Christian Living, Prayer, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom
John Beeson
What if Paul Could Coach You on Your Prayer ...

Most people pray. Many of those don’t even consider themselves Christians. In a recent survey, 61% of Americans said they pray.

If your prayers were recorded and played back to you, what would they sound like? How do you refer to God when you pray? Do you have ruts in your prayer life? What do you pray for most? 76% of Americans said their prayers focus on loved ones in crisis. What don’t you pray for?

What if I were to tell you that you could be coached in prayer by the Apostle Paul. If you’re like me, you’d pay a pretty penny to go to that seminar!

What if Paul Could Coach You on Your Prayer Life?
Family, Finance, Marriage, Parenting
John Beeson
Choosing Eight

I am blessed to have many special people in my life. My sister (Sarah) and her husband (Anders) are such people. At age 22, they might have been two of the least likely people you could have imagined to be where they are today: homeschool parents of eight kids. Neither their background nor their career trajectory would have given you a hint they would choose to have eight kids. Both came from families of four and Sarah was enrolled in medical school on the way to becoming a doctor. I had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah and Anders and listen to how God led them to choose to have eight kids.

Choosing Eight
Recommendations, Apologetics, Marriage, Family
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. The thief’s good works: Jackson Gravvitt considers two different perspectives on the thief on the cross: does the thief demonstrate that our faith is solely because of Christ’s work or through our good works that flow from Christ’s work?

  2. Lessons from caring for a disabled child: Jamie MacGregor shares, “At first, we were told to terminate the pregnancy since it was likely that she would have disabilities. We responded that abortion was not an option. Then, we were told that we have no idea what it would be like to raise a child with special needs. The doctors were right. We had no idea how difficult it would be.”

This Week's Recommendations
Church, Family, Marriage, Orphan Care, Parenting
John Beeson
Blessed to Multiply

Weeks before I received my first calling as a pastor, the elders decided that they were going to seek tWho wouldn’t want to experience God’s blessing? So, then, how can we step into the blessing of God? One of the straightforward ways the Bible teaches us that he blesses us is through children. Look, for instance, at the book of Genesis, where blessing is directly correlated to having children:

 

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28)

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” (Gen. 9:1)

The angel of the Lord also said to [Hagar], “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” (Gen. 16:10) acquire property and build a new facility for the church. They informed me that leading the relocation and capital campaign efforts would be part of my job. As a fresh seminary graduate, I had precisely zero requisite experience for the task. I had no experience in fundraising or contracting. And, of course, seminary did not include any preparation for the task.

 Over the course of those years, I had to learn a lot, but perhaps the most important lesson I learned was that leading a congregation through a capital campaign could be a significant spiritual blessing.

Blessed to Multiply
Church, Gratitude, Prayer, Religion
John Beeson
You and the Universal Church

Healthy Christians know that the Church is bigger than their church. We call this the universal church, the collective body of all followers of Jesus worldwide and across history. This spiritual entity is invisible, transcending denominations.

Unhealthy churches and denominations communicate directly and indirectly that they are the only true church. Unsound churches make the opposite error: not drawing any boundaries for who is outside of the orthodox church.

But what does this mean for the ordinary Christian? For many Christians, it doesn’t mean much at all. Their only meaningful connection to the church is with their church.

You and the Universal Church

Recommendations

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This Week’s Recommendations

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This Week’s Recommendations

  1. The Depressing End of “Your Truth” Brent McCracken begins, “In her lifetime-achievement-award acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey said, ‘What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.’ Your truth. Those two words are so entrenched in our lexicon today that we hardly recognize them for the incoherent nightmare that they are.”

  2. Will I Suffer More If I Serve Jesus? John Piper takes on this challenging question: “Why will God allow us to suffer as Christians if that suffering will harm our faith?” In response, he asks this question, “What if, instead of seeing Christian suffering as something added to our lives because we become Christians, we see our suffering as something that up till now was certain and deserved, but now, by the grace of God, has become suffering that is made to serve our salvation?”

  3. Exploring the Problem of Evil: Rhys Laverty explores the classical conception of the problem of evil: how can there be a God who is perfectly good and all-powerful when evil exists? Laverty explains that our problem is that we are still trying to conceptualize the problem from a human perspective. He says, “The LORD doesn’t simply say “look how much bigger I am!” but “look at how well I run the universe”. This is part of what lies behind the great promise that the Lord works all things together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28).”

  4. The Touch: Tim Challies tells us about the power of the touch of Jesus, “Jesus left no one worse than he had found them. None left his presence without some blessing, some challenge, some enablement or encouragement to live for the good of others and the glory of God. And what a difference it would make in this world if we determined to do the same…”

  5. Aerial Sheep Herding: Mesmerizing. I love watching the behavior of the sheep that break away from the flock.

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This Week’s Recommendations

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This Week’s Recommendations

  1. Why Brutal Honesty Isn’t Honest at All: Justin Hale with an important response to us when we might be tempted to excuse our harsh responses to others, “Being more honest is about being more clear, more specific, more sincere, and more authentic. So, you DON’T have to raise your voice to increase your honesty. You DO need to be more effective at stating the observable facts of the situation and your honest perspective about those facts.”

  2. Why Does Hell Exist? James Williams offers some simple analogies to help get our minds around this challenging doctrine. He concludes, “If there were no hell, there would be no need for salvation. If sin didn’t separate us from a holy God, then we wouldn’t need the gospel. The testimony of Scripture undeniably points us to such realities. We lack the ability to atone for ourselves, thus our need for an external deliverance. But, thanks be to God us gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

  3. You Will Fail Sometimes. Don’t Quit: Melissa Edgington considers the discouragement of sanctification and the double truth that God will change us, but we will also fail along the way. She encourages us, “You see, there is no moment of arrival. At least, not on this side of Heaven. But on any given day, in any given moment, we can become a little more like Christ. We can become a little more devoted. We can have moments of sincere adoration and awe for who God is. We can grow. And, before we know it, if we establish these patterns of putting another sin to death, of taking one more step toward God instead of away from Him, we’ll wake up one morning and realize that we are a whole lot more like Jesus than we were twenty years ago. Growth is slow. But He is patient.”

  4. There is Power in Counting it All Joy: Paul Tautges begins, “Joy is a state of mind, not merely a feeling. Joy is peaceful confidence in knowing God’s good and perfect will is being carried out as the result of your trials. I know from experience that this can be hard to accept.”

  5. How Turtles Find Their Way Home: How do turtles find their way back to the place of their birth decades later? What an amazing Creator we have.

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This Week’s Recommendations

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This Week’s Recommendations

  1. How Parents Can Help Kids Navigate Transgender Ideology: Maria Baer packs lots of wisdom into this post. She says, “This is a complicated calling for Christian parents. But whatever else we do in response to the normalization of transgender ideology, we can’t not talk about it with our kids. Make no mistake: they are hearing about it—in entertainment, online, at school, and from their friends.”

  2. My 30 Second Sermon as We Prepared for a Crash Landing: Kyle Donn shares his brief, but harrowing story. He begins, “Last Sunday I thought I was going to die. ‘Brace! Brace! Brace!’ The flight attendants prepared us for impact. The pilot of American Airlines Flight 2775—which had just taken off from Charlotte and was heading to Seattle—announced moments earlier that our plane was experiencing engine failure and that we needed to prepare for a crash landing. The attendants ran frantically up and down the cabin, preparing us.”

  3. Does Your Prayer Life Need to Change: Forrest McPhail’s article is loaded with helpful practical tips. He concludes, “Prayerlessness is not an option for one of God’s children. Find a way. Be creative. Worship God by maintaining fellowship with Him in prayer.”

  4. A Hidden Beauty: Chris Thomas invites us to see beauty as God sees it. He begins by considering the beauty of his native Australia, “The stone is clothed in ochre red, a brilliant protest against the azure sky that casts a blanket of suppression over the land and is stitched seamlessly into an unbroken line where the two meet. Below the ancient stone, a throne of fissured rock falls away in fearful wonder to jade depths of tepid water rich with life.”

  5. We Keep Stumbling Forward: How cute is this? And how true is this of our faith?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The Dearest Ache: Loving a Teenager: Melissa Edgington shares about what the changing relationship with her daughter has looked liked as it has shifted into her daughter’s teenage years. Melissa captures the heartbeat of the relationship beautifully. She begins, “I remember when she was three. She confidently navigated the world with boundless energy, curls bouncing, so sure of herself. So sure of me. Those were the days when she radiated around me like I was the sun, and she was never too far from the safety of my warmth.”

  2. What Non-Christians Really Think About the Church: Carey Niewhof reflects on Barna research that reveals some discouraging information including the fact that only 21% of non-Christians have a positive perception of the local church. Niewhof offers some helpful encouragement of how to begin to shift the story.

  3. The Impact of Saying, “I’m So Busy”: Darren Bosch explains three problems of responding to the question, “how are you doing,” with “I’m so busy.” He says such an answer “reveals our leadership,” “drains our credibility,” “limits the God-story.”

  4. My Anchor Holds: Tim Challies reflects on how his anchor, Christ, has held him through the tragic loss of his son, “My faith, my anchor, has held, but not because I have been rowing hard, not because I have been steering well, not because I am made of rugged stuff, not because I am a man of mighty faith. It has held fast because it is held firm in the nail-scarred hands of the one who died and rose for me.”

  5. Rosaria Butterfield’s Conversion: Butterfield shares the story of God bringing her to faith from her context as an academic in a committed lesbian relationship.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Shame in the Public Arena: Stephen Freeman considers the sticky nature of shame. He urges us to stay far away from its use, “Shaming is easily justified by many. Whether it is doctrine, the Church, the state, the culture, whatever institution stands most in danger, shaming, like violence, is considered an effective tool in guarding the fort. However, it remains the case that shame cannot be used without causing damage to the one who uses it.”

  2. A Life on the Frontier: Chris Thomas tells his story about a conversation with his tattoo artist and a divinely ordained conversation. He shares, “My new friend proceeded to pour out her heartache. As she shaded in my arm, she filled in the gaps of yearning and seeking, of love gained and lost, of hopes she had, and anguish she lived with. And there, with this young woman holding a needle to my arm, I saw past the stereotypes and ink, and saw a frightened and broken girl who carries a fractured image of a God who formed and loved her.”

  3. Encourage and Be Encouraged: A great word from my friend Cassie Watson. I love her observation that we are to be those are called not only to encourage, but to be easily encouraged. She concludes, “Let’s be on the lookout today for the encouragement that God has prepared for us, so that his glory may abound among his people.”

  4. Tim Keller’s Wisdom on Navigating Social Media: Keller explains the sociological and psychological dimensions of new public square of social media. He concludes with advice that is so important for every Christian. His final point is, “Loosen the links between your ideas and your identity.” This post is indispensable for any Christian with a social media account.

  5. The Man on the Middle Cross Said I Can Come: Alistair Begg’s description of the thief’s welcome at heaven is funny and makes the gospel clear.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. 4 Traits to Seek in a Spouse: David Qaoud concludes his sound advice with this, “Everyone marries the wrong person. Everyone is wrong because of sin. But a robust view of total depravity, and a firm understanding of providence, doesn’t mean you should have low standards for who you marry.”

2. I Am My Father’s Son: This is a powerful story of hope from Greg Lucas, who had a terrible relationship with his father. He concludes, “Like my dad, and failing fathers everywhere, I rest in the promises of the gospel. The promise of redemption, forgiveness, and grace. And through these promises I can proclaim with confidence and joy, I am my Father’s son.

3. Sometimes I Think I Hear Singing: Andrea Sanborn encourages us to have ears to hear God’s singing… I read this one twice it was so perfect. She says, “We look for the spectacular, for a jolt of awareness. For miracles. But God, who clothed himself in ordinary flesh, also comes on ordinary days, in just a subtle stirring in the soul; a hint of heaven. Can you sense it?”

4. River Runner: How cool is this tool? Let a raindrop fall anywhere you want in the United States and see where it ends up.

5. America’s Racial History and Christians: In this video, Justin Giboney with a thoughtful response to an important issues for all American Christians. He argues that, to speak faithfully and biblically, “We must not only confront the lies that offend us, but also the lies that serve us.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. How to Meet God at Your Lowest Point: Jane Marczewski guest posts over on Ann Voskamp’s blog. She has cancer and has been given only a 2% chance of survival. Jane recently auditioned on America’s Got Talent and received the golden buzzer. You’ll want to read her post and then watch her memorable performance. She writes, “I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower.”

2. Not this Man, but Barabbas! Keith Mathison nails it here, “I hear and read Christians almost every day saying that their biggest concern is the direction in which the United States is headed. Or they are most concerned about the collapse of Western civilization. Granted, many people are concerned about these things because of their love for their children or grandchildren… The problem occurs when our main concern is fundamentally a political concern.”

3. 5 Cultural Shifts We Need to Know to Reach Our Neighbors: Mark Clark begins with this truth, “The highest good is now individual freedom and happiness.” All five are helpful in considering how to reach our neighbors with the gospel.

4. Romanticizing Death: A fellow Tucson pastor, Rod Hugen reminds us that to understand the power of Jesus conquering death we must come face to face with the ugliness of death. He concludes, “I live in the time when death is still the enemy, but with the sure knowledge that death is defeated and will one day be no more. It is an exhilarating time, freeing me to seize life and to take joy in the journey, knowing that Christ’s resurrection is a reality. Death defeated is far superior to death romanticized.”

5. PT Barnum’s 10 Most Famous Human “Freak” Show Attractions: If you’ve seen The Greatest Showman you’ll appreciate how this video humanizes the various people that Barnum promoted (and often exploited) in his show.

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50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too)

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50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too)

Books hold a unique power to change. Even the infrequent reader can remember the time when a book grabbed their heart. Whose eyes didn’t brim with tears as Wilson Rawls paints the picture of Old Dan’s sacrificial death in Where the Red Fern Grows? Who doesn’t remember the first time they went through the wardrobe into Narnia?

Through books we get to sit at the feet of some of the smartest and godliest men and women ever to lived and learn from them. Books have changed my opinion of myself and God. Books have taken me to places I’ve never been. I’ve grown in faith and empathy through what I’ve read.

Books have changed my life. Here are the fifty books I believe have changed my life the most. I offer them to you with the hope that they might change your life, too.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The Solution to America’s Theological Salad Bar: Paul Peterson deconstructs the 2020 State of Theology Findings that leave any astute reader scratching their head. How is it the case that 72% of Americans agree that “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” And yet, “52% of Americans claim, ‘Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.” The results are baffling. Peterson tries to make sense of the mess. He explains that, “It helps to know what most Americans believe, but even more so, we must grasp how Americans believe, if we might engage them with the truth. Those cultural Christians who attend church on Christmas and Easter can select orthodox-looking statements about God on a survey. Still, their approach to knowledge prepares them to depart from Christian teaching further down the salad bar line. A culture that ingests “Be yourself” will also absorb “Believe yourself.””

2. How Much Money is Enough? (And Other Wisdom from Proverbs): We just finished a series on the book of Proverbs. There are some excellent little gems Geiger has in here we didn’t even get to!

3. The Wait of All Waits: Brittany Lee Allen reflects on waiting and then asks these convicting questions, “All of our waiting points to the wait of all waits. Jesus is coming back. We will see him face to face and leaving all this world behind us, we will live in eternity with our Savior. Do we yearn for that day as much as we do for earthly things? Do I long for Jesus to return more than I do for another baby? Sometimes I wonder if I hope to see his face more than I hope for healing from chronic pain?”

4. Congregations of Bruised Reeds: My friend Benjamin Vrbicek shares that we all are the bruised, but serve a God who sees our bruising. He offers this pastoral wisdom, “Over the last decade of pastoral ministry, I have learned the time required to heal from abuse and other trauma is always longer than I would have guessed.”

5. Shadows in the Sky: I’m a total sucker for videos that display a sliver of the breathtaking glory and power of our Almighty God. Don’t multi-task when you watch this one.

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