Recommendations, Abortion, Culture, Nature, Sexuality
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. What to do in conflict: Benjamin Vrbicek says, “Rarely do interpersonal struggles get better until the people involved move up what I call the ‘Hierarchy of Communication Ladder.’”

  2. Five ways AI is impacting the next generation: Shelly Melia reports, “According to Common Sense Media, half of teenagers use AI companions regularly, while almost 75% of teens have experimented with them. Another study found almost 1 in 5 students have used their back-and-forth conversations with AI to have a romantic relationship.”

This Week's Recommendations
Family, Forgiveness, Marriage, Parenting
John Beeson
How Motherhood Changed Me

Today I have the privilege of having my wife, Angel, share her thoughts on motherhood and her spiritual journey. You’re in for a treat. Angel is a counselor at Whole Hope Christian Counseling

 I am a type A, firstborn. By the time I was twenty, I had my life planned out. After marriage, John would work to get me through college, and then I would work as an elementary school teacher to get John through seminary without debt. Then he would graduate, we would move into our white-picket-fence dream home, start our family, and begin a life of ministry together.

I feel like you went through marriage, education, and childbearing at such a young age.  Would you please consider adding your age at various stages?  You’ll see my clues, lol.

How Motherhood Changed Me
Christian Living, Church, Evangelism, Leadership, Suffering, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
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,

Sheep Without a Shepherd
Recommendations, Church, Evangelism, Finance, Nature, Sexuality, Science
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. A scientist produced a monogamy study, including us: The most monogamous animal will likely surprise you (six animals rank higher than humans!). But this won’t surprise you, “Overall, less than 10% of mammals are monogamous, according to Dyble.”

  2. Don’t overthink your problems: Wyatt Graham begins, “When we face criticism or feel uncertain about our actions, our natural tendency is to analyze every detail, replay every conversation, and search for what we might have done wrong. But Scripture offers us a surprisingly liberating approach: acknowledge clear sin, but don’t lose yourself in endless rumination over unclear accusations. Instead, trust that God knows your heart better than you do.”

This Week's Recommendations
Christian Living, Prayer, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
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?

The Questions Jesus Asked
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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       How to Talk to a Child You're Disciplining: Simple but important advice. " Words like these will reassure your children of their value to you. They will underscore that the foundation of your relationship is bigger and stronger than any wrong act they could perform. Words like these mirror how God the Father loves you."

2.       7 Questions to Ask Your Staff on a Bi-Annual Basis: These are great questions from David Fantin. I especially like #1 and #3: "how is work affecting your soul?" and "are you being utilized to the best of your abilities?"

3.       Do You Regret Your Dating History?  Marshall Segal reflects, "Nearly two thirds of not-yet-married Christians express regret over previous relationships. That means the critical questions in dating are not just whom to date, how to date, and when to wed, but what to do when we get it wrong. And the reality is most of us get it wrong at some point along the way."

4.        I Am Not a Pirate: The first story about how the worst pirate in the world met the best pirate in the world is especially good. 

5.       How Geography Made the US a Superpower: This is such a unique way to read the history of the United States. Beyond discussing how geography made us a superpower, the video talks about why cities ended up where they did and how those cities were shaped as well. 

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

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The Anti-Hero's Final Lesson: Love

Do you know Jonah’s last words in the Bible?

“Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”[i]

Those are not words motivated by suffering or grief. Those are words that come straight out of the hateful heart of our anti-hero, a prophet who cannot bear that God would have compassion on a city he deemed worthy of destruction and upset that the God who provided a plant for shade for him would allow it to wither.

The compassion of God knows no bounds. He orchestrates the salvation of a city that every Jew would have longed to see the destruction of. A city that was not only a military threat to the Israelites, but whose pagan worship was a stench to those loyal to the one true God.

It is the Hero who has the final say in Jonah. These final words reveal God’s love and call us to this deep compassion:

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       Every Interview with Every Football Coach in 90 Seconds: Football season is upon us. Jon Crist nails every word ever spoken by a football coach. In a minute and a half.

2.       How Do I Stop Worrying? David Powlison offers sage advice. Third of his six steps is that we ask ourselves, "Why am I anxious? Worry always has its inner logic. Anxious people are “you of little faith.” If I’ve forgotten God, who or what has edged Him out of my mind and started to rule in His place? Identify the hijacker. Anxious people have fallen into one of the subsets of “every form of greed.” What do I want, need, crave, expect, demand, lust after? Or, since we fear losing the things we crave getting, what do I fear either losing or never getting? Identify the specific lust of the flesh. Anxious people “eagerly seek” the gifts more than the Giver. They bank treasure in the wrong place. What is preoccupying me, so that I pursue it with all my heart? Identify the object of your affections."

3.       Offer Thanks: Josh Buice: Paul offered thanks and appreciation to others, so should we.

4.       Hope in the Midst of a Recidivism Nightmare: Whatever your political stripe, we all must agree that the situation of imprisonment in America needs to be fixed. Marian Hatcher tells briefly about her hopeful story in Cook County and shares, " Among the nation’s 2,700 drug courts, Cook County is considered in the 10 model programs for prisoners. The jail has seen an 81 percent drop in felony convictions three years following prisoner release for those who have gone through their drug court program."

5.       The Problem of Nice and the Promise of New: Michael Lawrence on the allure of nice, "These days, there are lots of different kinds of nice. There’s the polite but detached tolerance of “live and let live” nice. There’s the socially conscious and politically engaged nice. There’s religious nice in many different denominational and faith-community forms. There’s “spiritual but not religious” nice. There’s even what’s known in my town as “Portland nice,” a sort of non-confrontational, “let’s not make anyone feel uncomfortable, even though we’re silently judging and dismissing you in our minds” nice. But for all the different kinds of nice, the appeal of nice hasn’t changed much in the last two thousand years. To be a nice person, a good person, a person who’s becoming a better person, is to feel good about yourself."

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Speak

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Speak

Jonah doesn’t get much right. Not much at all. God called him to arise and go to Nineveh. Nope and nope. Jonah up and ran the opposite direction. But after God gets Jonah’s attention, Jonah ever-so-tentatively leans into what God calls him to.

The third call God placed on Jonah’s life was that he “call out against” Nineveh “the message that I tell you.” After being spit up by the fish and told a second time to “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you,” Jonah heads to Nineveh. We aren’t told what God tells Jonah to tell the Ninevites, all we have are Jonah’s words: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”[i]

Just imagine what this must have looked like. We don’t know whether Jonah delivered this message once or multiple times as he walked through the city. The text is ambiguous about that. But it’s not ambiguous about how it must have been delivered. All we need to do is look one chapter further to see that Jonah’s heart was not at all in his message. After he delivers the message, Jonah sits perched on an overlook, anticipating the destruction of the city. In fact, if there was any pep in Jonah’s step as he delivered his message, it was that he was pouring salt into Nineveh’s terminal wound.

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Won't You Be My Neighbor?

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Won't You Be My Neighbor?

This past weekend we finished a brief sermon series on neighboring. Neighboring, as we see it in Luke 10 is at the heart of God and ought to drive our hearts. 

The bad news is that it's hard to be a good neighbor today. The good news is that there are so few good neighbors, when you neighbor well it stands out. 

Here are a couple of resources to help encourage us to take simple steps toward neighboring with God's heart.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       3-2-1 Animated Gospel Presentation: A simple five and a half minute gospel presentation by Glen Scrivener. It is clear, thorough, and compelling. I encourage you to watch it and consider using it yourself. 

2.       Why the Internet will Strengthen, Not Hurt the Church: Paul Alexander reflects that "When YouVersion launched there were 12 versions of the Bible available in 2 languages. Today there are more than 1,200 versions of the Bible available in more than 900 languages! YouVersion is working to make God’s Word available to every person on Earth, no matter where they live or what language they prefer."

3.       7 Things Evil is Not: What the Death of My Son Taught Me: This weighty piece by Khaldoun Sweis is worth reading whether you are struggling with suffering or in a time of peace. He shares, "I held my son Enoch’s little hand as he died, and went through a suffering that no words could express. A perpetually wounded heart that would not mend, a broken body for which there is no antidote, or a destroyed home that can never be the same…There are more books and articles on this topic than any other in theology. But because it is so personal, we need to be reminded of the simple truths about it."

4.       Lies About Cultural Awareness: Jared Olivetti, over at Gentle Reformation, elaborates on these four lies: Lie #1 – You can understand a complex subject in a very brief time; Lie #2 – You should understand as many complex subjects as possible; Lie #3 – Your opinion on those many and complex subjects is valid; Lie #4 – You are angry at all the right things. 

5.       Does "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" really belong in the Bible? Paul Carter with an excellent reflection on one of the most difficult passages in the Bible, Psalm 137. "They say that the Book of Psalms was the songbook of the early church – but how could anyone who knows and loves Jesus read or sing – let alone pray a sentence like that? We were told to love our enemies; we were told to turn the other cheek – how in the world does this go with that?"

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Go

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Go

Jonah was the only prophet called to people out of Israel.[i] That fact makes it easier to sympathize with Jonah’s resistance to God’s call to go to Nineveh. “I didn’t sign up for this,” Jonah must have thought. “No one else has ever been asked to do this!”

In his own book, Jonah is the anti-hero, a reminder of what we are not to do. God gives Jonah four directives in his book and Jonah (initially at least) rejects all four. The first two calls are coupled together. “Arise and go!” God twice tells Jonah. Last week we examined God’s call for Jonah and us to arise and we reflected just how difficult it is to swim against the cultural current and arise. But arise we must.

And Go. We must go into the mess. We’re called to step into the entanglements of lives around us. It’s easier to keep the lids on the trash cans, but you can’t get into the lives of those around you unless you start taking off some lids.

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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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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Arise

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Lessons from an Anti-Hero: Arise

The Anti-Hero isn’t a modern invention, thousands of years ago Jonah was the Anti-Hero of his own story. An inspired story in the pages of scripture, no less! Jonah’s story is in the Bible to hold up a mirror to ourselves and ask if our hearts reflect Jonah’s twisted heart for the world or God’s compassionate heart.

God, the Hero, speaks first in Jonah’s tale. “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me,”[i] God directs Jonah. “But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish”[ii] (in the exact opposite direction, over sea instead of over land).

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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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