Spiritual Growth, Church, Evangelism, Generosity, Worship
John Beeson
Worshiping Through Our Service

Most Sundays, like most churches, New Life Bible Fellowship gathers to sing, pray, and hear the Word of God preached. This is a beautiful, biblical rhythm (Acts 2:42). But what if, on occasion, the most faithful way to worship is not inside the walls of the church but outside, serving our community? Once a year, we gather to Love Tucson. Before we worship, pray, and hear God’s Word together, we serve at a partner school.

Love Tucson is one of my favorite Sundays of the year.

Worshiping Through Our Service
Recommendations, Church, Marriage, Nature, Religion
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. The worst of all possible worlds: Samuel James considers the grip of malaise on the modern world and the hope of the gospel. “There is a place you can reach where there is neither pleasure nor pain, just a prolonged limp between compulsion and guilt. Malaise won’t do what it should do, and it can’t do what it really wants to do. Malaise is the worst of all possible worlds.”

  2. The rise of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses: Derek Cooper provides background and context on two American religions. He summarizes, “New religious movements such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses serve as poignant examples of how deviations from orthodox Christian teaching eventually produce entirely new religions that add or remove foundational truths. These groups, while professing allegiance to Christ, diverge significantly in their doctrines of God and theologies of salvation, revelation, and eschatology.”

This Week's Recommendations
Church, Gratitude, Leadership, Relationships
John Beeson
Thank You Gracious Church Members

Presidents age poorly. Photos of U.S. presidents before and after their terms reveals what we all know: the weight of leading a country impacts you. Take a look at George HW Bush after just four years. Barack Obama had nary a grey hair when he entered office. When he left, he had a lot more salt than pepper.

Leadership isn’t easy. We pastors are called to keep watch over the sheep, prepared to give an account to God for their care. That is a heavy responsibility. Many (myself included) aspire to leadership, not recognizing the burden that comes with caring for people. Some are hard to lead. They disengage, they wander, they chafe at correction, and they demand that their preferences are met.

Thank You Gracious Church Members
Christian Living, Culture, Relationships, Social Media, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Deep Calls to Deep

We’ve all heard how poor the state of mental health in America. But the numbers are truly staggering. “Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.” We have a serious problem.

Deep Calls to Deep
Recommendations, Death, Family, Relationships, Apologetics
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Tortured, imperfect, and held by Jesus: Garrett Kell’s touching tribute to his mother, “My two earliest memories of my mother couldn’t be more different. The pleasant one is our evening routine: She’d pull me onto her lap to recite the Lord’s Prayer and sing “The Old Rugged Cross” until I fell asleep. The other is her sobbing in her bathroom, telling me how badly she wanted to die.”

  2. How Jesus helps my unbelief: Erin Mount shares her struggle, “My mind knows that God has not left me, for there is nowhere I can go that he will not also be, but my heart has not felt him. All of the pain and sorrow and sickness would be much easier to bear had I felt God’s comfort, but for whatever reason, God has not felt near. It has felt like he was hiding, and as much as I have tried to find him, I couldn’t.”

This Week's Recommendations
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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Was anyone more alone? Charisse Compton reflects, “I am hardly alone in my loneliness. About one in four adults across the world suffers from a similar hunger. Bankrupt of any long-term solutions, the world suggests increased human interactions to alleviate the suffering. But for all our digital connectedness, the loneliness epidemic persists and grows.”

  2. When I have intrusive thoughts: This is a subject I’ve done a lot of thinking about as well. Lara D’Entremont offers solid counsel, “Through therapy, I learned that fighting against intrusive thoughts is like trying to stop water from gushing out of your faucet with your hands—it will continue to burst through, perhaps even explosively.”

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A Dire Warning for Me? Where?

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A Dire Warning for Me? Where?

“The end is near!” “Repent!”

Have you ever seen a statement of prophetic warning spray-painted on a wall or in a subway station? got to be honest, I don’t take much notice to such warnings. But what if those warnings were for me and for you?

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Do You Have a Graduate in Your Life?

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Do You Have a Graduate in Your Life?

We are feeling all the feels. Our youngest, Soren, is about to graduate from high school. This has been a season of reflection for Angel and me and a season of preparation. In our children’s ministry hallways at New Life next to each age level we have containers that represent how many days of influence remain for you as a parent before your child launches. I recognize, of course, that there is no finish line for parenting, but one’s influence and role changes significantly in each season.

 As we look back on our parenting, the most important things we taught our children were who God is and who they were.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Who would I be if I was happy? Trevin Wax warns us, “Many young people are increasingly drawn to establishing and expressing their identities through their psychological maladies.”

  2. Wherever he leads, I’ll go: Glenna Marshall shares a story I bet you might identify with, “In young, untried faith, I nearly invited him to test me, telling him in a long, journaled prayer that wherever he led, I would most certainly go. I banked on my obedience. I would be stalwart, no matter what came. But life came. And the Lord led me to places I longed to escape from: decades of infertility, disease, chronic pain that battered my body for years on end.”

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Exchanging Intrusive Thoughts for God-talk

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Exchanging Intrusive Thoughts for God-talk

Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome and hard to control. I can remember having intrusive thoughts from the time I was a child. When we drove, I often felt the compulsion to press one foot down on the floor between the telephone poles (and yes, I also hopped over the cracks in the sidewalk). At other times, when walking alone, I remember the persistent thought, “He’s watching you.” I would search the bushes and trees for the one my mind told me was watching me.

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The Pillaging of Hezekiah

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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).

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Britain’s loneliest sheep: Stephen Steele begins, “A high-profile new resident arrived in South West Scotland recently – a ewe once known as ‘Britain’s Loneliest Sheep’. Fiona, as she has been named, was rescued after being stranded for more than two years at the foot of cliffs in the Scottish Highlands.”

  2. When the walk becomes a crawl: David Powlison exhorts us, “The key to getting a long view of sanctification is to understand direction. What matters most is not the distance you’ve covered. It’s not the speed you’re going. It’s not how long you’ve been a Christian. It’s the direction you’re heading.”

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The Long Journey of Self-Knowledge in a Culture of Confusion

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The Long Journey of Self-Knowledge in a Culture of Confusion

“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.

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The Air Raid Siren

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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.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. Why I’m not an exvangelical: Carey Nieuwhof explains, “I, too, am tired of the abuse, corruption, arrogance, shallow thinking, anti-intellectualism, partisanship, and politicization of the Christian message. I’m done with the racism, toxic culture, and the abuse of power we see again and again.”

  2. What do Mormons believe about marriage? Liesl Counterman explains, “In Mormonism, the bare minimum entrance requirement to eternal life is baptism, but the way to reach the highest heaven is through marriage.”

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