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
Christian Living, Culture, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Don't Numb Your Feelings

“Don’t listen to your feelings; remember what Jesus did for you!”

“Don’t be guided by your feelings; listen to what God commands you to do!”

In just the past week, I heard both of these warnings. Two very different Christian speakers urged their audiences to shut down their feelings. These admonitions resonate. They contain truth. It is correct that our feelings don’t override truth, nor do our emotions negate what God has done. Neither do our feelings give us an out for what God commands us to do.

Don't Numb Your Feelings
History, Spiritual Growth, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
Lord, Reach Your Justice Down

I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.

Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.

Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from

Lord, Reach Your Justice Down
Culture, Generosity, Nature, Relationships
John Beeson
Marshmallows and Friends

Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.

The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.

Marshmallows and Friends
Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Uprooting Our Political Identity

Happy election day!

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.

 As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views.

Uprooting Our Political Identity

The Valley of Vision

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Do You Want to Be Inspired to Pray?

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Do You Want to Be Inspired to Pray?

I don’t know a Christian who hasn’t struggled at one time or another in their life with prayer. We long to experience God as others seem to in prayer. But prayer itself can feel like a massive challenge. In this hare-world of notification and hustle, prayer represents a tortoise reality. We know it’s the better way, but how do we live like that?

I still feel like a toddler in my prayer life, but I long to grow into someone with a rich prayer life. Below are five books that have encouraged me in my prayer life. They are very different. Pick up one that you think will help you the most and dive in.

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Have You Given Me the Fountain, but Deny Me the Stream?

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Have You Given Me the Fountain, but Deny Me the Stream?

Six times in the book of Hebrews, the author urges us to draw near to God. In Hebrews 4:16, the author encourages us about what awaits us as we approach the presence of God. He says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

God offers us himself fully to us not just in the accomplishment of our salvation, but also daily in prayer. God not only grants us the fountain of life, but also the streams of his mercy. But, with my muddled mind and divided attention, how do I draw near to his throne of grace with confidence?

My Co-Lead pastor, Greg Lavine, and I lead discipleship groups that run concurrently through the school year. We take a group of men or women through a year of study that includes theological and spiritual formation. Currently we are in a stretch focused on the practice of prayer. In one of the weeks we use two books of compiled Puritan prayers: Valley of Vision and Piercing Heaven. The idea of utilizing Puritan prayers might sound as exciting as watching someone else fill out their tax returns, but I have found these books vibrant guides.

Why would we use someone else’s prayers to help us pray? Wouldn’t that make our prayer life stilted and formal? Wouldn’t praying the words of someone who died several hundred years ago create distance between God and us? These concerns haven’t been realized in my own prayer life.

As I read the prayers of those among the cloud of witnesses, I find myself nudged out of the ruts of my typical extemporaneous prayers. When I pray along with the meditations of the Puritans, my prayers tend to focus more on spiritual realities. These brothers help me see the glory of Christ and my sin more clearly.

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What I Read in 2020 (and What You Might Want to Read in 2021)

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What I Read in 2020 (and What You Might Want to Read in 2021)

In 2019 I read 101 books, which was a personal high for me, at least since I’ve been keeping track. I expected to tail off that number in 2020. And then COVID-19 struck. With fewer social gatherings than ever and more quiet nights at home, my reading actually increased. A new high-water mark for books resulted: 115.

2020 was also a year that provided plenty of internal reasons to need the companion of books. I read loads from other pastors and leaders on how they were navigating leading through COVID (given the immediacy of the issue, most of that was by way of blogs, not books). The fracturing of the nation over issues of race and racism had me diving deep on that topic. I’m still processing much of that, but I do plan on sharing more about what I’m learning about race and racism on my blog in the future.

2020 also saw the publication of my first book (co-authored with Benjamin Vrbicek), giving me a new appreciation for the labor of love every author has in bringing a book into the world. Thank you to those who read Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World. I’m grateful you let Benjamin and I spend several hours with you.

Let me start with my three favorite books of 2020.

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