Christian Living, Consumerism, Culture, Generosity
John Beeson
How Can I Excuse Myself

You’re running a day care center that closes at 5pm. You notice a handful of parents pick up their children late. Every time a parent arrives late it impacts you: you must stay late—family dinners and events are lost. What do you do? Realizing that your honor system isn’t cutting it, you start charging a fine for arriving late.   

And then the unexpected happens: the number of late-arriving parents doubles.

This experiment was run by economists trying to help an Israeli daycare. The results confounded the researchers.

How Can I Excuse Myself
Recommendations, Culture, Biblical Studies, Nature, Prayer, Science
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Three things stress reveals: Michael Kelley says, “And maybe you, too, know what that bursting feels like – it’s when something small that ordinarily shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did just sets you off. And you find yourself overreacting to that single incident because of the accumulated pressure from the other circumstances.”

  2. Seraphim may be flying serpentine creatures: Wyatt Graham challenges how we envision these angelic beings, “The word saraph occurs only seven times in the Hebrew Bible. Its verbal form means “to burn,”

This Week's Recommendations
Christian Living, Culture, Identity
John Beeson
Can We Choose Our Identity?

I was fourteen years old, 5’9” and 130 pounds. My backpack hung loosely over my shoulders and butterflies filled my stomach. It was the first day of high school. I navigated the path from my fourth period class toward the cafeteria in a sea of three thousand mostly new faces. Who would I sit with? I saw the group of guys I had hung around with in middle school: jocks who had made those three years fairly miserable for me.

I scanned the grass and picked out the groups: band kids, several kids playing chess, kids playing pick-up basketball. I saw one gathering playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Can We Choose Our Identity?
Biblical Studies, Christian Living, Culture, Faith, Fear, Hell
John Beeson
The Mark of the Beast and The Mark of God

We are all familiar with the mark of the beast. Fear and confusion surrounding it seem to swirl around it. As a child, I remember hearing a preacher declare that the birthmark on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s head was the mark of the beast. We were warned that Visa cards or barcodes might be the mark. Today, rumors abound that the mark is a QR code, a vaccine, or something connected to artificial intelligence.

Such speculation dramatically misunderstands John’s explanation of the mark of the beast in the book of Revelation.

The Mark of the Beast and The Mark of God
Recommendations, Biblical Studies, Gratitude, Wisdom
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. The exhausting work of being your own foundation: Christopher Cook says, “And as much as I wish it were different, the Word of the Lord from Isaiah does not promise the storm will lift on your timeline; it promises a foundation that will not move while the storm within (and without) rages. The counterfeit tells you to become stable enough to stop being afraid.”

  2. Our motive for obeying God shouldn’t be gratitude: John Piper says, “There is an impulse in the fallen human heart—all our hearts—to forget that gratitude is a spontaneous response of joy to receiving something over and above what we paid for.

This Week's Recommendations
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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Are therapists to blame for the rise of adults cutting off their parents? Elizabeth Bernstein on a concerning issue I’ve posted on (see here), “After decades of urging families to communicate better and work on their issues together, some therapists are now taking an opposite tack: They’re encouraging estrangement as a means of self-care.”

  2. Wrestling with “Your will be done”: Kirsten Black says, “We can learn to process this pain and disappointment as a form of lament. God invites his children to cry out to him over and over. It rarely, if ever, will look like praying one time and the pain is resolved. Rather, it is approaching the throne of grace time and time again, knowing that our Father is good and kind, even though the circumstances of our lives feel anything but.”

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The Cost of Awkward

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The Cost of Awkward

The next day, the extended family hosted a party for us. As we drove up to the farm, the pressure of meeting a whole group of strangers began to mount. I felt like the boyfriend from the city visiting his girlfriend’s family farm in a Hallmark movie. To quote Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrell), I was “shaking in my custom baby-seal leather boots.”

The men headed outside to lawn chairs while the women stayed inside. I drifted outside with a group of men I had never met and sat down. I had a beer in my left hand like the rest of the guys, but unlike everyone else…

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. You called it wisdom. Jesus called it wicked: Christopher Cook says, “I want you to understand that the third servant we’re talking about (from the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25) isn’t some distant villain; he’s a person who received a genuine gift, accurately calculated the cost of full investment, and decided the risk wasn’t worth the exposure…

  2. The holy work of hello: Stacy MacLaren says, “It may not look particularly spiritual, but I believe that some of the holiest work happening on a Sunday morning begins long before anyone opens a Bible app or sings the first note of a worship song….”

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To My Freshman Self: Look More Like Jesus, Even if it Means Rejection

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To My Freshman Self: Look More Like Jesus, Even if it Means Rejection

This week I have the blessing of sharing a post from my daughter, Camille. Camille just graduated from college. In her post below, which she wrote as a college freshman, she offers wisdom for herself as a high school freshman. I’m sure you’ll be blessed by the hard truths she wrestles with. -John

Hi high school freshman me! It is freshman college me, writing to encourage you in hard truths that you will wrestle with over the next four years.  

As I begin college, I am borderline overwhelmed with the repercussions and magnitude of my sin patterns.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. What it means that Christ is praying for you today: Dave Harvey says, “Now, because of our Advocate, we receive what Christ deserved: a full hearing before our loving Father. We are not beggars hoping heaven might notice us. We are beloved children invited to make our requests known to God (Phil. 4:6). Christ was forsaken so we could be heard. His advocacy means our prayers reach the throne.”

  2. One at a time: Andrea Sanborn wants us to consider something about how Jesus performed his miracles, “Most of his healing miracles were simply performed for one person.

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Quietly Fighting the Most Important Battle

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Quietly Fighting the Most Important Battle

Christians know that the realities of this world are beyond what we see. Paul reminds us that, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 4:12).

But what do we do with such knowledge of an invisible war being waged?

May I suggest one very simple way to participate in this war? Join your pre-service prayer team.

Every Sunday at New Life at both campuses, we gather at 7:30 to spend time in prayer for the day ahead.

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The Bee Hive In Video

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The Bee Hive In Video

Greetings, faithful readers!

Do you know that we publish The Bee Hive in video and podcast form? Check out The Bee Hive’s playlist on New Life Bible Fellowship’s YouTube page or search for New Life Bible Fellowship on whatever podcast platform you use.

Here are a few samples of the videos on YouTube. Enjoy!

The threat of passivity
 The croucher
Why we don’t trust pastors

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Let me dwell in your tent forever: Wes Bredenhof explains how to understand David’s cry  in Psalm 61:4, “Let me dwell in your tent forever!” “Now here’s an important detail about the tabernacle:  no one was allowed to dwell in it.  It was God’s dwelling and God alone.  By God’s command, the High Priest came into the Most Holy Place once per year.”

  2. The body keeps score. But the mind and heart do too: Beth Claes says, “Being a Christian doesn’t prevent trauma or eliminate body-mind responses to it. But recognizing that God created us with an interconnected body, mind, and heart informs how we understand trauma

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Strange Questions for Your Future Pastor

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Strange Questions for Your Future Pastor

So, you’re looking for a church.  

I hope you’ve prayerfully considered why you’ve left your former church (I’ve written about the ten reasons to leave a church here). You’ve already watched a service online, read the church’s doctrinal statement, and visited the church. What comes next?

You will, of course, want to understand the church’s doctrine and affiliation. If you have kids, you will definitely ask, “Are the children’s and students’ ministries biblically grounded, safe, and engaging?” You might want to know about their outreach strategy.

What if I told you that while these issues are important, there might be a different set of questions

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Destructive Play

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Destructive Play

Any parent knows that before a child learns to build, he learns to tear down. Our children are two years apart. I still remember our eldest, Camille, running into our room with tears when she was four years old. Her little brother, Soren, had just knocked down her latest block creation.

Psychologists describe this stage as destructive play. Before toddlers can construct something with intention, they are learning cause and effect, physics, spatial reasoning, and fine motor control. Every parent remembers the stage when their toddler begins throwing the spoon, fork, or bowl onto the floor, watching with fascination as gravity does its work.

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