Death, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Ruin of Me

Today I have the pleasure of sharing a poem by my daughter, Camille (age 21). It is from the perspective of King Ahaz (see 2 Chronicles 28).

The Ruin of Me
Christian Living, Evangelism
John Beeson
Open Dumpster Living

Along the route from my house to the church is an undeveloped intersection on three of its four corners. Two medium-trafficked two-lane roads converge at a stop sign. A while ago, inexplicably, two massive forty-yard dumpsters showed up on one of the undeveloped corners. They sat empty for a few days, and then some observant neighbors, likely determining that the dumpster didn’t have another purpose, dumped a ragged armchair in the dumpster.

The proverbial floodgates opened. Old TV sets, broken dressers, bikes, and couches filled the two dumpsters to overflowing. Over the next two months, the dumpsters were emptied multiple times and then quickly filled.

Open Dumpster Living
Recommendations, Church, Counseling, Culture
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Understanding therapy culture from different generations: This article from Sheryl Jacob resonates with my experience in the counseling room with different generations. “Millennials (born 1981-1996) grew up with therapy as mainstream - encouraged to talk about trauma, set boundaries, process their inner child, and name anxiety. While this openness is good, this generation also normalised many struggles the Church should have addressed long ago.”

  2. Be drunk with love: J.A. Medders encourages, “We get filled with the Spirit—when bottles (barrels) of the vintage gospel hit our bloodstream, our Blood Gospel Content rises above the legalistic limit.”

This Week's Recommendations
Suffering
John Beeson
Ducking Suffering

"Forgive me for all the times I needed to suffer and I ran from it, I numbed it.” The prayer caught me off guard. I looked up. Aspens bent in the wind outside the window. A small group of pastors gathered in the small community center in the tiny town of Summerhaven, located near the summit of Mount Lemmon, 5,000 feet above Tucson.

Who hasn’t avoided suffering? I’ve avoided suffering in countless ways: I’ve dodged difficult conversations, evaded serving, neglected the spiritual disciplines of fasting and silence, overspent our budget, and skipped leg day. But how often have I prayed for forgiveness for shirking suffering?

Ducking Suffering
Christian Living, Culture, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Grieving God's Heart

Six chapters into the Bible and only three chapters after Adam and Eve committed the first sin against God, the hearts of humanity have turned in on themselves. They desire to please themselves alone. God’s heart is broken. Listen to the narrative in Genesis 6. It’s a remarkable glimpse into God’s emotional life,

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart….

Grieving God's Heart

Church

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

Happy Thanksgiving friends! 

I am thankful for you. I echo Paul's prayer in Philippians 1:3-5, "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now."

It is a gift to walk with you as we grow in faith, in love, and in hope. 

With gratitude,

John

 

1.      Dads, We Have a Powerful Influence in the Lives of Our Daughters: Charlotte Andersen reports, "'I see too many men buy into the idea of 'that's a girl's issue' or 'only a woman can understand another woman' and avoid talking to their daughters about sex, dating, or other 'girly' topics. They may assume their daughters should automatically fit into preconceived gender roles,' Dr. Brown says. 'I also see men who are locked into their own narrow view of what it means to be a father to their daughter. They believe that their only role is as a provider and protector, and they end up working too much and missing out on those wonderful father-daughter bonding moments. It doesn't have to be that way at all.'"

2.     The Worst Consequence of Skipping Church: Tim Challies reminds us that "Gathering with God’s people is not first about being blessed but about being a blessing. It’s not first about getting but about giving."

3.     5 Truths About the Holy Spirit: Alastair Begg on five important truths about the Holy Spirit. 

4.      Do You Love Your Wife Out of Obligation? The close of Brian Goins article shifts how we so often think about marriage: "In Scripture, God’s bride blossoms after the wedding day and becomes more beautiful and splendid over time, not because she “worked out” or “aged gracefully,” but because God loved her into radiance. If a man views the wedding day as the height of his bride’s beauty, then he will never love like Jesus. He’ll constantly be comparing what was rather than anticipating his role in what it could be. For Jesus, the wedding day was simply the start of a lifelong extreme makeover designed to advance His bride to royalty.

5.      We Are Sinking! This Berlitz commercial still makes me laugh out loud.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.     Safety is Not the Antidote to Fear: A brief video by Gary Haugen that shakes our expectations of what God wants to do in the midst of our fears.

2.    Learning About the Wolves: Kevin DeYoung reflects on who are wolves in the church and how we should respond to them.

3.    How Our Churches Can Grow in Diversity: We have so far to go in this. I'm grateful for Greg Morse presenting not just the seriousness of the issue: "The father of lies devours minority souls, barring them from the gospel of grace and eternal life, simply by whispering, 'Christianity isn’t for you. Whites only.' When Christianity is whitewashed, when the church becomes associated with suburban country clubs, when our celebrated leaders and theologians throughout time have almost exclusively white faces... minority souls close their ears to the gospel and die in their sins." Morse also calls us forward. Among his admonitions he asks us to re-evaluate our stance on justice issues: " Social justice is not the gospel — but it is a result of the true gospel, and can be instrumental in directing souls to the true gospel." 

4.     Why the End of Marriage in Eternity is Good News: John Piper shares hard to believes news, " If the age to come is not only an improvement over the worst of this world, but over the best, then the end of marriage is spectacularly good news. Do you see this? Marriage in this age, at its best, offers some of life’s most intense pleasures, and sweetest intimacies. If you have ever tasted these, or have ever dreamed of tasting them, then you can feel the astonishing force of the promise that marriage will be no more because it was too weak to carry God’s best eternal pleasures."

5.     Match Made in Marrow: Radiolab is one of my favorite podcasts, it is also done from a secular scientific worldview that is atheistic in slant. I was shocked when they made the story of a man who came to faith in God because of his atheist bone marrow donor the centerpiece of their podcast last week. It is a fantastic listen.

6.       Penguins Don’t Belong in Antactica: Kellen Erskine is too funny: “Have you ever seen the way penguins walk? They walk the same way you would, if you were wearing cold, wet pants.”

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Always Being Reformed

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Always Being Reformed

Today we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. But unlike the work of Christ on the cross, this side of heaven, God’s work on his church will never be finished. We celebrate the Reformation, but, by the power of God, we are always being reformed.[i]

1500 years after Christ had called to the church to a radical resurrection-faith, the church had sold that cruciform grace for a religion that was more about moral conformity, more about earning your way into God’s favor, than it was about the transformative grace that flowed from a Savior who died and was resurrected that we might be multiplied into his children.[ii] We are always in danger of missing out on what God is doing with us. But reformation is always one open heart away.

The year was 1516 and a 33 year old professor was teaching a class on the book of Romans[iii] at a small university in the small town of Wittenberg, Germany: population 2,000. He was pierced by these truths: that salvation was a gift of God, secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The shocking truth that we must be righteous to be saved, but that righteousness could only come from God rocked this monk’s world.[iv]

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Sea Lions, Sharks, Dolphins, and a Whale take on a Shoal of Sardines: This is incredible to watch.

2.       How to Ruin Your Teens for Life: Eleven ways to make sure your teen is not prepared for the future by Tricia Goyer.

3.       Entertainment and Worship: Joe Thorn with a nuanced perspective on entertainment and worship: "The nineteenth-century pastor Charles Spurgeon said, “The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.” It may not be new, but it is increasingly popular, especially in light of our entertainment-driven culture."

4.       Will We Be Married in Heaven? Randy Alcorn responds to what he says is the most frequently asked question he gets about heaven: "there will be one marriage in Heaven, not many. That marriage will be what earthly marriage symbolized and pointed to, the marriage of Christ to His bride. So we will all be married—but to Christ... However, I do envision that people who’ve had important roles in each other’s lives will continue to be friends—and that would include a lot of people who’ve been married. So although married couples’ relationships will look different in Heaven, that certainly doesn’t mean that earthly marriage is unimportant and that God doesn’t use it in our lives in profound ways."

5.       What if There are More Categories Than Creation vs. Nurture? Justin Taylor explores the idea of creation nature, sin nature, sin nurture, and grace nurture. It's a very helpful way to think about this issue from a gospel perspective. 

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Time Lapse of the Earth: So stunning, this footage from the International Space Station looks fake. 

2.       Is the Attractional Church Dead? This is the first of a two part series by Jared Wilson that reflects on some of the reasons why the attractional model might have numbered days. In the second part he reflects on why it might not be over yet. " The attractional church has spent decades discipling its customers toward a more self-involved, individualized faith. They should not be surprised when this self-involved individualism gets fully embraced and people “peace out” showing up to church on the weekend."

3.       The News of the Attractional Church's Death is Greatly Exaggerated: Jared Wilson responds to himself with five reasons why the attractional church is not only alive, but is going to keep going strong. " We were never properly grounded, so we are easily led astray. Further, we’ve been accustomed to siding with the crowd and discipled according to a Christianity that apes the culture, so when preachers and teachers come along who are marrying Christianity with the culture’s views on sexuality, the fingers feel good on our ears."

4.       12 Principles for How to Deal with Christians Who Disagree with You: Wow, this is good. I'm going to come back to Andrew Naselli's chart here many times, I'm sure. Where have I disagreed like a heretic? Where have I disagreed in an unloving way? Where have I disagreed with a spirit of judgmentalism?

5.       What Happens to Babies? Dr. Tom Schreiner answers the very difficult question: "what happens to babies when they die?"

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Why Don’t You Preach More About…?!

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Why Don’t You Preach More About…?!

What topics does your pastor avoid? When was the last time you heard sermon dealing with depression? Sexuality? Race? Immigration? I’ve been part of more than a few conversations with congregants who have complained either that we don’t preach enough on a particular topic (ironically, this often occurs right after we preach on that topic), or that they hope we will not be like their old church that never preached on a particular topic.

Christianity Today puts out periodic issues which focus on particular issues. In those issues, they often have polls where they report how often respondents say their pastors speak about that particular issue. Unsurprisingly, the polls always show severe neglect of the given topic. I’m grateful for Christianity Today—they do great work and I benefit from their excellent writing and reporting. But I’m wary of the criticism that pastors don’t preach often enough about any given issue for a few reasons:

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Church Hunters: Jon Crist's mockumentary skewers church shopping with a smile.

2.       What If I Can't Find the Perfect Church? Josh Buice shares why "Nonattendance was not an option for the early church and it shouldn’t be an option for the modern church."

3.       The Challenge of Really Loving Your Church: Jonathan LaBarge offers not-so-easy wisdom: "Father Cyprian wrote, “No one can have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his mother.” There will be many times when we will have to say to the church, “I do not much like you right now, but I do love you.”"

4.       Diagnosing and Mortifying the Sin of Complaining: Geoffrey Kirkland reflects, "Everyone does it. It’s all around us. In fact, it’s so normalized and pervasive that we hardly even recognize when it actually occurs. The sin of complaining is one of those “respectable sins.” That is, it’s one that’s hardly spoken about, seldom preached against, and still less frequent, a sin with which Christians persistently wage violent war. Complaining is ugly. Complaining is one of the most commonest and frequent sins that’s almost as easy to find and common as the air we breathe."

5.       How We Spend Our Days: How the average American adult spends their days. An infographic. Lots of fascinating gems in here: religious and spiritual activities are doubled by shopping which itself is doubled by personal care. 

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Why is the Very Hungry Caterpillar so Hungry? What a beautiful short video about God's marvel of the caterpillar. 

2.       7 Reasons Not to Go to Church: Scott McKnight summarizes John Pritchard's book Why Go to Church where he reflects on the most common reasons people don't go to church – here are his top three: 1. I don’t believe in God; 2. The Church is a hierarchical, controlling institution in an age of freedom and choice; 3. I used to go, but I just don’t see the point.

3.       10 Reasons to Go to Church: Scott McKnight's rejoinder of his first post: Here are the top 5: 1. Because we’re on a journey; 2. Because we’re looking for a framework to live in; 3. Because it’s a place of moral seriousness in a trivialized culture; 4. Because churches make an honest attempt at community in a culture that’s forgotten how to do it; 5. Because I’m a learner, and church seems to be a community of learners.

4.       10 Spurgeon Quotes on Death: Charles Spurgeon's reflections on death are worth reflecting on. This one might be my favorite: “He who learns to die daily while he lives will find it no difficulty to breathe out his soul for the last time.”

5.       Why the Overpopulation Myth Persists: I just had a conversation with a very smart person who still believes in the threat of overpopulation. Jon Dykstra explains how the overpopulation myth was developed, why it persists, and what significant real-life damage was caused by this myth.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       The Birth of a Daughter and the Birth of the Camera Phone: The story of how the camera phone was born.

2.       8 Major Changes in the Church in the Past 10 Years: Thom Rainer reflects on the most significant changes in the church in the past decade. It's a pretty encouraging list.

3.       A Hill to Die On: When is a hill worth dying on? Jonathan Van Maren reflects on whether hills are worth dying on. Douglas Wilson's quote is helpful and I'm still wrestling with it: "Whenever we get to that elusive and ever-receding “hill to die on,” we will discover, upon our arrival there, that it only looked like a hill to die on from a distance. Up close, when the possible dying is also up close, it kind of looks like every other hill. All of a sudden it looks like a hill to stay alive on, covered over with topsoil that looks suspiciously like common ground. So it turns out that surrendering hills is not the best way to train for defending the most important ones. Retreat is habit-forming."

4.       The Case for Free Range Kids: Lenore Skenazy makes a case for free range kids by sharing a story of the day she let her 9 year old find his way home in New York City.

5.       Thunderstruck: a collection of beautiful supercell thunderstorms.

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Teaching for Change, part 2

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Teaching for Change, part 2

I took three preaching courses at seminary. They were all excellent. I didn’t take any courses on teaching, and wasn’t aware of any offered. It wasn’t until a campus minister sat me down for a conversation I would have even considered the need for a separate class on teaching. Aren’t they both just presenting biblical truth accurately and memorably?

That conversation ended with the most impactful advice I’ve ever received about teaching: prepare your lesson around several open questions that engage the group. Such preparation maximizes what small group teaching environments can do so well: connect biblical truths with individual hearts to bring about change.

Let’s unpack how I prepare to teach with the aim to experience change myself and help those in the group experience change.

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