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
Recommendations, History, Nature, Religion, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. When God says now: Christopher Cook says, “I understand the hesitation, but you and I need discernment for this hour. We are being called to submit. Our job is not to assess our readiness (according to our perspective). It is to step forward with clean hands, a yielded spirit, and a heart tethered to the will of the Father.”

  2. The secret things: Andrea Sanborn concludes, “Someday we’ll know the secret things that our mortality can’t fathom. “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”, as the Apostle Paul explained it. But for now, it’s okay to rest in wonder. Because wonder, in the end, is worship.”

This Week's Recommendations

Evangelism

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. How to Meet God at Your Lowest Point: Jane Marczewski guest posts over on Ann Voskamp’s blog. She has cancer and has been given only a 2% chance of survival. Jane recently auditioned on America’s Got Talent and received the golden buzzer. You’ll want to read her post and then watch her memorable performance. She writes, “I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower.”

2. Not this Man, but Barabbas! Keith Mathison nails it here, “I hear and read Christians almost every day saying that their biggest concern is the direction in which the United States is headed. Or they are most concerned about the collapse of Western civilization. Granted, many people are concerned about these things because of their love for their children or grandchildren… The problem occurs when our main concern is fundamentally a political concern.”

3. 5 Cultural Shifts We Need to Know to Reach Our Neighbors: Mark Clark begins with this truth, “The highest good is now individual freedom and happiness.” All five are helpful in considering how to reach our neighbors with the gospel.

4. Romanticizing Death: A fellow Tucson pastor, Rod Hugen reminds us that to understand the power of Jesus conquering death we must come face to face with the ugliness of death. He concludes, “I live in the time when death is still the enemy, but with the sure knowledge that death is defeated and will one day be no more. It is an exhilarating time, freeing me to seize life and to take joy in the journey, knowing that Christ’s resurrection is a reality. Death defeated is far superior to death romanticized.”

5. PT Barnum’s 10 Most Famous Human “Freak” Show Attractions: If you’ve seen The Greatest Showman you’ll appreciate how this video humanizes the various people that Barnum promoted (and often exploited) in his show.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Most Americans Embrace Spirituality and Religion, Even Atheists: Also of note is the large gap between spirituality and religion. Aaron Earls reports, “Yet even among the quarter of Americans who do not identify with a religion (atheists, agnostics, and those who say they are “nothing in particular”), most still describe themselves as a spiritual person.”

2. Characteristics of Churches That Keep Young Adults: This is a great addition to the two posts I recently wrote on raising teens to love the church. Aaron Earls begins with the importance of sincerity. He says, “When teenagers see church members as insincere, they are more likely to drop out. Relatively few young adults say the church they attended as a teenager was insincere, but dropouts say this more often.”

3. One of the Ugliest Sights in the World: Tim Challies begins with a scene we’ve all witnessed, “One of the ugliest sights in the world is that of a child who rules over his parents. We have all seen it, I’m sure. We have seen parents who tiptoe around their child’s cries, their child’s demands, their child’s outbursts of anger. They will do whatever he dictates, give whatever he commands. We look on with horror, knowing they have set their child on a path to destruction.”

4. Brothers, We Should Stink: Thabiti Anyabwile explains that godly pastors live among the sheep. He says, “Do you know how to tell the difference between sheep and wolves in sheep’s clothing? Sheep eat grass; wolves eat sheep — it doesn't matter how prettily they are dressed.”

5. What is Christianity? This is a simple and clear three-minute visual presentation of the gospel.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. Everything is Broken: Alana Newhouse considers why “flatness” and “frictionless” created a broken culture. You’ll have to stick with her and she puts the pieces together, but the payoff is worth it. She opines, “So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators.”

2. 5 Ways Judgmental Christians are Killing Your Church: Carey Niewhof on just how serious an issue judgmentalism is, and how to foster the opposite. He shares, “Humility, by contrast, fosters empathy. It says ‘I’m like you. I get that. Maybe we can help each other.’ Many people would run to that.”

3. The Onliest Way: Glenna Marshall considers the challenge of telling the good news and the pressing reality of Jesus, “the onliest way.”

4. Homecoming: You’ll want to read this lovely reflection on adoption.

5. Understanding Why Jesus isn’t Praying to Himself: Helpful video from Red Pen Logic explaining the “who’s” and the “what’s” of the Trinity.

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What Spooks You?

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What Spooks You?

Across the street from our new home is the holiday house. You probably have one in your neighborhood. They go all out for every holiday. On Saturday, cars stacked up on the main road leading into the neighborhood as families drove by slowly, taking in the massive display that must have cost the owners thousands of dollars.

Last week I drove by a home whose Halloween decorations weren’t nearly as massive or ostentatious, but the lawn display was certainly the eeriest I’ve ever seen. A life-like severed head hung from a tree limb. A decapitated corpse with a visible spinal cord jutting out between slumped shoulders sat underneath. Swaying gently on a swing in a nearby tree was a ghoulish young lady. The scene spooked me, but I couldn’t look away.

Horror movies have increased in popularity in the past few decades. People love watching scary movies. Horror movies are well known to have one of the best rates of return for investors. Our culture can’t seem to get enough scary. In our dopamine-addicted world, horror movies offer some of the biggest dopamine hits out there. They toy with our anxieties and spin out our fears.

Surprisingly, Jesus wasn’t averse to utilizing the power of spook in his ministry.

The difference is, Jesus doesn’t spin fictional fears to create a reaction. Jesus, rather, points his audience to what they truly ought to be afraid of: not imagined fears, but fears that will come to pass.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. The Most Important Election in US History: Keith Mathison gives us some helpful perspective. He begins with this quote, “We have had many important elections, but never one so important as that now approaching…. The republic is approaching what is to be one of the most important elections in its history.”

2. The Answer to Loneliness: Andrew Blunt begins, “Loneliness is a serious and growing problem. The stats are pretty heartbreaking. One study found that 9 million people in the UK are always or often lonely—that’s just slightly more than the population of London or the entire population of Australia.”

3. 3 Apologetic Approaches to Reach the Next Generation: Jacob Haywood sums up his three approaches this way, “The next generation should see that the gospel applies to their lives, answers their biggest questions, and fulfills their deepest longings.”

4. How Big Should You Think? And How Big Should You Act? I appreciate the way Eric Geiger considers this. He begins, “Some leaders seem to think small and act big. There is not a large vision that captivates them, grand plans that motivate them, or an overwhelming sense of awe for the opportunity in front of them. Yet at the same time they seem to act big. They hold tightly to their positions, enjoying that others view them as and and that they are able to make decisions that impact others. Their plans may be small, but they act large.”

5. The Science of Male and Female: What does God teach us about gender through nature? Steven Wedgeworth begins, “Recent breakthroughs in human genetics have made it clear that humanity is fundamentally dimorphic, which is to say, human nature is irreducibly male and female.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1. You are What You Sweep: Andrew Wilson with an insightful post on the power that we are made from dust. "The language of dust also highlights our supernatural, God-breathed origins. In some of the Egyptian and Akkadian creation stories, humans are described as being made out of clay, which you can kind of imagine. Most of us, with a bit of practice, could form clay into something resembling a person. But you could never do that with dust. The most complex shape I could make out of dust would be a pile, and even then a gust of wind would instantly scatter it."

2. 6 Steps to Become an Effective Witness for Jesus: Ashley Unzicker’s post is both simple and profound. She says, “A common theory is more training is necessary to help boost our evangelistic efforts. Is the problem in our techniques? Maybe. Could it be simpler than that? I think so.”

3. 5 Things People Blame the Church for...but Shouldn't: Carey Niewhof begins with the fact that, "The church didn't stop you from growing spiritually." And he finishes his list with, "The church didn't make you lose your faith."

4. Never Read a Bible Verse: Tim Challies begins provocatively, "Greg Koukl often passes along a cheeky little tip related to reading and understanding the Bible. 'If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart, one useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life, what would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I’ve ever learned as a Christian? Here it is: Never read a Bible verse.'" He goes on to explain why that doesn't mean what you think.

5. What's Your Treasure? Three Questions to Ask Yourself: Cindy Matson's article certainly convicted me. Maybe it will help you uproot some sin in your heart. She shares, "God designed us to be active worshipers, and treasure is simply shorthand for the object of our worship. Since our hearts are always actively worshiping something, they’re not neutral; nor do they accidentally stumble into worship. They choose it."

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God Loves You and Your Neighbor

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God Loves You and Your Neighbor

“Won’t you be my neighbor?”

Those famous words were earnestly sung by Mister Rogers on every one of the 895 episodes of his show. Have you ever stopped to consider how profound Mister Rogers’s question is? How many people would you ask to be your neighbor? The circle is probably pretty small, I bet. How many people do you know that you would want to live next to you? Before you throw out a number, remember what being their neighbor will entail. They will expect you to do dinners together, have game nights, and of course you will be the first person they will call for that emergency babysitting need.

Rogers invites us to come near so that he can treat us as his neighbor. And he means it. This is unnatural.

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

Two thousand years ago a lawyer engaged Jesus in conversation. “Teacher,” he asks Jesus, “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25).

Jesus asks him to answer the question. He complies, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Jesus tells him it’s a good answer.

The lawyer isn’t comfortable with just how wide the net of neighbor might be.

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Why Should I Believe the Bible?

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Why Should I Believe the Bible?

Let’s not soft-pedal this. Christianity’s claims about the Bible are patently absurd.

Let’s pause and consider Christianity’s claim. Christians claim that we have in our possession a book that contains a message from the Creator of the universe to us. The book we are talking about was written in a time period roughly between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. To claim such an ancient book has any relevance whatsoever for a modern reader is an absurd enough claim, but to claim it is the word of the source of all life itself? That is hard to believe.

Isn’t this book written by human beings full of legends? Isn’t it full of contradictions? Hasn’t it been proven false?[i] How can we possibly trust that it is the message God has for us?

Let me make the stakes of this conversation completely clear. If we can’t trust the Bible, then it’s a book that might have use for historians or perhaps to be read alongside Aesop’s Fables. But if it is the Word of God, we ought to devote ourselves to this book. If God really wrote a message to us, then every person is duty-bound to take this message seriously.

The skeptic’s challenge is that the Bible is a story, it is not reliable history. I’m going to respond to this challenge with seven responses. The first will be shared in this post, the following six in the next two weeks.

The most important question regarding the trustworthiness of the Bible is whether or not there was a man named Jesus Christ who lived in the first century in Palestine, who claimed to be the Messiah, who died on a cross and rose again. The trustworthiness of the Bible stands or falls on its claims about Jesus of Nazareth.

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The Courageous Multiplication of God’s Church in India

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The Courageous Multiplication of God’s Church in India

We just returned from our second trip to India and it was another unforgettable experience. I’ve been blessed to have been able to participate on quite a few mission trips over the year, but as powerful as each of those trips have been and as many God-glorifying organizations I’ve worked with, nothing compares with these trips to India.

Through a series of providential connections, New Life has connected with Mission Voice Network, an organization of indigenous church planters in Southern India, where fewer than 2% know Jesus. Mission Voice Network’s heart is to plant churches where 80% of India’s 1.2 billion people live: in the rural communities of India. This is needed because 80% of funding for church planting in India is being sent to India’s cities.

This vision is being carried out in a country with significant persecution. A month ago Open Doors released their latest ranking of the most persecuted countries for Christians and India ranked #10 with the additional designation of being the country in the world with the worst physical or mental abuse directed at Christians.

Mission Voice Network packs our time from morning to late in the evening, allowing us to visit many pastors and congregations. We attended pastors’ homes, evangelistic outreaches, baptism services, evangelism training services, church services, regional pastors’ gatherings, and Mission Voice Network’s Director’s conference. Every pastor has a different story, many converted from Hinduism, and many highlighted by God’s miraculous intervention. I shared a few of these stories last year.

One of the sweet blessings of a return trip is reconnecting with the many godly pastors and digging deeper relationally. We were also able to visit many new churches. One of those pastors, William, is one of the few second-generation Christians in the network. But that doesn’t mean William’s[i] life has been easy.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Americans Opinion of the Church Continues to Fall: Aaron Earls reports that "Today, 36% of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church or organized religion—an all-time low." Included in the report is a break-down on gender and generational opinions as well as the most significant young people leave the church: a political disagreement.

2.       Blood Calls to Blood: Samuel James reflects on how the messiness of God's redemptive crushes the siren's call toward the fuzzy spirituality of America. He begins, "This is embarrassing to admit, but here goes. If I were not a Christian, I’m pretty sure I would be a Unitarian Universalist, or something like one... For me, this exercise is hypothetical. For a lot of people, it’s where they actually are. A whopping 72% of Americans believe in heaven; 58% believe in hell. That 14-point gap is one of the most seductive places I can imagine. Who wouldn’t sell all they had to live in a world of just heaven, no hell?"

3.       6 Ways You Might Be Sabotaging Your Team: Daniel Darling asks important and pointed questions for us to consider. One of the six is "neglecting intentional encouragement." He says, " You’d be surprised how even seemingly confident employees or volunteers go home wondering, Do they like me here? Do they value my work?"

4.       4 Promises for Same-Sex Attracted Christians: Helpful and biblical wisdom from a partner on the journey, Christopher Asmus. He concludes, "If you’re a Christian struggling with same-sex attractions, know that you are not defined by your sin. Your identity is not determined by your temptations. “Embrace who you really are” by embracing Jesus Christ and your new life found in him (2 Corinthians 5:17) and enjoying the freedoms Christ purchased for you with his blood."

5.       Nature's Uprising: This video by Thomas Blanchard comes with my guarantee: if it doesn't wow you, you can give me a topic to write a post on and I’ll do it!

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