October 8, 2026

Recommendations, Counseling, Family, Nature, Parenting, Spiritual Growth

John Beeson

This Week's Recommendations

1. How to have a soft heart: Katie Laitkep says, “When the season you expected to be brief stretches from months to years, layered with added pressures in other areas of your life, the weight of it all doesn’t just exhaust your body; it changes how you see the world. You grow more guarded. You lower your hopes, expecting disappointment and attempting to protect yourself from anyone or anything that could cause more pain, whether it’s people, circumstances, or God Himself.”
2. What is wrong with the world? Paul David Tripp answers, “When we are looking for answers to the world’s problems, we can begin in an unlikely place: the doctrine of sin.

October 6, 2026

Christian Living, Faith, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom

John Beeson

The Spirit's Voice

“Pastor, I was really touched when you said…”

One of my favorite parts of pastoral ministry is hearing how Scripture, sermons, Bible studies, and blog posts are shaping the lives of people in the congregation.

A common occurrence in these conversations is when someone tells me I said something in a sermon that I did not actually say. What happened? Usually, it’s not because the person was inattentive.

October 1, 2026

Recommendations, Culture, Gratitude

John Beeson

This Week's Recommendations

Two ways to worry about AI: Alan Noble begins, “If you’ve followed some of the news in AI recently, you might be feeling scared. Concerning stories have been coming from two leading AI companies this summer.”
What gratitude was never meant to do: Tracy Harper says, “We run into problems with gratitude, though, when we use it as a countermeasure to avoid the thoughts and emotions that disappointment brings to the surface. God was prompting me to sit with the deeper question of why this mattered so much to me, and I couldn’t use my list of blessings to avoid going there with him.”

September 29, 2026

Christian Living, Consumerism, Culture, Generosity

John Beeson

How Can I Excuse Myself

You’re running a day care center that closes at 5pm. You notice a handful of parents pick up their children late. Every time a parent arrives late it impacts you: you must stay late—family dinners and events are lost. What do you do? Realizing that your honor system isn’t cutting it, you start charging a fine for arriving late.

And then the unexpected happens: the number of late-arriving parents doubles.

This experiment was run by economists trying to help an Israeli daycare. The results confounded the researchers.

September 24, 2026

Recommendations, Culture, Biblical Studies, Nature, Prayer, Science

John Beeson

This Week's Recommendations

Three things stress reveals: Michael Kelley says, “And maybe you, too, know what that bursting feels like – it’s when something small that ordinarily shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did just sets you off. And you find yourself overreacting to that single incident because of the accumulated pressure from the other circumstances.”
Seraphim may be flying serpentine creatures: Wyatt Graham challenges how we envision these angelic beings, “The word saraph occurs only seven times in the Hebrew Bible. Its verbal form means “to burn,”

Compassion

John Beeson

October 8, 2026

Recommendations, Counseling, Family, Nature, Parenting, Spiritual Growth

This Week's Recommendations

John Beeson

October 8, 2026

Recommendations, Counseling, Family, Nature, Parenting, Spiritual Growth

1. How to have a soft heart: Katie Laitkep says, “When the season you expected to be brief stretches from months to years, layered with added pressures in other areas of your life, the weight of it all doesn’t just exhaust your body; it changes how you see the world. You grow more guarded. You lower your hopes, expecting disappointment and attempting to protect yourself from anyone or anything that could cause more pain, whether it’s people, circumstances, or God Himself.”
2. What is wrong with the world? Paul David Tripp answers, “When we are looking for answers to the world’s problems, we can begin in an unlikely place: the doctrine of sin.