might not like what he has to say. But you know he always speaks truthfully and with a heart of love for you.

Thankful in 2024
Christian Living, Culture, Politics, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Vulgar Authenticity

Who is your favorite celebrity? Your favorite political pundit? Your favorite politician?

Why are you drawn to these individuals? Maybe it is their personality. Perhaps it is because you respect their convictions. Possibly, it is because of their unique style.

Taylor Swift might be the most beloved celebrity in the world. Many have commented that one of the reasons that Swift has cultivated such a devoted following is her accessibility and down-to-earth qualities, from what she wears to the love stories she writes about in her music.

Vulgar Authenticity
Christian Living, Biblical Studies, Religion, Spiritual Growth, Theology
John Beeson
The Faith of Unbelief

Bart Ehrman has perhaps done more to undermine the credibility of the Bible than anyone else in my lifetime. But his story didn’t begin that way. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found his way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.

For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in the biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible.

The Faith of Unbelief

Christianity

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The internal contradiction in transgender theories: Trevin Wax explains, “It doesn’t take long to recognize the internal inconsistency between these two narratives. The first depends on maleness and femaleness being something real, for a binary must exist for it to be transgressed or transcended. The second questions reality altogether, falling for a radical skepticism that reimagines the world in terms of linguistic power plays.”

  2. Tasting heaven now: Casey McCall asks, “But what if I told you the Bible presents the resurrection as something you begin experiencing now in this life?

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How do You Pray for Someone Who is Hurting?

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How do You Pray for Someone Who is Hurting?

“How are you?” you greet your neighbor at the park. You ask the question like you mean it.

“Okay,” she responds. But the crease between her eyebrows and the slump of her shoulders lets you know that she is most definitely not “okay.”

“What’s the matter?” you ask, lovingly responding to her body language instead of her words.

She begins to open up. She and her husband got in a fight last night. Tears begin to flow. She’s worried about her mom’s health. She’s anxious about work. The conversation winds to a close. You would like to pray for her, but how do you cross that bridge? How do you pray for someone in need?

Perhaps the only thing stronger than our natural impulse toward the spiritual and religious is our reticence toward public displays of our religion. Last week we talked about five reasons we ought to press through our discomfort to pray for those in need. Those reasons were:

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Most Americans Embrace Spirituality and Religion, Even Atheists: Also of note is the large gap between spirituality and religion. Aaron Earls reports, “Yet even among the quarter of Americans who do not identify with a religion (atheists, agnostics, and those who say they are “nothing in particular”), most still describe themselves as a spiritual person.”

2. Characteristics of Churches That Keep Young Adults: This is a great addition to the two posts I recently wrote on raising teens to love the church. Aaron Earls begins with the importance of sincerity. He says, “When teenagers see church members as insincere, they are more likely to drop out. Relatively few young adults say the church they attended as a teenager was insincere, but dropouts say this more often.”

3. One of the Ugliest Sights in the World: Tim Challies begins with a scene we’ve all witnessed, “One of the ugliest sights in the world is that of a child who rules over his parents. We have all seen it, I’m sure. We have seen parents who tiptoe around their child’s cries, their child’s demands, their child’s outbursts of anger. They will do whatever he dictates, give whatever he commands. We look on with horror, knowing they have set their child on a path to destruction.”

4. Brothers, We Should Stink: Thabiti Anyabwile explains that godly pastors live among the sheep. He says, “Do you know how to tell the difference between sheep and wolves in sheep’s clothing? Sheep eat grass; wolves eat sheep — it doesn't matter how prettily they are dressed.”

5. What is Christianity? This is a simple and clear three-minute visual presentation of the gospel.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       9 Questions to Ask Yourself to Prepare for 2018: Scott Slayton with a thoughtful list. I like especially his questions: “What are my roles?” What two changes will make the biggest difference,” and “What two things do I need to stop doing?”

2.       How Your Husband Defines Romance: Thoughtful advice from Dennis and Barbara Rainey, "When a man is rejected often enough, he typically internalizes his anger, his hurt, and his disappointment until such time when the rejection drives him to one of several reactions—none of them are good." This ought not to be taken as license from men who feel rejected, but as good advice for wives who want to love their husbands well.

3.       Why Being Tough as a Leader Fails: Kerry Patterson is excellent on leadership and conflict. He reflects, "“I yell at my employees because it’s the only thing that works,” say a surprising number of leaders I’ve consulted with over the years. Parents often take a similar path with their kids. “They only respond to threats. So, I mostly threaten them.” Of course, when you interview the employees or the kids, they don’t subscribe to Hunter Thompson’s theory of leadership. That is, they don’t believe that the newest and hottest motivational tools are fear and loathing. They prefer respectful reasoning."

4.       Six Times It's Time to Quit Your Job: Jeff Gilmer at Vanderbloemen asks, " How do you discern whether this is just a season, or if it’s a bigger sign that you should be looking for your next opportunity?"

5.       Protecting Children from Abuse: Tim Challies interviews  Boz Tchividjian about his important new book, The Child Safeguarding Policy Guide. He begins the interview sharing this heartbreaking statistic, " Research has consistently found that approximately 1 in 4 females and 1 in 6 males will be sexually victimized before their 18th birthday. With 75 million children in the United States, this translates to almost 15 million children who will be sexually victimized over the next 18 years!"

6.       The Spread of Christianity: A shocking visual representation of the spread of Christianity around the globe.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Please Stop Saying Christianity is a Relationship, Not a Religion: Kevin Halloran responds to the claim that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, "Christianity isn’t a dead religion of boredom at church, life as a hypocrite, and trying to be better than everyone else. It’s having the God of the Universe who was once my enemy as my loving Heavenly Father. It’s having my sins forgiven through Christ’s blood and communion with God by His Spirit. It’s living hope for this broken world and the promise of restoration. And, oh yeah, I have an eternal inheritance that no man, demon, or trial can EVER snatch away from me. Now that is a religion and relationship worth pursuing religiously.”

2.       Why Your Child's Feelings Shouldn't Be the Final Arbiter for How You Parent: Melissa Edgington with this counter-cultural truth: "We have been taught to pay special attention to our kids’ feelings and to validate them as much as we can. I’m not saying this is a terrible practice. I mean, it’s never bad to consider someone’s feelings. But can I say with all honesty that about 85% of a kid’s feelings about things are irrelevant? Kids feel 147 different ways before lunchtime. They get upset if their graham cracker is broken. They cry like their heart is broken because a dog licked their elbow. Worse than that, they will kick and scream like you’re murdering them because you’re trying to buckle them into a carseat or keep them from grabbing a hot burner or stop them from running into the street. If we pay attention to every feeling that a kid has, we will be paralyzed and completely ineffective as parents."

3.       10 Common but Illegitimate Reasons to Get a Divorce: Tim Challies shares from Jim Newheiser's new book on marriage helpful responses to these ten common reasons given for divorce.

4.       They Shall Know Us by Our Clutter: Kristin Du Mez reports, "I recently came across the results of this anthropological study, published in 2012: Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors... the authors analyzed and cataloged the visible possessions in each and every room of the 32 households—counting, documenting, examining, and coding artifacts in situ, in their place. Devoting thousands of hours to data collection, they hoped to glean insights on the acquisition and organization of material artifacts, and on how families interacted with their possessions, and with one another. The results of the study are at once illuminating and devastating. Their most striking findings concern the sheer magnitude of our material possessions."

5.       Yosemite: Range of Light: The whole earth is full of his glory!

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How to Pray for Someone in Need

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How to Pray for Someone in Need

“How are you today?” you greet your neighbor at the park. You asked the question like you meant it, and, perhaps because of that her response, “Okay,” is accompanied by the expression that says that she is most definitely not “okay.” “What’s the matter?” you ask, thoughtfully ignoring her “okay,” responding instead to her expression. And out comes the story of her fight with her husband last night. How do you conclude your conversation? You know you should pray, but how do you pray?

Perhaps the only thing stronger than our natural impulse toward the spiritual and religious is our reticence toward public displays of our religion.

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A God of Many Understandings? by Todd Miles

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A God of Many Understandings? by Todd Miles

Miles begins A God of Many Understandings? with an event I remember well: “On Sunday morning, January 18, 2009, Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, stepped to a podium near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to open the inauguration festivities for Barack Obama with an invocation and began his prayer, ‘O god of our many understandings, we pray that you will…’” (1). That simple opening to his prayer hit me like a tidal wave that day. “O god of our many understandings (?!)” At the same time I felt befuddlement, anger, and a sense that in that very phrase, Robinson had profoundly captured the essence of our modern religious sensibilities.

There have been plenty of books published over the recent years that have decried the slippage in the American church’s commitment to the exclusive claims of the gospel. But I promise you none have been written that are quite like this. The ambitious nature of Miles’s book is remarkable. The book is a biblical-theological tour de force that deals with a host of issues relating to the topic of the exclusive nature of the gospel.

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