Christian Living, Leadership
John Beeson
What’s Your Leadership Superpower? (And What’s ...

My grandma Betty’s house smelled of lilacs and bacon. Her favorite dusting powder and her favorite breakfast food blended to form a smell all her own that permeated her one-bedroom apartment. I’m sure she didn’t realize the unique olfactory experience she greeted her visitors with.

We become nose blind to the smells we are often around. We recently rented a vehicle that smelled of dirty diapers. By the third day, we weren’t sure if the nasty smell had dissipated or we had just grown accustomed to it.

Similarly, we are often blind to how others experience our leadership. Have you ever met someone who thinks they have a gifting they clearly don’t have?

What’s Your Leadership Superpower? (And What’s Your Leadership Kryptonite?)
Recommendations, Christian Living, Consumerism, Finance, Culture
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. If you want to be miserable, then spend your money like this: Morgan Housel begins, “Tell yourself that you’ll be satisfied once you make just a little more money, have a little bit nicer home, and can spend just a little bit more than you do now. Ignore the fact that the group you’re in now used to be a dream that you thought would bring you contentment and happiness.”

  2. If you ask AI for marriage advice, it’ll probably tell you to get divorced: Samuel James with an important post. “I’m convinced that part of the emerging polarization between men and women has to do with the increasingly niche information streams that men and women are immersed in. Men see the excesses and abuses of feminism daily. Women see the excesses and abuses of masculinity daily.”

This Week's Recommendations
Biblical Studies, Christian Living, Identity
John Beeson
The Worst Hall of Fame Ever!

Just recently my sister was inducted into the Stanford Hall of Fame. Sarah is a phenomenal athlete who was a stand-out high school athlete in swimming and softball. She went on to play softball for Stanford University where she batted .350 with 28 home runs over her career and was a three-time All American, eventually playing on the US Women’s National Team.

You might be familiar with some of the other members of Stanford’s Hall of Fame: Tiger Woods and John Elway are two of the other inductees. Sarah My is also a member of the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame alongside Tucson greats like Steve Kerr, Lute Olsen, and Sean Elliott.

The Worst Hall of Fame Ever!
Fear, Parenting, Family
John Beeson
The Trap of Fear-Based Parenting

She was one day old with the brightest, bluest eyes, a bald head, and the cutest little ears that stuck nearly perpendicular out of her head.

We checked out at the hospital's front desk and walked to our car with our baby girl in the car seat. As the safety officer checked out the security of our car seat base, a wave of fear came over me. Why would they let us take this beautiful baby home?

To be a parent is to experience fear. Will they be safe? Will they be bullied? Will they make friends? Will they like me? Will they survive a sexually confused world?

The Trap of Fear-Based Parenting
Recommendations, Christian Living, Church, Religion
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. When bitterness becomes your religion, healing becomes heresy: Christopher Cook says, “But here’s the fruit of that belief system: the most anxious, entitled, bitter, and emotionally fragile generation in history. The world is not freer. It is more fractured. The culture of curated authenticity has not led us to peace, but to exhaustion.”

  2. Mortifying our desire: Keith Evans begins, “A young man once told me, “I never chose to feel this way. These attractions seem to have always been part of my life.” His honesty captures what so many experience—same-sex attraction often feels unchosen, even natural. But when we look to Scripture, we discover even that which may feel natural is not always good.”

This Week's Recommendations

Christian Living

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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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Consuming Alone

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Consuming Alone

In this series we’ve tried to help pull us out of our fish tank and examine the water we swim in every day: the water of consumerism. We’ve examined how the waters of consumerism have impacted our experience with the local church and found that impact has been largely negative. The next two weeks we will talk about the way it has engaged our devotional life and worship life before closing by discussing how it has impacted our lives as stewards.

When growing up it was fairly common to talk about “your personal relationship with Jesus.” Salvation, similarly, was couched in very personal terms: “Have you asked Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior?” Those statements aren’t wrong, but they only begin to get at what the Christianity of the New Testament. In the gospels and the letters in the New Testament those who are invited to participate in Christianity are called into a new family, are asked to welcome a new kingdom, and are called to live in a radical new community. The invitation to salvation went far beyond one’s “personal relationship with Jesus,” inviting one into a new community, new way of life that was lived out in a new family.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

Americans’ Not-So Warm Feelings Toward Evangelicals: I think the biggest news here is that 20% of Americans say that they don’t know an evangelical. That is fairly significant news regarding our cultural retreat.

Types of Honor and Shame Cultures: This interesting article breaks down the earth into five basic types of honor-shame cultures.

Foolish and Slow of Heart: Chris Bruno asks: How does your life fit with God’s mission? “[T]heir stupidity was not rooted in a lack of intelligence. It was rooted in their inability to see how their lives fit with the story of the Bible.

9 Myths about Abortion: Kevin DeYoung on abortion myths, including myths about the availability of abortion historically, the number of deaths from back-alley abortions, and how mainstream our abortion laws are.

Visiting Famous Sites Via Google Earth: Thanks to Tim Challies for sharing this fun video.

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Consumers at Church, part II

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Consumers at Church, part II

We’ve been discussing the impact of the water we swim in in 21st century America – consumerism—on our spiritual lives. Last week I took a look at how unique our situation is in the context of 2,000 years of church history. The notion that you have any decision to make on the church you attend would be a completely foreign idea to the experience of two millennia of Christians around the globe.

The point of such an observation isn’t to shame our current context or even lament the fragmentation of the church (those would be discussions for another day). Rather it helps us see the strangeness of the reality that, for most contemporary American Christians, there is a lengthy period of shopping for a church that happens when one moves or, for most, if anything happens within their church context that upsets or unsettles them. The days of being buried in the church where you were baptized and married are long gone for most.

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