How does a Christian make sense of a world where our understanding of sexuality and gender has turned into quicksand underneath our feet?
Here are four books I commend to you to help you engage some of the hardest questions relating to sexuality and gender.
I pray you had a blessed Thanksgiving. I hope your heart entered into this past week with a spirit of gratitude and that your time with friends, family, and God only heightened that gratitude.
No one wants to walk in ingratitude, and yet gratitude can be so quickly snatched from us.
What destroys thanksgiving? There are many threats: envy, pride, and selfishness. But one sneaky snatcher of gratitude is injustice. When the earth quakes with injustice, its tremors rattle our hearts and our trust.
When we experience injustice, questions swirl: Why would God allow that wrong to happen? How could He let this grievance happen to me? Won’t the wrongdoer be punished? Won’t the victim receive restitution?
How to practice gratitude (even when you don’t feel it): O. Alan Noble says, “We like to think of gratitude as an overflowing feeling directed at others—an outpouring of love and warmth. But sometimes warmth doesn’t come. Even still, another’s kindness deserves our gratitude. What are we to do when we don’t feel grateful but know we ought to be?”
Fight burnout with thanksgiving: Ajith Fernando writes this to pastors, but it’s applicable to everyone. “I have come to notice that the most joyful people in my life and ministry are also the most thankful, and joyous people experience freshness as they go about their service. God’s grace is a means of freshness over the long haul.”
In the fall of 1997, I arrived at Gordon College. Nestled 45 minutes northeast of Boston, Gordon’s beautiful campus sits in the heart of New England. This southwest kid was about to get the full New England experience. And you can’t have a New England experience without experiencing her fans.
Just three years later, the newly minted coach of the Patriots, Bill Belichick, would draft Tom Brady with the 199th draft pick of the 2000 NFL draft. At that point, the Patriots had logged a sad 68-92 record in the 1990s.
My grandma Betty’s house smelled of lilacs and bacon. Her favorite dusting powder and her favorite breakfast food blended to form a smell all her own that permeated her one-bedroom apartment. I’m sure she didn’t realize the unique olfactory experience she greeted her visitors with.
We become nose blind to the smells we are often around. We recently rented a vehicle that smelled of dirty diapers. By the third day, we weren’t sure if the nasty smell had dissipated or we had just grown accustomed to it.
Similarly, we are often blind to how others experience our leadership. Have you ever met someone who thinks they have a gifting they clearly don’t have?
Right now, Angel and I are in California working on the audiobook for Trading Faces. We would love your prayers as we help our book get into the ears of more listeners.
Books are such a great companion to summertime. Do you have any vacation plans this summer? Perhaps you hope to get some time poolside? Even if you don’t, I hope you’re able to carve out a bit of time to enjoy a few good books. Here are a few you might enjoy.
We aren’t okay. After decades of mental health stabilizing or improving, the mental health of teens started plunging in 2010 and fifteen years later continues its downward trajectory. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation argues that the cause of our mental health crisis is that rectangle nestled in our pockets: our smart phones.
Over the past month at New Life we have been asking the question: what does the Bible have to say about mental health? This past week we dove into Psalm 42, where one of the sons of Korah battles the lies he is believing by speaking God’s truth over himself. Twice he stops his anxious thoughts with a question and a promise,
The vermin of intrusive thoughts: Crystal Kershaw writes, “In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul uses battle language to describe the ongoing struggle taking place in believers’ lives. He describes bullets of “arguments” and “pretensions” that land in our internal dialogue. Our supernatural Enemy fires them with a clear, age-old motive; to undermine our faith.”
Just a little bit: Rachel Whisman says, “When have I tried softening sin to make it seem more comfortable, more approachable? Where are you willing to add “just a little bit” to something to make it seem okay? Where are you willing to cave in for “just a little bit” more?”
Congratulations class of 2025! Whether you are graduating high school or college, you’ve been asked countless times and will be asked countless more: what’s next? Where are you going?
Maybe you have a set course. You are already rocking that U of A t-shirt and you are confident in four short years your photo will flash on the jumbotron at Arizona Stadium as you walk across the platform, Mechanical Engineering degree in hand. Or, as a college grad, maybe you’ve already said yes to that job offer from Tucson Unified School District and you’re ready to take on the world and 24 third graders.
Spine: that’s the technical word for the pointy things that come out of cacti. Most Arizonans use more colloquial expressions like prickers or stickers when referencing them. Either way, they’re nothing to laugh at. If you’ve lived in the Sonoran desert for any length of time, you’ve used a pair of tweezers to yank them from your skin.
After my parents moved to Tucson, my grandfather visited from Florida. Amazed by the beautiful and seemingly soft “fur” covering prickly pear cacti, he stroked the fuzz. The prickly pear gifted him with a few hundred spines that pierced his fingertips. He groaned.
Recently I was doing some yard work and got too close to a saguaro’s spine as I tried to weed around the base of the cactus. The spine pierced my fingernail. I groaned.
A shard, sharpener, and sin: Rachel Whisman says, “One of my students probably thought, “Oh, I bet I can sharpen it just a little more. I wonder how small I can get it so I can still use it.” Then, the pencil was lost in the vortex of the sharpener and there were ramifications to that seemingly innocent action.”
When suffering knocks: Paul David Tripp says, “When hardship will come, we don’t know. How we will suffer may vary. But one thing is for sure: suffering will come knocking.”
Have you ever shared with a loved one how much you “saved” and omitted how much you spent? Have you ever “invested” in yourself by buying a shirt or a haircut? Do cash purchases not really count against your budget?
You may have fallen prey to girl math. A viral TikTok trend, girl math is meant to poke fun at illogical reasoning to justify purchases and make financial decisions seem less costly. Girl math playfully rationalizes purchases by minimizing the actual price of something or emphasizing the perceived value.
Meanwhile, the world is a bluster over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes levied on goods imported into a country from abroad.
I sat across from Olivia. Her hands and her voice shook. “All my life I wanted to be a mom. I was so excited to get married, mostly because then I could finally be a mom. Six months after our wedding day we got pregnant. We were so excited! We began picking out names and preparing the nursery. At four months, I miscarried. I was so angry with God. How could he let this happen? Isn’t this what he made me for?”
She began to cry. I let the quietness sit in the room.
1. Don’t scratch the itch: Brittany Allen begins, “I have a weird problem. When I get in the shower, my legs inevitably begin to itch like crazy. I cannot for the life of me find the self-control it takes to not scratch. I have a condition called dermatographism that causes my body to react to scratching with hives. By the time I step out of the steaming hot water, my thighs are covered with wheals. I scratched the itch and the itch only intensified.”
2. Should Christians plead the blood of Jesus? Wanjiru Ng’Ang’A explains the history of this prayer and then offers a warning,
The year was 1990. II was eleven years old, and skateboarding was HOT. Tony Hawk was soaring and Rodney Mullen was innovating street skating, popularizing tricks like the ollie. I watched in awe as kids jumped up and then slid down handrails (a grind). I dreamed of doing so myself.
At the top of my Christmas list was, of course, a skateboard.
I counted down the days until I would unwrap my rad new board. I bolted up on Christmas morning, raced down to the tree, and, to my dismay did not locate anything that looked like a skateboard.
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