Christian Living, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Girl Math, Tariffs and Your Spiritual Life

Have you ever shared with a loved one how much you “saved” and omitted how much you spent? Have you ever “invested” in yourself by buying a shirt or a haircut? Do cash purchases not really count against your budget?

You may have fallen prey to girl math. A viral TikTok trend, girl math is meant to poke fun at illogical reasoning to justify purchases and make financial decisions seem less costly. Girl math playfully rationalizes purchases by minimizing the actual price of something or emphasizing the perceived value.

Meanwhile, the world is a bluster over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes levied on goods imported into a country from abroad.

Girl Math, Tariffs and Your Spiritual Life
Family, Identity, Parenting
John Beeson
The Freedom of Releasing your Motherhood (and ...

I sat across from Olivia. Her hands and her voice shook. “All my life I wanted to be a mom. I was so excited to get married, mostly because then I could finally be a mom. Six months after our wedding day we got pregnant. We were so excited! We began picking out names and preparing the nursery. At four months, I miscarried. I was so angry with God. How could he let this happen? Isn’t this what he made me for?”

She began to cry. I let the quietness sit in the room.

The Freedom of Releasing your Motherhood (and Fatherhood)
Recommendations, Church, Nature, Prayer, Religion
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

1. Don’t scratch the itch: Brittany Allen begins, “I have a weird problem. When I get in the shower, my legs inevitably begin to itch like crazy. I cannot for the life of me find the self-control it takes to not scratch. I have a condition called dermatographism that causes my body to react to scratching with hives. By the time I step out of the steaming hot water, my thighs are covered with wheals. I scratched the itch and the itch only intensified.”

2. Should Christians plead the blood of Jesus? Wanjiru Ng’Ang’A explains the history of this prayer and then offers a warning,

This Week's Recommendations
Culture, Church, Christian Living, Music, Religion, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
The Embarrassing Cry of Faith

The year was 1990. II was eleven years old, and skateboarding was HOT. Tony Hawk was soaring and Rodney Mullen was innovating street skating, popularizing tricks like the ollie. I watched in awe as kids jumped up and then slid down handrails (a grind). I dreamed of doing so myself.

At the top of my Christmas list was, of course, a skateboard.

I counted down the days until I would unwrap my rad new board. I bolted up on Christmas morning, raced down to the tree, and, to my dismay did not locate anything that looked like a skateboard.

The Embarrassing Cry of Faith
Recommendations, Family, Nature, Suffering
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. The dragon and the rooster: Heidi Tan shares the story of an apology, “Dad began to see that in spite of my ‘Dragon’ spirit, my love for him was always loud with quality time, words, and affection. I had to learn that in spite of his ‘Rooster’ demands, Dad’s love for me had always been consistent with hard work, service, and sacrifice.”

  2. Comforting the dementia sufferer: Matthew Rehrer says, “ Focusing on the temporal is overwhelming, but not when it is viewed in light of eternity. In many regards, dementia helps loosen the grip we have on this world.”

This Week's Recommendations

Culture

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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.       Danny Macaskill's Wee Day Out: This is fantastic. Sweet, fun, and amazing. And the cinematography is great too!

2.       Need Volunteers? Your Church's Culture May Be the Issue: Almost every church needs volunteers. Here is the reason it may be our fault. 

3.       What’s True in the Global Warming Debate? It’s so hard to sort out truth in our politicized culture. Justin Taylor shares an example of how a thoughtful person tries to disentangle the global warming debate from the political tentacles.

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

5.       One Key Pursuit for Young Christians: Tim Challies on the importance of our early life and how differently God planned his Son's life than we would have: "But it fell to God—not you or me—to set the course for his life, and God planned it very differently. Jesus lived for around 33 years, but his entire public ministry fit into just the final three. He spent 90 percent of his life in obscurity and only 10 percent in the public eye. For every one year that was recorded, there were 10 that were not. God arranged the itinerary, and he chose to have Jesus spend 30 years in quiet preparation for his three years of public activity."

6.       Free EBook: The Gospel and Personal Evangelism: Crossway is offering one of my favorite books on evangelism for free. Check it out!

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Teaching for Change, part I

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Teaching for Change, part I

When I signed up to serve as a pastoral intern during my seminary years, I knew I wouldn’t be able to preach on Sunday morning, but I would be given other opportunities to grow in preaching and teaching. One of those opportunities came in the form of our Adult Sunday School class. The popular and engaging regular teacher handed me the reigns for a half dozen or so weeks that first semester. I studied, I crafted a syllabus, and I wrote out a manuscript for the class’s first week. I handed out the syllabus (that included weekly homework) and launched in, hands gripped to the podium, with passion and verve.

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. It changed the way I have taught ever since.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Arizona's Monsoon Season Begins: Incredible footage of an incredible season here in Tucson. 

2.      How the Worst Moment in My Life was Also the Best: David Murray shares the story of Matthew Bryce and considers it in light of our salvation: "Just over a week ago, Matthew Bryce decided to go surfing off the Scottish coast. Within a few hours the tide and wind had blown him thirteen miles out to sea. He watched the sun set, knowing he would not survive the night."

3.      How Self-Forgetfulness Makes us Happier: Randy Alcorn on how self-forgetfulness makes us happier: " However, people who think a lot about Christ and His grace, the great doctrines of the faith, and how to love and serve others tend to be happy people. By redirecting attention from ourselves to God, we adopt a right perspective that brings happiness."

4.      What to do when singleness lasts longer than expected:  Marshall Segal shares, “Marriage is a good gift and a terrible god. Most of my grief in my teenage years and even into my twenties came from giving more of my heart to my future marriage than to God. It’s easy to anchor our hope and happiness in a wife or husband and to define our growth, maturity, and worth by our marital status. And when we worship love, romance, sex, or marriage—and not God—we welcome the pain and disappointment.”

5.      7 Things to Consider Before You Make a Political Post: Thanks to Tim Challies who pointed me to Scott Slayton’s sage advice.  

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LeBron James Messed Up Your Christianity

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LeBron James Messed Up Your Christianity

LeBron James recently completed perhaps the greatest performance in the history of the NBA Finals, averaging 33.6 points, 12.0 rebounds and 10.0 assists, something that has never been accomplished before,[i] and against one of the greatest teams in NBA history no less. And yet there was no space for us to stop and appreciate James’s performance. Judgment was our first impulse. Every fan had an opinion on what this means to James’s legacy. Many declared that by losing these finals, the fifth NBA Finals he’s lost, he forfeited his right to be considered one of the greatest basketball player of all time.

Let’s set aside the argument of whether or not James ought to be considered the one of the greatest (although, he is!). My point is that, in a society driven by social media, we become, more than ever, agents of judgment and identified by our opinions. Hot-takes don’t just fill the waves of sports talk radio, they fill our social media feeds, and even our souls. We are taught to have strong and quick opinions on all matter of subjects. We build up and tear down social icons like skilled contractors.

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A God of Many Understandings? by Todd Miles

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A God of Many Understandings? by Todd Miles

Miles begins A God of Many Understandings? with an event I remember well: “On Sunday morning, January 18, 2009, Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, stepped to a podium near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to open the inauguration festivities for Barack Obama with an invocation and began his prayer, ‘O god of our many understandings, we pray that you will…’” (1). That simple opening to his prayer hit me like a tidal wave that day. “O god of our many understandings (?!)” At the same time I felt befuddlement, anger, and a sense that in that very phrase, Robinson had profoundly captured the essence of our modern religious sensibilities.

There have been plenty of books published over the recent years that have decried the slippage in the American church’s commitment to the exclusive claims of the gospel. But I promise you none have been written that are quite like this. The ambitious nature of Miles’s book is remarkable. The book is a biblical-theological tour de force that deals with a host of issues relating to the topic of the exclusive nature of the gospel.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      Bob Newhart’s Six Minute Tutorial for Effective Counseling: This is an all-time family favorite, especially since my wife is a counselor. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve got to watch it. If you’ve already seen it, you can’t watch it too many times.

2.      More Than Mere Equality: Jonathan Leeman broaches the difficult topic of privilege, identity politics, and gospel peace. Leeman reflects the tension between justice and moral agency. On the one hand, “Biblical justice isn’t just a putting down of the oppressor. It is a lifting up of the oppressed and downtrodden.” On the other hand, "The bottom line here is: Identity politics, at its most careless, undermines moral agency."

3.      Disentangling Privilege: Andrew Wilson digs deeper into the topic of privilege and reflects on what he believes we should acknowledge is true about white privilege and what isn't.

4.      Check Your Privilege: Denny Burk also reflecting on Jonathan Leeman's piece says, "Obviously, these conclusions are squarely at odds with biblical teaching about guilt, justice, and reconciliation with God and with one another. And that is why we are going to have to give careful attention to the claims being made by proponents of identity politics."

5.      A Day in the Life of Americans: A mesmerizing infographic of how Americans spend their time during the day.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Does Your Pastor Need Swag Seminary? Is your pastor out of style? Old? Outdated? Jon Crist takes his pastor to Swag Seminary. The results speak for themselves.

2.       What Learning Myths Do You Believe In? Illuminating quiz on learning myths. One helpful nugget: "Praising effort, rather than ability, is far more likely to motivate students to work hard and improve."

3.       When We Work and Rest: A mesmerizing infographic on how different industries work and rest during the day. 

4.       Things Your Wife Wishes You Knew: Courtney Reissig on what stay at moms want you to know.

5.       This American Life: Fermi’s Paradox: This American Life is always good. The last story on this episode asking the question “Are We Alone?” choked me up.

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Slow Down: a Dad's Reflection

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Slow Down: a Dad's Reflection

Our kids just finished fifth and seventh grade. Unless God has unexpected plans for us, elementary school is now in our rear view mirror. The week of my son’s fifth grade promotion, Nicole Nordeman’s “Slow Down” came on. I froze as I listened and welled up.

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