Death, Easter, Heaven
John Beeson
The Resurrection of Jesus: An Eyewitness Account

Happy Easter!

Today we consider the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. What follows is a compilation of the eyewitness resurrection accounts of Jesus Christ as told by the authors of the gospels. They have been edited together to maintain the flow of the narrative and do not include Jesus’ multiple appearances following his resurrection. The accounts are framed by Paul’s extended reflection on the importance of the resurrection.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

The Resurrection of Jesus: An Eyewitness Account
Recommendations, Easter, Death, Heaven, Nature
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Eagles, fowl, and a Savior with wings: Kevin Burrell’s post makes my heart sing, “And a living, risen savior is still our covering today, to all those who by faith trust in his wings. In fact, we are clothed in his righteousness. He is oh-so willing to gather us under his wings.”

  2. Even to death: Jamaal Williams invites us to consider Jesus at the Mount of Olives, “Jesus models what it looks like to stumble into the presence of God—hurting but hopeful.”

This Week's Recommendations
Easter, Death, Heaven, Hell
John Beeson
The Crucifixion of Jesus: An Eyewitness Account

On this Tuesday of Holy Week, we consider the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. What follows is a compilation of the eyewitness crucifixion accounts of Jesus Christ as told by the four authors of the gospels. They have been edited together to maintain the flow of the narrative. The accounts are framed by the words of the 8th century BC prophet, Isaiah. On Sunday I will share the resurrection account of Jesus from the eyewitnesses.

The Crucifixion of Jesus: An Eyewitness Account
Christian Living, Church, Finance, Generosity
John Beeson
Why We Should Give to Financially Mismanaged ...

In 2007, the House Committee on Oversight investigated the “Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes and Help Hospitalized Veterans.” Something was seriously wrong with CEO Roger Chapin’s leadership (and it wasn’t just the absurdly long name of the charity). Chapin had raised nearly $170 million between 2004 and 2006, but only 25% of the money reached veterans. Over $125 million was funneled to Chapin and his cronies.

 

Whether at a national or local level, we don’t have to look long and hard for mismanagement of donations. There is nothing that breaks the trust of a donor more than seeing their hard-earned dollars misspent. We should care about where our giving goes. Churches ought to lead the way in financial transparency and accountability.

Why We Should Give to Financially Mismanaged Organizations
Recommendations, Nature, Evangelism, Parenting
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. 6 discouraging trends in global Christianity: Aaron Earls reports, “While Christianity continues to grow, Islamic growth continues to outpace the church’s growth. Christianity slightly outpaced the global rate of population growth (0.98% v. 0.88%), but Islam grew even faster (1.67%).”

  2. Wikipedia founder embraces Christianity: Trevin Wax reflects on Larry Sanger’s conversion, “Considering how many people are curious about the Bible these days, the increase in Bible sales, the interest in various philosophers and commentators providing their takes on the Scriptures,

This Week's Recommendations

Spiritual Growth

, ,

Every Week My Dog Protects Us From the Amazon Delivery Driver: On the Danger of Learning the Wrong Lesson

, ,
Every Week My Dog Protects Us From the Amazon Delivery Driver: On the Danger of Learning the Wrong Lesson

I’m working from home today. It’s a great working environment: calm and focused. Our dog lies peacefully at my feet. Until a vehicle dares to enter our cul-de-sac, that is. Then our 25-pound Australian Labradoodle leaps to the window, both paws on the window sill, and turns into a ferocious beast.

The Amazon delivery guy pulls up to the curb, jumps out with a package in tow, and places it at the front door. Our dog howls as though a cadre of gunmen have encircled our property. This is no sociable bark to his neighborhood doggie friends: this is a protect-the-house-at-all-costs-bay. The deliveryman hustles back to his van and pulls out of the cul-de-sac.

My dog settles back down at my feet. He’s protected the home from another invasion. In his mind, he’s batting a thousand. 849 attempted burglaries all thwarted by his fearsome presence.

, ,

Cactus Spines and Groaning

, ,
Cactus Spines and Groaning

Spine: that’s the technical word for the pointy things that come out of cacti. Most Arizonans use more colloquial expressions like prickers or stickers when referencing them. Either way, they’re nothing to laugh at. If you’ve lived in the Sonoran desert for any length of time, you’ve used a pair of tweezers to yank them from your skin.

After my parents moved to Tucson, my grandfather visited from Florida. Amazed by the beautiful and seemingly soft “fur” covering prickly pear cacti, he stroked the apparently innocuous fuzz. The prickly pear gifted him with a few hundred spines that pierced his fingertips. He groaned.

Recently I was doing some yard work and got too close to a saguaro’s spine as I tried to weed around the base of the cactus. The spine pierced my fingernail. I groaned.

It has remained lodged there for over two months. Initially located at the base of my fingernail, it was impossible to remove without taking off my entire fingernail. The fingernail itself now holds the tip of the spine against the flesh under my fingernail. It’s a tiny amount of pain, but pain that will not leave. I groan.

, , ,

Teaching for Change: How I Learned to Stop Preaching

, , ,
Teaching for Change: How I Learned to Stop Preaching

When I signed up to serve as a pastoral intern during my seminary years in New Jersey, I was given the opportunity to teach our church’s adult Sunday school class. The popular and engaging regular teacher graciously handed me the reins for a chunk of the fall semester. I decided we would study the gospel of John together. I read through the gospel, paged through commentaries, crafted a syllabus, and prepared the manuscript for the class’s first week. I handed out the syllabus to the group (that included weekly homework) and launched in, hands gripped to the podium, with passion and verve.

I had mixed thoughts about how it went. On the one hand, my sermon lesson was well structured, thoroughly researched, and faithful to scripture. I intentionally added questions in the lessons, so it wasn’t just a monologue. I should have felt good about it. On the other hand, there seemed a disconnect between the class and myself that I couldn’t figure out how to bridge. My enthusiasm for the book didn’t seem to create engagement. The questions I asked were met with (mostly) silence or shallow answers. The faces in front of me seemed largely unaffected.

I got a friendly call from one of the campus ministers who attended our church (and that Sunday School class) that week and he invited me out to coffee. Over mugs at the local caffeine dive, Small World, I had a brief conversation that was worth a semester’s worth of seminary education. (Parenthetically, while I took four classes on preaching, I never took a class on teaching at seminary, and I am not sure if one was offered.) The conversation changed the way I have taught ever since.

, , ,

How to Make Your Spiritual Life Purposeful: Your Vocational Call, part 3

, , ,
How to Make Your Spiritual Life Purposeful: Your Vocational Call, part 3

What gives you purpose in seasons that feel meaningless or directionless? God does.

When you think of godly leaders, King David is in rarified air. He is, after all, the famed slayer of Goliath, the one who was known as “the man after God’s own heart,” and the greatest king in Israel’s history. But, from a human perspective, the majority of his life seemed directionless and even wasted. And yet every step had an incredible purpose. There is no King David without his journey.

As a young man, Samuel anointed David’s head and “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.”[i] Within a few years David defeated Goliath and was promised to Saul’s daughter in marriage. Surely David must have thought that his ascension to the throne was near. If I were in David’s shoes I would have anticipated my reign to begin at any moment.

But as things so often are in God’s economy, our expectations are not God’s. It would be many years before David would sit on the throne.[ii] David would go from the rising star of Israel, whom the people sung about in the streets, to fleeing, to exile, wandering with his motley band across the hostile terrain of Palestine. Even after so many years had passed, he twice refused to take the life of the man who not only sought his life, but blocked his anointing.[iii]

What must have sustained David for these long years was not only the presence of God, but also God’s purpose for him. Even as he ran for his life, he speaks of his trust and his purpose, “But the king [referring to himself, who wasn’t yet king] shall rejoice in God.” So it is with the power of a purposeful spiritual life for us. When we know and understand the identity and purposes God has placed on our lives, it sustains us through tremendous difficulty, which is also God’s purpose.

, , , ,

How to Make Your Spiritual Life Purposeful: What is Your Destination? Part 2

, , , ,
How to Make Your Spiritual Life Purposeful: What is Your Destination? Part 2

A few years ago my wife and I took a hike for my birthday. We enjoyed the beautiful Arizona morning, winding our way up into the foothills of the Catalina Mountains through the lush Sonoran desert. Creosotes, palo verdes, mesquite trees. barrel cacti, cholla, ocotillos, and saguaros sprang out of the mountainous terrain. We went on a well-traveled trail toward our destination: pools tucked into the Catalina foothills, 2.8 miles from the trailhead.

As inexperienced hikers who hadn’t hiked the trail in some 20 years, we overestimated our progress and asked multiple passersby how far away the pools were. It shouldn’t take this long to go 2.8 miles, right? Our legs grew heavy and my wife wondered if we had made a wrong turn. Maybe we should just turn around?

We finally crested a hill and below us lay the still, emerald pools. Our pace quickened with the pools in view and the final 15 minutes sped by. We relaxed on sun-bathed boulders, ate a snack, took some pictures, and then headed back. Knowing the terrain now and having a much better sense of how far the 2.8 mile destination was, there were no moments of confusion or frustration. The trail seemed to melt quickly behind us and we arrived back at the trailhead quickly.

Knowing your destination changes your journey.

This is a series about fixing a spiritual destination, and doing so changes our spiritual journey.

, ,

How to Make your Spiritual Life Purposeful, part I

, ,
How to Make your Spiritual Life Purposeful, part I

What plan do you have for your spiritual life? Where do you want to go spiritually? And how are you going to get there?

My hunch is that most of us don’t have a plan for our spiritual life. Most of us live hoping that we’ll drift into a better spiritual life. But that is a faulty assumption. Have you drifted into losing weight? Or becoming a better father? Or into your Master’s degree?

For some reason, we think that even though we make plans for improvement and we set goals in other areas, it's not necessary or spiritual for us to set out these kinds of plans for our spiritual walk.

Jesus himself lived an incredibly purposeful life. If you pick up the gospel of John, you see that Jesus is very sensitive to discerning and following God’s purpose for his life. His purpose was not about self-fulfillment but self-giving at the cross. In John 17:1, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.”

How do we live a spiritual life with such purpose and awareness?

,

Hiding God's Word Away in 2022

,
Hiding God's Word Away in 2022

“How can a young man keep his way pure?” the Psalmist asks.

“By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Ps 119:9-11).

In a world where temptation presses in at every side and lures us to follow its path, we ask, “how can I keep my heart pure?”

In a world where Christians are deconstructing their faith because of their disappointment with the Christianity of their fathers, we ask, “how can I keep my faith pure?”

In a world where what is right and wrong seems to shift like sand beneath our feet, we ask, “how can I know what is true?”

The answer comes back to us, “by listening to God’s unchanging Word.”

The analogy has been offered many times: how do you teach someone to detect counterfeit bills? By pouring themselves into the study of authentic currency.

There are many competing voices for what true faith should look like in today’s confusing world. May none have a louder voice in our lives than God’s.

How should we store up God’s Word in our hearts? I would encourage two ways:

, , , ,

The Four Villains of Christmas: Herod

, , , ,
The Four Villains of Christmas: Herod

Advent has arrived. It’s a time for joy and generosity and hope and celebration. But threats lurk. Over the next four weeks we will consider four villains of Christmas. The first villain is King Herod. King Herod fought for power. The yearning for power in our own hearts endangers Christmas.

Herod was the villain at the first Christmas. He was a politician’s politician. He was oily and underhanded, vicious and cold-hearted. Born in 73 BC, Herod rose to power quickly (in his mid-twenties) by maneuvering his way through the Roman political machine. He was ultimately given the title “King of Judea” by the Roman Senate.[i] Upon rising to power, Herod murdered anyone who might be his rival, including three of his sons and his first wife, Mariamne.

Herod’s paranoia served him well and allowed him to rule for 37 years—far longer than most. His political savvy extended well past his paranoia. A half-Jew himself, Herod was a master of alliances, eventually taking ten wives, each gaining him a strategic political advantage. And he knew the power of tangible change. Herod took on massive building projects throughout Judea including the construction of the port at Caesarea Maritima, the Second Temple, the fortress at Masada, and Herodium. Many of these can still be seen in Israel today. In fact, most beautiful ancient buildings that remain in Israel are Herod’s handiwork. To fund these projects, Herod levied massive taxes on the people that created animus between him and the people (and also helps us understand just how hated the tax collectors we meet in the Bible were).

One day in the final years of Herod’s life, a group of Magi from the East requested an audience with the King of Judea.

, ,

I’ve Missed You

, ,
I’ve Missed You

Life comes at us fast. How do our calendars get so full? Birthdays and conferences and vacations stack up. We miss church one week, and that turns into two, which turns to a month. Ever so sneakily, new rhythms have crept in and getting to church feels like a challenge.

“How much is it really hurting my spiritual life, anyway?” you wonder. “I still read the Bible. I listen to sermons online sometimes.”

I’m so glad that you are pursuing God on your own. But your spiritual life isn’t intended to be lived out alone. It’s not even designed to be lived out with just you and your family. Part of God’s purposes for you are only found in the context of the gathered family of God.

What if the church is missing you, not just for you to fill a chair, but for the gifts that you bring? What if the church isn’t whole without you?

Sign up to get The Bee Hive delivered to your inbox and receive a free 50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too) download!