Identity, Spiritual Growth, Worship
John Beeson
God's Names and Our Identities

There was a season of worship music from my childhood where a flood of songs were released reflecting on the names of God. El Shaddai, Jehovah Jireh My Provider, and Emmanuel all spring to mind. Interest in the names of God appears to making a comeback in worship as demonstrated by the popularity of Jireh, Yahweh, and Yahweh Elyon.

The names of God have always been dear to his people. The first person in scripture to give God a name is Hagar, who calls God El Roi, “The God who sees”

God's Names and Our Identities
Recommendations, Church, Identity, Nature, Theology
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. A theology of leisure: Reagan Rose with an important piece. She says, “Many Christians have unthinkingly adopted a view of leisure that sees rest time as synonymous with me time. But this is a historical anomaly.”

  2. The church’s unsung hero: the persevering Sunday School teacher: Can we get an amen to Trevin Wax’s post? God bless our amazing faithful teachers! “Committed Sunday school teachers are a big part of what makes discipleship effective. Yet how often do we let weeks and years go by without lifting up their example or celebrating their faithfulness?”

This Week's Recommendations
Christian Living, Church, Leadership, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Danger of Driscoll In Me

A few years ago Christianity today released a podcast series entitled “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.” It’s as gripping as it is sobering. In it, Mike Cosper chronicles the history of the formation of Mars Hill Church. The podcast follows Mark Driscoll’s beginnings as a church planter in 1996 when he launched Mars Hill in Seattle to his quick rise to fame to the church’s ultimate collapse. The details are excruciating. It’s heartbreaking that such an influential community could have gone from leading such a huge cultural wave to closing its doors in a matter of years (Mars Hill ceased to exist in 2014).

The Danger of Driscoll In Me
Christian Living, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Resolving To Do Less

I enjoy this time of year. New Year’s resolutions are right up my alley. I love the challenge of improving spiritually, emotionally, and physically. In James Clear’s Atomic Habits, Clear popularized the idea of habit stacking: linking a new habit you want to form with a habit you already faithfully perform. 

In past years, I’ve added the habits of reading through the Bible in a year, memorizing scripture, working out, and other disciplines. This year I will try something different: I’m resolving to do less.

Resolving To Do Less
Christian Living, Generosity, Gratitude, Hospitality, Marriage, Recommendations, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Best of the Bee Hive Honeycomb in 2024

Our is an Esau world. We exchange our birthright for a pot of stew, God’s Word for an endorphin hit, the eternal for the ephemeral.

My hope is that by stewarding my ministry of Words, I can help push back against that tide just a little bit. I blog first to pastor my dear congregation New Life Bible Fellowship through the ministry of the written word. My hope is that the three additional touchpoints during the week allow those God has entrusted to me as an under-shepherd to grow in their love for God, their wisdom, and to foster unity. I’m grateful for the many who read…

The Best of the Bee Hive Honeycomb in 2024
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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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Believer, beware

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Believer, beware

I grew up in the age of Neil Anderson and Frank Peretti, two Christian authors who used their pens to try to enlighten their audiences about the power and pervasiveness of the spiritual world. I can still picture the claws descending from heaven on the cover of Peretti’s This Present Darkness that spooked me as a child.

 As I developed theologically, especially through the influence of Reformed thinkers, I began to set aside these influences, which now felt naïve. To focus on the demonic forces of the world seemed to leave people with magical worldviews, where they held very little power over their own actions, and diminished the importance of mortifying the flesh as disciples of Jesus.

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How to Raise Kids Who Are Best Friends

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How to Raise Kids Who Are Best Friends

Did you like your siblings when you were growing up? Do your kids like each other?

 

Every parent wants their children to be friends. One of the best gifts of my childhood was my friendship with my sister. The gift of a playmate and a confidant, of someone to walk through life’s ups and downs with you, is incalculable. 

Over time I’ve realized that the gift of my friendship with my sister, Sarah, has paid enormous dividends in my life. It was that friendship that taught me how to navigate conflict, how to apologize and reconcile, how to comfort, and how to navigate long-distance friendship. My relationship with Sarah has always been a touchstone of learning and growth. Looking back on my friendship with Sarah, I realize that is where I learned to be a husband as well.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The lie half your church believes: Jared Wilson warns, “This slogan’s nod to God is a subterfuge from Satan. He would prefer if we never thought of God at all, but the next best thing is to think wrong thoughts about Him, thoughts that are not worthy of Him.”

  2. Men play significant role in decisions surrounding unplanned pregnancies: Aaron Earls reports, “In making their decision, 42% of men whose partners had an abortion say they encouraged the woman to do so, with 12% saying they strongly urged her to do so.

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What Does the Bible Have To Do with My Life?

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What Does the Bible Have To Do with My Life?

One of my least favorite reading experiences was reading Beowulf in high school English. Were you subjected to this torture? Beowulf was written sometime between the 8th and 10th century and uses an early form of Old English called West Saxon. Maybe if I re-read Beowulf I would love it, but at the time it felt like it was just one of those books we were reading because of its historic significance. Getting through the language was just brutal. I could barely piece together what a sentence meant, much less a paragraph, and understanding the plot felt virtually impossible. On top of that, this bizarre story of a monster in a far-away land felt profoundly irrelevant to my life...

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Can We Trust the New Testament Documents?

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Can We Trust the New Testament Documents?

Over the past week, we have considered whether it might be plausible to trust the Bible's audacious claim: that it is the word of God.

The final response to the challenge is to address the reliability of the manuscripts. Can we trust that the Bible we have in our hands resembles the original writings of the disciples? Is it true, as Bart Ehrman said, that there are 400,000 errors in the early biblical manuscripts?

Let’s respond to this critical challenge.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Every nightmare starts as a dream: Erik Raymond warns us, “No one sets out to bring misery upon themselves. Quite the opposite. They are looking for fulfillment. They want happiness. They are chasing the dream. But remember, every nightmare starts as a dream.”

  2. Pain needs interpreting: Simon Arscott, “My job is to help people interpret their pain. Pain itself – though very unpleasant – doesn’t tell us much. It hurts. It’s uncomfortable. It’s upsetting. We don’t want it. Often, we just want it to go away! But good spiritual care requires interpretation of our pain.”

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What Reasons are there to Believe the Bible?

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What Reasons are there to Believe the Bible?

“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else… Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.” Sam Harris

Can we trust the Bible? Do Christians believe the Bible with “no evidence whatsoever”? What is the evidence that it is trustworthy?

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Why Should I Consider Reading the Bible?

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Why Should I Consider Reading the Bible?

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. This book was written roughly between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. To claim such an ancient book has any relevance whatsoever for a modern reader is a ludicrous 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?How can we possibly trust that it is God's message for us?

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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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