Identity, Reading, Recommendations
John Beeson
Who are You?

Do you want to know God better? Know yourself better. You, after all, were made in his image. Do you want to know yourself better? Know God better.

My wife Angel and I wrote Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity in order to combat the lies we are tempted to believe about who we are and press into God’s Word to hear his truth.

Many have asked when the audiobook will release. We are delighted to share that the Trading Faces audiobook is now available!

Who are You?
Recommendations, Church, Family, Religion
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Will I ever love a church again? Brittany Allen asks, “Could I reclaim that vulnerability that once came so naturally to me after it had been used as a weapon pointed at my own heart? Could God rebuild my faith in his Bride and redeem what had been lost?”

  2. The hidden curriculum of the wilderness: Christopher Cook says, “When you’re in that space—the wilderness between who you were and who you’re becoming—you will be tempted to mislabel it; to call it punishment; to rebuke it like it’s an attack; even, to distract yourself from it.

This Week's Recommendations
Generosity, Church, Gratitude, Leadership
John Beeson
Invisible Generosity

I’m normally the second person to arrive at church on Sunday morning. Nick is always first. Nick arrives at 5am, straps on his blower, and cleans the sidewalks and patios. What a heart of hospitality: to volunteer to make sure that the church is looking her best come Sunday morning.

This is one notable act of service among countless others. A few years ago, two members of our connection group showed up within an hour of my text to help me move a jacuzzi. In our two local moves, we’ve had more than two dozen help us. Our connection group dropped off meals at our doorstep when we had Covid.

Invisible Generosity
Culture, Death, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack

I’ve had four bags in my (nearly) ten years of pastoral ministry at New Life. I bought a leather briefcase that was too small and came apart at the seams followed by a leather briefcase that was too large and stiff. I gave up on the briefcase experiment and for the past three years I have used my son’s hand-me-down backpack from his middle school years. My wife and kids constantly teased me about my middle school backpack. But you know,

Four years ago, I was tagging along on my wife’s shopping trip and found a backpack tucked away on a clearance rack. It was love at first sight, and not just because of the 60% off tag.

Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack
Recommendations, Christian Living, Culture, Heaven
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Four good questions to ask your tech: Tim Challies says, “We are in constant communication with our devices and through our devices. And since we are already in the habit of asking them our deep and personal questions, perhaps it would do us good to ask them some good and honest questions about themselves. Here are four questions I propose we ask of any technology that has become (or has the potential to become) deeply embedded in our lives.”

  2. Embracing the silence: Christopher Cook says, “We’re spiritually exhausted, disoriented, and desperate to hear from God. And in our desperation, we turn up the volume, hoping that more input will lead to more clarity. But the Lord doesn’t compete with the chaos. His voice doesn’t cut through the noise. It waits for stillness.”

This Week's Recommendations

Culture

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What is Good (and Bad) about Transparency

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What is Good (and Bad) about Transparency

The rise of reality TV and then social media has radically increased transparency. Team Transparency has rallied around #nofilter selfies and sharing even the frustrating and discouraging parts of life. Team Self-Respect has rallied around calls for decency and the need for some last bastion of privacy. Team Transparency has attacked Team Self-Respect for their filtered and prettied-up lives, for mushy posts about significant others, and for bragging about their kids. Team Self-Respect has attacked Team Transparency for their self-importance and oversharing about bad bosses and relationships, and shaming their spouses and children.

So, which team is right? Should we be transparent?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Nietzsche was Right: In a similar vein as my post on Tuesday, Tim Keller reviews Tom Holland’s (not the actor) book on how Christianity revolution changed the world. Keller concludes, “In no way does [Holland] let the church off the hook for its innumerable failures. Nor will he let secular people live with the illusion that their values are just self-evident, the result of reason and scientific investigation.”

  2. What Has Been Most Helpful in Your Marriage? Ed Welch answers this question with wisdom.

  3. Beware of Pride: A Cautionary Tale: Lee Hutchings tells the story of how pride led William Henry Harrison to have the shortest tenure of any US President. He explains, “Such a tragic and ironic ending to an otherwise tenacious life is compounded by the fact that Harrison died, in all likelihood, of his own vanity and pride.”

  4. Love is a Skill: Seth Lewis comments, “It’s interesting that Jesus never mentioned how the Good Samaritan felt about the man on the road. He only tells us what he did for him. Evidently, Jesus does not consider love to be primarily about how we feel, but more importantly about what we do.”

  5. Can Cancer be God’s Servant? Randy Alcorn considers hard truths in the face of his wife’s recent death. “When our ministry posted Nanci’s words, “My cancer is God’s servant,” someone responded, “WHAT? God does NOT give people cancer. Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains on the cross.”

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Would You Help The Hurting?

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Would You Help The Hurting?

During a crisis, we feel a sense of urgency to step in and take charge. But we must wisely sit in the backseat if we want our assistance to have long term effectiveness.  If the affected population is not bought-in in terms of leadership and on-the-ground help, aid fails. In fact, there have been many instances where outside help has shown to be unnecessary and unhelpful. In short, “Avoid paternalism. Do not do things for people that they can do for themselves.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Will My Spouse be My Best Friend in Heaven? John Piper responds to a new widow who asks a heartfelt question, “Can’t I at least be guaranteed that my husband will still be my best friend in heaven? Will he even be excited to see me when I get there? In marriage, two become one. Am I just half a person left behind? I know when I get to heaven and enter God’s presence, none of these questions will matter. But they matter now. And I struggle to find wisdom and comfort as to how I must approach my remaining years on earth.”

  2. The Age of Ingratitude: Carl Trueman warns us, “We live in an age marked by infantile ingratitude. And if Scruton is right, that means we live in an age when we do not really know how to live at all. Ingratitude has dehumanized us.”

  3. A Word About the Spark in Marriage: Lauren Washer with a short post encouraging us to consider what really keeps love alive in marriage, “Think about what draws us to a fire. Dancing flames. Unpredictable patterns and colors. We can’t turn our eyes away from a fire’s beauty and its glory mesmerizes us. But the embers—the non-flashy red hot coals at the base of the fire—these hold the most heat. The glowing bits of heat tucked away beneath the wood aren’t noticeable until the flames die down. Embers are constant, though.”

  4. How Did the Pandemic Affect Church Swapping and Switching? Aaron Earls reports on big jumps of church swapping and switching during Covid. He also reports that, “At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, 58% of all Americans and 39% of U.S. evangelicals by belief said worshipping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church. In 2022, that jumped to 66% of Americans and 54% of evangelicals by belief.”

  5. What Does My Dog Think I Do All Day? Chris’s post offers a simple but illuminating metaphor. He begins, “My dog lives to play. She likes tug of war and fetch—though she has yet to realize if she gives you the ball back, you can throw it again. Her very favorite thing is her frisbee.”

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Welcome to the Fishbowl

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Welcome to the Fishbowl

Not long ago, Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson was ousted from his post at Southwestern Seminary.[i] The firing began not with a dramatic revelation, but with a public statement Patterson made some 18 years ago. In that statement, Patterson said that he had never counseled couples to separate or divorce.[ii] The trickle turned into a stream and then a torrent as other statements and counsel surfaced (including discouraging a female student from reporting a sexual assault on his campus). The external pressure from the mounting claims made Patterson’s firing all but inevitable.

I believe the outcome was just. Paige Patterson’s record is marked with ongoing abuses of power. And yet, there was a time not so long ago when he wouldn’t have lost his job. It is only in today’s world that the voices of those injured by Patterson or upset with the trustees at Southwestern Seminary would have been heard so quickly and had such an impact.[iii]There are benefits to the age of the fishbowl.

But there are dangers of fishbowl living as well. We live in a day and age where every statement is public and permanent.

Every word is public.

Every word is permanent.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Decline of Christianity Shows No Sign of Stopping: Daniel Silliman reports, “Currently, 64 percent of people say they are Christian, but nearly a third of those raised Christian eventually switch to “none” or “nothing in particular,” while only about 20 percent of those raised without religion become Christian. If that ratio of switching continues at a steady pace, then in roughly half a century, only about 46 percent of Americans will identify as Christian.”

2. Who are the 144,000 in Revelation 7? Tom Schreiner answers. “Here we have the number twelve representing the people of God from the twelve tribes in the OT, and the number is squared and then multiplied by 1,000. Hence the number should be understood as a symbolic way of designating the entire people of God.”

3. Five Truths About Suicide and the Church: Kathryn Butler reports, “As stewards of the greatest message of hope in history, churches are uniquely positioned to minister to those grappling with thoughts of self-harm. However, leaders can struggle with knowing how to help and may worry their words or approach will only bring more anguish.”

4. Say the Quiet Things, Out Loud: Kristin encourages us to not withhold encouragement. “Our children, regardless of their age, are not our parents. We are theirs–so let us be about the business of seeking and loving them well–unselfishly with our time, full gaze, and devoted words.”

5. Getting America’s Most Famous (or Infamous) Sermon Right: Travis Hearne sets right the many who have a distorted understanding of an infamous sermon. He begins, “In the Summer of 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God—the most famous or infamous sermon to land on what would soon be American soil.”

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A Womb or Two for Every Man

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A Womb or Two for Every Man

What does the Bible say about men and women? There is no quick or easy response to that question. God’s Word blows up our narrowly defined cultural constructs and categories.

So long as we go hunting in scripture for proof of our expectations about masculinity and femininity, we are likely to create two-dimensional cut-outs in place of God’s three-dimensional realities. Contemporary western culture would like to erase or psychologize gender, and some religious hold-outs want to revert to a mid-twentieth-century conception of gender. The Bible leads us in a different direction if we have ears to hear.

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How to Get Married

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How to Get Married

The Knot recently did a study and found that over the past seven years, weddings in churches have dropped from 41% to 26%.[i] Wow. Only a quarter of weddings now take place in a church.

This fact itself isn’t catastrophic. I don’t believe that one has to get married in the church for it to be a “real” wedding. But it does speak to a secularizing trend that has been pretty apparent. More disconcerting for me is the fact that 43% of weddings are now officiated by a friend, up from 29% seven years ago.[ii] The Bible doesn’t say you need a pastor to officiate your wedding, but choosing a (non-pastor) friend to officiate your wedding makes a statement.

You’re saying that your wedding is about celebrating your relationship with friends. That’s a wonderful part of what a wedding should be, but it shouldn’t be what your wedding is primarily about.

If you are considering marriage at some point in the future, let me urge you to consider making your marriage about something bigger and then doing some practical things to make sure your wedding points to that bigger truth.

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Fear and Tremble

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Fear and Tremble

Recently there was a tragic shooting at the University of Arizona. It impacted several close to me, including my mom, who knew the man killed in the tragedy. Hurricanes, opioids, cancer, car wrecks, and even the threat of war lurk and stir up anxiety and fear. Who wants more fear in their life?

A 2021 study found that Americans most want to avoid fear in their lives and most desire security and safety. On the flip side, Halloween is right around the corner: a holiday where Americans trivialize fear. Perhaps we think that we can lessen our anxieties if we make light of them.

Michael Reeves suggests that one type of fear can oust every other fear: the fear of God. To fear God is to experience true peace.

Michael Reeves is one of my favorite living Christian authors. He tackles profound theological topics with clarity and depth. In Rejoice and Tremble, Reeves argues for us to recover fear as a foundational posture in our relationship with God.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Blame David, Not Bathsheba. The prophet Nathan Did: Carmen Joy Imes navigates whether it is more appropriate to call David’s act with Bathsheba ‘adultery’ or ‘rape.’ She says, “Those arguing that David committed adultery often try to pin blame on Bathsheba for bathing in public, thereby seducing David, while those arguing that David raped her point to the uneven power dynamics between them.”

  2. A Lack of Generosity Means a Lack of Contentment: Bryan Chappell concludes, “If you knew that your funds were supporting people who need mercy, then you would earn all you could. If you knew that your funds were providing for the security of your family, you would save all you could. And if you knew that your funds were providing for the ministry of the gospel, you would give all you could. That’s why John Wesley said, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.””

  3. Viewing the Christian Story through the Lens of Our Suffering: Mark Talbot begins, “Often when something awful happens to us or those whom we love, we find ourselves asking, Why me? Why now? Why this? Suffering disrupts our lives, seeming to violate the way life should be. This can make us desperate to know why we are suffering.”

  4. The Elusiveness of Contentment: Reagan Rose starts her post, “Want to hear something kind of mind-blowing? 36% of people making over $250k/year live paycheck to paycheck (Bloomberg). I don’t know what economic bracket you’re in, but that seems like a fair chunk of change to be only scraping by.”

  5. Fighting Anxiety: Learning to Trust and Entrust: Robert Jones offers insight on anxiety in light of 1 Peter. I would add that it is important to discern if there are physiological reasons for anxiety as well that might require medication. He says, “When we look at the world around us and the daily pressures that consume us, like Peter’s readers, we realize how little we can control our lives. We can’t change the economy, the climate, the government, our health, or our friends and family. We can’t make people act the way we want. We have a lot to worry about.”

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