Church, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Relationships
John Beeson
A Healing Place

It was a long week. I felt sniped at by a handful of complaints from congregants. I was fighting for a spirit of gratitude as frustration grew in my heart. I stepped into a meeting and did my best to be present, but the inner critic’s voice was loud. I asked a simple question to kick things off: “Where is God growing you?” Tears welled in the eyes of the woman across from me. “New Life is my safe place, my growing place. New Life is my healing place. Every time I come to church, it feels like a hug.”

A Healing Place
Recommendations, Evangelism, Family, Leadership, Parenting
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Sitting down in victory: Beth Ferguson says, “When Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father, something decisive happened not only in heaven, but for us. When we lose sight of that throne, discipleship begins to feel heavier than it was ever meant to be.”

  2. Knowing yourself is not the same thing as changing yourself: The post begins, “Here’s a controversial fact: Despite their popularity as leadership development tools, personality assessments fail to make leaders better.”

This Week's Recommendations
Faith, Prayer, Spiritual Growth, Wisdom, Identity
John Beeson
The Croucher

I was two years out of college, working as a Detention Officer at Madison Street Jail in downtown Phoenix. I was assigned to the juvenile unit, one of the most volatile units in the jail.

One particularly mouthy teen had been in the unit for only a week. He decided the best way to prove himself in front of the other juveniles was to try to provoke me. I tried not to take the bait.

Until I did.

I was gathering the juveniles from visitation when he refused to leave. He cursed me, mocked me, and then, once I uncuffed him from his visit, he ran,

The Croucher
Christian Living, Family, Leadership, Marriage, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Threat of Passivity

Everyone loves a great reveal.

If you saw it, you likely haven’t forgotten the penultimate scene in The Sixth Sense, when everything you thought you understood was suddenly turned upside down. Or the final scene in The Usual Suspects, when the mystery of Keyser Soze turns out to be right in front of you the whole time.

Genesis 3 contains one of the most devastating reveals in all of Scripture. As the passage unfolds, Moses forces us to reread the whole scene with new eyes.

The scene opens with the serpent: “Now the serpent was more crafty…”

The Threat of Passivity
Recommendations, Culture, Leadership, Relationships, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Should Christians flip tables like Jesus? Alan Noble concludes, “Scripture intentionally emphasizes humility and servanthood over anger and strong language. We should do likewise. We must follow Jesus knowing his actions are different from our own. We do not need to imitate his every act to be his faithful follower.”

  2. Burnout looks different across the org chart: watch for these signs: Daisy Auger-Dominguez begins, “Workplace burnout is often discussed as if it were a single condition with a single solution: fewer hours, better boundaries, more resilience. That framing is incomplete and misleading.”

This Week's Recommendations

Spiritual Growth

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Pest Control and the Human Heart

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Pest Control and the Human Heart

I never thought much about the pest control industry—until that Saturday. As we prayer-walked the neighborhood adjacent to our church, I found myself chuckling at how many residents apparently worked for pest control companies. I began noticing and counting the trucks parked in driveways: Truly Nolen, Northwest, Greenshield, Responsible, Action, Western, Aptive, SOS. Eight pest control companies represented in a single neighborhood.

There are more than 34,000 pest control businesses in the United States employing over 167,000 specialists. Together, they generate upwards of $22 billion in annual revenue, and the industry is projected to grow steadily at a 5.7% rate annually. 

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The Ring of Fellowship

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The Ring of Fellowship

JRR Tolkien had an elevated view of friendship. For years, he met with an informal group of literary friends called the Inklings at the Oxford pub, the Eagle and The Eagle and the Child (or, as the group called it, “The Bird and the Baby). Tolkien and CS Lewis were fast friends. Tolkien’s Ent Treebeard was fashioned after Lewis, and Lewis likely fashioned his protagonist Ransom in his Space Trilogy on Tolkien.

Both were shaped by The Great War, their love of languages and myths, and by their devotion to Christ. Tolkien, in fact, was crucial in Lewis’s conversion.

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AI Isn't Your Mentor

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AI Isn't Your Mentor

…

more and more people have begun turning to AI as a stand in for God when they want comfort, guidance, or even something that feels like prayer.

But let me say this gently and clearly: please don’t pray to AI. Claude is not God, and it cannot take his place.  No matter how advanced it seems, the ‘A’ in AI still stands for “artificial.”

For many, AI has become a conversation partner. It is reported that 75% of teens  use AI companions, and for some, those AI companions are beginning to function like mentors

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Hell to pay: what truly happened to Jesus on the cross? Nick Batzig says, “If Jesus wasn’t truly forsaken—if he didn’t really endure the equivalent of eternal punishment on the cross—then substitutionary atonement is a legal fiction.”

  2. Before the snow returns: Andrea Sanborn with a brief reflection on “false spring” and the resurrection. She says, “This is the tug-of-war between the new life and the old, the cold bite of disappointment wrestling with the hope of better. Of more. Of failure and forgiveness, of discouragement and hope, of worry and contentment.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. What comes after expressive individualism? Trevin Wax says, “More and more people are shaping their sense of self through powerful group affiliations rather than as independent individuals. This isn’t a rejection of expressive individualism so much as its evolution…

  2. The surprising importance of shallow Christian friendships: Danny D’Aquisto with a helpful contrarian perspective,

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Deepening Our Friendships

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Deepening Our Friendships

As I headed into a pastors’ lunch one afternoon, an older pastor I admired greeted me with a big smile and asked, “Can we chat afterward?” I wasn’t sure what Glen wanted to ask me. After the lunch concluded, we walked out to the patio together. Glen got right to the point. “Would you be interested in being part of a covenant group I’m forming?” He explained that he was inviting four other pastors to join the group. We would meet once a month and go on two retreats each year.

It was a significant commitment, but the answer was an easy yes.

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The Thing Under the Thing

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The Thing Under the Thing

I have the opportunity of sharing this space with my friend and mentor, Glen Elliott (you find out more about Glen here). I’m sure you will be blessed by his wealth of wisdom. –John

Last winter I learned something from a dying tree.

There’s a tree outside our bedroom window that provides beautiful shade in the summer. A while back I noticed the leaves were dying—brown, brittle, hanging lifelessly from the branches. So I did what most of us do when something looks unhealthy: I trimmed the visible problems.

I cut off dead branches. Then more branches. I fertilized. I watered. Nothing worked.

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A New Hope

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A New Hope

Jesus wept (Jn. 11:35).

This is the shortest verse in the Bible.  

It is profound as it applies to the heart of Our Lord, Jesus Christ; to those whom he came to save: You.  Me.  Us.  

There is much pain and confusion in our world today.  You don't need to look far to see it.  Some of us have been brought to our knees in grief and in this moment cannot hardly see past it; the same can be said of those of us in the throes of financial woe; relational strife; physical affliction.  

Hopelessness.  Dread.  Despair.

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Sheep Without a Shepherd

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Sheep Without a Shepherd

You see it, don’t you? A co-worker quietly losing their battle with alcoholism. A cousin whose marriage and family are unraveling. A friend struggling under the weight of a debilitating eating disorder. Pain is everywhere. People are hurting all around us.

If we are able to glimpse even a fraction of the world’s pain, can you imagine what Jesus saw? For any one of us, such suffering would be overwhelming. Yet, what was Jesus’ response to a world filled with the “harassed and helpless”?

Recently, while reading through the gospel of Matthew, I returned to the well-worn passage where Jesus tells his disciples,

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The Questions Jesus Asked

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The Questions Jesus Asked

We ask God a lot of questions.

·        “Why do bad things happen?”

·        “Why is there only one way to heaven?”

·        “Why are some people who follow you hypocrites?”

·        “Why don’t you make it more obvious that you are God?”

God invites questions. These questions haunt some. For others, the questions create confusion and stall their faith journey. For others, these questions deepen their faith as they wrestle them through with God.

But the line between us and heaven is not one way.

Did you ever consider that God might have questions for you?

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