Recommendations, Abortion, Parenting, Relationships, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Go ahead, bring a knife to a gunfight: Tim Challies says, “They say you should never bring a knife to a gunfight. It’s a colorful little proverb that emphasizes the value of proper preparation, yet I’m not sure it’s a proverb God cares much for. I sometimes think of the biblical judge Shamgar, who entered a battle armed with only an ox-goad—a stick used to poke oxen to get them to comply with directions. Shamgar brought an ox-goad to a sword fight, yet emerged victorious and with 600 Philistines dead at his feet.

  2. Help! I think I’m a bad parent: Adam Griffin says, “Our inadequacy in parenting is a great gift. If we weren’t inadequate, when would we run to Jesus?

This Week's Recommendations
Christian Living, Prayer, Wisdom
John Beeson
A Prayer for the Loud Lord

Today I have the opportunity to share another one of my daughter, Camille’s poems. She wrote this poem during her time serving at the Grand Canyon this past summer. –John

a prayer for the Loud Lord

 

You are loud here. winds wind through royal blue stone, drowning my breath.

so small. so fleeting. so futile. but the vapor of a whisper.

i don’t need to go anywhere to find you. You are here. 

A Prayer for the Loud Lord
Culture, Fear, Identity, Prayer
John Beeson
Shame and Single Serve Vodka Bottles

What is the most frequent item I pick up during my prayer walks around our campus?
Mini vodka bottles.

They’re everywhere — three billion of them are sold annually in the U.S. I’ll find them tossed onto the roadside, likely flung from moving cars. But more often, I find them in quiet clusters, tucked into corners of our church parking lot. Every bottle tells a story. Every bottle raises questions.

Why is the most common brand I find unflavored vodka?

Why would someone throw a mini bottle out of a moving vehicle?

Why pull into a church parking lot…just to drink?

Shame and Single Serve Vodka Bottles
Recommendations, Culture, Death, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Are we the idols? Andrew Noble says, “It is strange to become an idol, isn’t it? It’s hard to wrap your mind around. Yet every day, people are morphing into something like mud. Instead of functioning as images of God, they worship idols and turn into lifeless dust. Life goes wrong when we don’t worship right.”

  2. Weakness in God’s economy: Kirsten shares, “As I consider my heart, my struggle does not come in whether or not I believe that God is able to heal; I believe that God is able to do all that pleases him. Rather, my struggle comes in believing whether or not God is willing; at least in the timeframe I am hoping and praying.”

This Week's Recommendations
Christian Living, Gratitude
John Beeson
How Hard Is Your Heart?

You can tell a good piece of fruit or vegetable by its color and by its feel. The avocado, though, is tricky. A novice might think that a bright green, hard avocado is the best, but counter-intuitively, the best avocados are dark, with shades of brown, giving easily to the touch. The heart of a growing Christian also gives easily to the touch.

When we seek out counsel, the state of our hearts can resist the very thing we want. A soft heart can turn mediocre counsel into pearls of wisdom. A hard heart will turn the wisest counsel into sawdust.

How Hard Is Your Heart?

law enforcement

How Christian Border Patrol Agents Think About the Border

How Christian Border Patrol Agents Think About the Border

“I have to make sure I’m never in uniform in public.” I sat down over pizza with two border patrol agents and chatted about their experience as Christian agents. Living near the border, we have a number of Border Patrol Agents who attend at our church. I wanted to hear from them what their experience was and hear how their experience could shape the church’s thoughts concerning illegal immigration.  

Over the course of three meetings, I met with four agents and listened as they shared their perspective on serving as Border Patrol Agents. All of them share an unbending commitment to uphold the law of the land and protect our borders and to care for the people they engage

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       What the Bible Teaches About Sexuality: David Powlison on the threefold vision of sexuality in the Bible, " The Bible discusses many forms of sexual immorality and sexual victimization. A vision for fidelity does not drive honesty about infidelity and betrayal underground. Prudish? Not Scripture. Squeamish about the sordid details of human life? The biblical authors frequently (though not always) eschew photographic description and details when they speak of sex. They often model a certain delicacy of generic description."

2.       Making Space for your Neighbor: Dexter Culbreath encourages us to reach out to those God has placed near us, " Let’s be real. We are the ones holding ourselves back. We are not fans of failure, nor do we want to subject ourselves to the messiness of investing into the lives of others. So, what do we do? We wait to see how it goes with others before we stick our necks out there. As with many things, fear drives our hesitancy."

3.       Your Smartphone is Making You Stupid, Antisocial, and Unhealthy. So Why Can't You Put it Down? Ouch, this is a painful read by Eric Andrew-Gee. He reports that the evidence is "in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time. They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes."

4.       6 Ways to Discourage Your Pastor: Paul Levy with a pointed, but accurate list. His fourth reason is, "Speak to others in the congregation, but not the leadership. This way word gets back to leadership through others, 'Some people are saying...'"

5.       Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man: How do we navigate these incredibly difficult discussions around law enforcement and African American men? The More Perfect podcast takes us back to the beginning of what would become an important precedent in courts' interpretation around how to rule on these cases.

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