Biblical Studies, History, Religion
John Beeson
The Pillaging of Hezekiah

The aged prophet Isaiah showed up at the bedside of the middle-aged king. Hezekiah was only about 39 years old and terminally ill. But the prophet was not bringing good news, “Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover” (Is. 38:1).

The weak king cried out to God, “’ Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight’. And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” (Is. 38:3).

The Pillaging of Hezekiah
Church, Culture, Book Reviews
John Beeson
The Long Journey of Self-Knowledge in a Culture ...

“We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in US history. It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction.” This is the conclusion of the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by sociologists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe. In The Great DeChurching, pastors Jim Davis and Michael Graham unpack why and how over the past twenty-five years, forty million of those who formerly attended church no longer do so.

The Long Journey of Self-Knowledge in a Culture of Confusion
Christian Living, Prayer
John Beeson
The Air Raid Siren

Jerusalem, Israel

3:15 am, April 13

 

I sat up in bed to a wailing sound I had never heard before, but knew immediately: an air raid siren. Our building rattled to the booms of interceptors from Israel’s missile defense system hitting their inbound targets. I pulled back the curtains and watched as sprays of light streaked the sky.

 Iran launched 170 drones, 20 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s purported attack on an Iranian embassy in Syria.

The Air Raid Siren
Christian Living, Nature
John Beeson
The Ground Where Saguaros Thrive

Nothing is more iconic to the Tucson landscape than the saguaro. The emblematic cactus is to the Sonoran Desert what the palm tree is to Miami: hard to imagine without it. Saguaros typically live between one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five years, not sprouting its trademark arms until around thirty to seventy years of its life and growing to around fifty feet tall.

For those Sonoran Desert natives, we intuitively know where saguaros thrive. They love the rocky (both granite and volcanic) soil at the foothills of the five beautiful mountain ranges that surround Tucson.

The Ground Where Saguaros Thrive
Leadership, Wisdom, Vocation
John Beeson
Anger, Retaliation, and My Scion xB

I drove a little manual 2005 Scion xB for about eight years. It finally gave out after 230,000 miles. I loved that little car. It was fuel-efficient and required minimal maintenance. But it is undeniably close to the least powerful car on the road. I’m pretty sure that on its specs, next to 0-60mph, it says, “Eventually!”

Unless I was lined up against someone from a nearby retirement community, I was the last car to reach the speed limit coming off a stoplight. Unsurprisingly, more aggressive drivers with more powerful vehicles tended to treat my little Scion like a safety cone on the road, more like an obstacle than a fellow traveler.

Anger, Retaliation, and My Scion xB

Death

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Six categories of the cross: JI Packer begins, “Jesus Christ is, in fact, an expression of the temper of the whole New Testament. For explaining the cross, the New Testament uses many images, many categories, many modes of thought blended together. These various categories and modes of thought serve to enrich our understanding of the cross and its meaning.”

  2. A game of hide-and-seek: how shame keeps us from the Father’s love: Bethany Broderick shares a moment with her daughter, “The angry speech I was ready to give her melts away, and I drop to the ground next to her. I pull her close, and she cries against me. She is broken over her sin, yet she doesn’t know what to do other than try to hide.”

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Tragedy and Holy Week

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Tragedy and Holy Week

This past week has been one of the hardest in my calling as a pastor. Within 24 hours we had three deaths in our congregation: one by cancer, one took his own life, and the other two by a murder-suicide.

There is no sufficient response to these tragedies on this side of heaven. There are no answers, no sense to be made of such senseless loss. There is only grief and the promise that God is sovereign and he grieves with us.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Is our view of Satan too small? Peter Mead, “For many Christians, the devil appears to be a very limited antagonist.  He might get some vague credit (for want of a better term) for any temptation we consciously notice. Still, he gets specific credit for very little activity.”

  2. Aging peacefully: Melissa Edgington reflects, “As I age I feel the constraints of a culture that equates youth and beauty with value. For women, an essential quality, desirability, is always at the forefront of our training as humans. It isn’t explicitly spelled out in most cases, but is more of an underlying current of subconscious understanding: to be admired and desired is one of the ultimate purposes of a woman’s life.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The top ten fears in America: Chapman University finds, “The top 10 fears in the 2023 survey suggest that Americans’ fears center on five main topics: corruption in government (number 1), economic concerns (numbers 2 & 10), war and terror (numbers 3, 4, 8, & 9), the harming or death of loved ones (numbers 4 & 5), and pollution of drinking water (number 7).”

  2. As the outer is peeled away: Tim Challies reflects, “In the past few years, I have watched a number of dear friends grapple with terrible and ultimately terminal illnesses. I have watched people I only ever knew to be whole and strong fade until they were broken and weak.

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Thank You, Roger Barrier

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Thank You, Roger Barrier

Roger Barrier was my childhood pastor. Roger was a faithful expositor of scripture and a gentle shepherd. He had a quick, shy smile and a calm presence. As much as anyone, Roger taught me to love and become a student of the Word. Roger taught me to pray. “Lord, make me a man of God at any and all costs.” I have prayed that prayer countless times in my life. And, just as Roger warned, it has been a costly prayer.

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Grieving Over the Holidays

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Grieving Over the Holidays

Was there an empty seat at your table this Thanksgiving?

This has been a hard stretch for our New Life family. Several church members have recently passed away over the last several weeks. In addition, several more have lost friends and family members.

Loss comes unbidden and with it arrives grief.

Grief is difficult during any season, but the holidays have a way of stoking the embers of grief.

How do you survive grieving the death of a loved one? There is no recipe, no quick fixes. You will need the presence of God, the comfort of community, and time. David promises that, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). God’s goodness and grace don’t stop there: God heals the brokenhearted and those crushed in spirit.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Every Day’s a Bad Day: How Ecclesiastes Taught Me to Enjoy Life: Carolyn Mahaney wants us to see Ecclesiastes in a new light, “Ecclesiastes has shown me the secret of enjoying life, even in the midst of trouble. It has rescued me from disillusionment when labors I thought were fruitful appeared to be for naught. When friends have turned their backs, Ecclesiastes has helped me guard against bitterness. It has cured me of setting my hope on a particular outcome, and protected me from becoming bewildered and disheartened by bad news.”

  2. Hannah’s Funeral: Oh my, get your tissues out for this touching piece by Seth Lewis about their daughter they lost during pregnancy 16 years ago.

  3. What Things? D. Eaton considers Jesus’s casual two word response on the road to Emmaus and invites us to consider their spiritual power for us, “It is only because Jesus can ask, “what things?” without further suffering that we can look at our sin and ask, “what debt?” without being thrown into an anxious or guilty state. In Jesus, we have no reason to re-experience the threat of wrath that once hung over us.”

  4. Not a Dinosaur: Mitch Leventhal makes a convincing case that Leviathan in Job is Satan, not a dinosaur. “Job cannot subdue the Evil One. Satan is untamable by man, like a multi-headed sea beast in the waters of chaos. But God can overcome Leviathan. According to Jim Hamilton, ‘the whole book is bracketed by Yahweh’s enticing Satan to do his bidding at the beginning, and by his putting a hook in Leviathan’s nose at the end.’ Yahweh rules over the deep. Evil will not have the last word.”

  5. More Than Jumper Cable Christianity: JA Medders explains, “We use jumper cables when our car’s battery is depleted, dead, and in need of a jumpfrom another battery to get going. We connect jumper cables to another car, get some juice, and then go about our day and way. I fear far too many of us approach “abiding” in Christ this way.”

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. How did the King of Kings Die? Robert Martin begins, “In the ancient world there was a man declared to be ‘the King of kings.’ His reign was very short but he was widely influential, had thousands of admiring followers, and his presence brought peace and hope to many. Yet his life was cut short through a premature death. This king was Odaenathus, the king of the small but extraordinarily influential independent city-state of Palmyra in the third century.”

  2. Study finds Gen Z Wants to Know More About Jesus: Andy Macinnis reports some encouraging news, “The study found “a lot of just openness, country over country,” said Daniel Copeland, lead researcher on the project.”

  3. The Shadow is a Small and Passing Thing: I love Lara d’Entremont’s writing. She concludes, “To God, this Shadow is but a dust cloud, and with a wave of his hand, he will blow it away forever and one day draw me into eternal life—where he is the eternal light, and darkness has finally been banished forever. Until then, we press on with weak hands and aching feet, because God made this world good, and there’s still beauty worth fighting for despite its fallenness.”

  4. Wrath is not an Attribute of God: Jeremy Treat rebuffs a common misunderstanding, “In our society, love is often reduced to affection or affirmation. To love someone is either to have warm feelings toward her or to affirm her without conditions. And when people in our society think of the wrath of God, they imagine a red-faced deity with a bad temper and short fuse.”

  5. Two Days to Change Her Mind: A sobering account (I recommend listening to the podcast, not just reading the transcript) of a woman fighting to protect her mom from Canada’s euthanasia laws.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Don’t Let Your Wrath Make You a Wraith: Trevin Wax warns us, “The frightening future for the unforgiving isn’t in encountering a ghost but in becoming a ghost yourself, perpetually haunted by resentment and wrath until your humanity is diminished.”

  2. Reminding Ourselves to Forgive—Even After We’ve Said the Words: Lara d’Entremont’s related post begins, “We often picture forgiveness as a single moment—not a journey. We imagine a moment of tears as each party repents and asks the other for forgiveness. We imagine hugs and handshakes. What we don’t usually imagine is a journey. But what if a journey is a more apt description? What if forgiveness isn’t only a moment, but also a journey of reminding ourselves of the forgiveness received and given? What if forgiveness is refusing revenge and bitterness?”

  3. Deaths of Despair and Loss of Religion Linked: Steve Goldstein reports, “So-called deaths of despair such as from suicide or alcohol abuse have been skyrocketing for middle-aged white Americans. It’s been blamed on various phenomenon, including opioid abuse. But a new research paper finds a different culprit — declining religious practice.”

  4. The Murderer Who Crushed a Worm: Tim Challies points to a gentle warming from F.B. Meyers, “Guard especially against heart-hardening. Hard hearts are unbelieving ones; therefore beware of ossification of the heart. The hardest hearts were soft once, and the softest may get hard.”

  5. What was God Doing Before Creation? Michael Reeves packs a lot into his two-minute answer to this question.

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The Gospel of Self-Forgiveness

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The Gospel of Self-Forgiveness

She sits in my office, tears running down her face. Two years ago her mother died in hospice while she lay asleep at home. She was trying to get a decent night’s rest after days spent at her mother’s side. “I just can’t forgive myself. I let her die alone. I knew I should have been there, but I was selfish. I can never forgive myself for that.”

I’ve heard dozens share similar confessions with me. Does this resonate with you? What guilt do you bear? What burdens are you carrying because you can’t forgive yourself?

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