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
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

Christian Living

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Surprised by Hope by NT Wright

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Surprised by Hope by NT Wright

I heartily endorse NT Wright's thesis: a robust doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Christ necessarily impacts our lives.  Wright spends much of his book firing shots across the bows of both the fundamentalists and the liberals.

Wright attacks the fundamentalists' belief in a non-corporeal resurrection, grounded in an implicit dualism.  It's an important attack.  This idea that the real part of us is our immortal souls which will, alone, live on in heaven, is not just non-scriptural, it's anti-scriptural.  Furthermore, as NT Wright points out, it has several deleterious effects: it undermines any urgency for the church to do her work here and now; it can create apathy to change unjust social institutions; and it can lead toward a truncated understanding of how we are to respect and appreciate the bodily existence God has granted us.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Rescue Begins: The story of Easter begins long before Jesus arrives on the scene. I love The Gospel Project’s videos.

2.      Learning Styles are Bunk: Joy Pullman on the research that has debunked "learning styles" and why continuing to use this framework is counterproductive.

3.      Is My Desire Sour? Melissa Kruger gives us helpful questions to help analyze whether our desires are godly or not. The last question, "What is my desire while I wait?" might be the most important.

4.      Rules Without Reasons: Mike Leake: "If I’m being honest, there are some things in the Scriptures that I simply do not get. Some positions which I believe are biblical still make me a bit uneasy. At times, I simply do not understand why God set these things up the way that He did. But I’m asked to obey them nonetheless."

5.      The Science of Creating High-Performing Companies: Paul Zak is a neuroeconomist. Yup. I guess that's a thing. This is an interesting podcast where he talks about the impact of trust on an organization. 

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Why You Shouldn't Go on a Mission Trip

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Why You Shouldn't Go on a Mission Trip

In 1998 I went on a short-term mission trip to Honduras following the devastating impact of Hurricane Mitch. I still recall the stunning site of inches of mud caked over the entire cityscape of Tegucigalpa. Unbeknownst to me, sociologist Kurt Ver Beek was watching. He conducted a study surveying 162 short-term mission participants who, like me, traveled to Honduras in 1998. He later published a devastating report on these relief efforts.[i] Among his findings were that short-term groups spent $30,000 per home to build homes equivalent to homes built by local organizations for $2,000 apiece. There was no discernable difference between the homes or in the impact of them being built by short-term gruops. And perhaps, more disheartening, one year later there was no significant change in the generosity of those who had gone on the trips. Ouch!

Next week I’m going to tell you why you ought to participate on a short-term mission trip (full disclosure: I just returned from a short-term trip to Senegal). But today I’m going to explore why you shouldn’t go on a short-term trip.

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What Our 2 Year Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

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What Our 2 Year Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

Valentijn was hand-in-hand with the aid and Romeo in the crook of her arm. The aid had just driven the boys from the shelter, where they had spent three weeks. Chubby Romeo was ten months old at the time and well adjusted. It was two-year old Valentijn who had been impacted the most significantly. This was the third time Valentijn had been removed from his home. He was affectionate but fragile without boundaries.

As the Department of Childcare Services Specialist filled out the transfer paperwork to make our foster care official, Valentijn sat on my lap and pulled out the decorative pine cones from the bowl on the table and chucked them on the ground, one by one.

Not knowing what it looked like to love and discipline him well, I sat there, semi-stunned, and let him disassemble my wife’s handiwork. From that first moment, I knew parenting these two would prove to be a much different task than raising our two biological children.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      An Adorable Duet: A four year old and her dad sing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”... yup, it’s just as cute as is sounds.

2.      Don’t Let Satan Blackmail You: Tony Reinke: "In Christ we walk in the light of freedom that repels back into the shadow the greatest blackmailer this world has ever seen.”

3.      Which Degrees Are Create the Best Stewards? This fascinating study considered which degrees produce the best credit scores and the least amount of debt. Hint: that MBA isn't likely to help you out with your debt load! And hurrah for pharmacists!

4.      Boring Men and the Women Who Love Them: Ann Voskamp reflects on the real truth about romance and boring men.

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Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller

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Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller

"In the beginning, then, God worked.” It’s from this simple platform that pastor and author Tim Keller begins his project of redeeming the goodness of work. It’s a simple platform, but its implications are far-reaching. Keller continues, “Work was not a necessary evil that came into the picture later, or something human beings were created to do but that was beneath the great God himself. No, God worked for the sheer joy of it. Work could not have a more exalted inauguration" (pp.34-35). Everything flows out this profound reality. Work did not come after the fall; no, humans were given the task of work before there was sin. And, in fact, our work uniquely mirrors back our God's perfect work from eternity.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      5 Secrets of Superior Decision-Makers: Craig Groeschel was an acquired taste for me, but it’s stuff like this that has won me over. He packs an incredible amount of helpful content into these 26 minutes. You can watch via this link, or you can also listen via podcast.

2.      To Be a Diaper Changer: Nick Batzig reflects on the daily grittiness of being a real world changer.

3.      How to Love God and Your Neighbor through Your Work: We work well because we first love God and we then love our neighbor. James M Hamilton Jr. offers this reflection.

4.      Time Audit: Where do you really spend your time? JD Grear with this helpful resource on how to analyze where we are spending our time. 

5.      State of Inquiry: On this TED Radio Hour a number of speakers explore what it looks like to ask good questions. I particularly appreciated Eric Haseltine’s final session where he compares knowledge to an anchor that can hold us in the harbor. He quotes Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discovers, is not, ‘Eureka! I’ve found it,’ but ‘That’s funny!’”

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Consuming Worship

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Consuming Worship

Last week we took a more positive turn as we considered how our identity as consumers impacts our devotional lives. We continue in that positive direction as we consider our experience as corporate and individual worshipers in today’s consumeristic environment.

Throughout this series I have tried to provide a broader comparative historic context. The inclusion of songs in worship was present from the earliest days of the church. Paul incorporates what appear to be familiar songs in his writing, John shares songs in Revelation, and of course the Psalms provided a hymn book for the early church. The earliest house church discovered in Syria dates to the early 3rd century AD and is covered with beautiful frescoes. The church from the very beginning was worshiping artistically.

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness

At this season, in this week, I have considered the heaviness of the scriptural accounts that indicate the forgetfulness of our human natures. My regular day-time job as a dispatcher has me running all over the place and I have to take notes on my computer lest I forget what it was that I was supposed to do or promised I would do later. Life in general can be like this regarding my walk with Christ if I am not careful.

One particular account can be read in Exodus. From Exodus 7 to 12 we are given a glimpse of the awesome power of God through the text in the punishment of Egypt. One can only imagine how the Israelites experienced all of these events.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Alpine Adventure Video: Gorgeous Alpine footage taken in Europe.

2.      Advice of Two Older Saints: JI Packer and John Stott's advice from near the end of faithful Christian lives.

3.      The World and Everything In It: My go-to daily news podcast from a Christian perspective. Some of my favorite segments are the Legal Docket where they report on cases before the Supreme Court and Culture Fridays with John Stonestreet.

4.      5 Ways Porn Lies to You: Every sin speaks lies. Tim Challies verbalizes the dangerous lies porn tells us.

5.      Why Does Everything Have to Be Politicized? A timely post by Trevin Wax on consumerism and how signals we send out to prove who we are. My series on consumerism will conclude with a post that makes similar connections.

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