Identity, Recommendations, Sexuality
John Beeson
Resources for a Sexually Confused Time

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.

Resources for a Sexually Confused Time
Gratitude
John Beeson
Injustice: The Gratitude Snatcher

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?

Injustice: The Gratitude Snatcher
Recommendations, Gratitude, Leadership, Nature
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. 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?”

  2. 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.”

This Week's Recommendations
Christian Living, Gratitude, Prayer
John Beeson
Becoming What You Hate

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.

Becoming What You Hate
Christian Living, Leadership
John Beeson
What’s Your Leadership Superpower? (And What’s ...

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?

What’s Your Leadership Superpower? (And What’s Your Leadership Kryptonite?)
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Who Wants to Play!?

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Who Wants to Play!?

“I’ll sleep when I die,” a type-A friend of ours joked. They laughed. I pondered.

The joke squirreled its way into my heart. I was 21 and already had tasted the first fruits of my labor. It was sweet. My hard work had earned me esteem from my college professors. Their glowing comments were my drug. Late nights in the library were my payment.

“Who wants to play?” was the refrain of my school-teacher dad when I was a kid. My sister and I leaped when my dad arrived home from work and joined us for a football game with our neighborhood friends.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. The better way of Christian parenting: Casey McCall argues that appeasement benefits neither the parent nor the child, “Rather than grant your child’s every desire, your job as a parent is to use your God-given authority to redirect those desires toward righteousness (love of God and neighbor) and to train your child to righteously handle the common human experience of coping with the disappointment of unfulfilled desires. In other words, the wise parent prepares the child for adulthood by training the child to be content in all circumstances.”

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Why Didn't We Preach About Charlie Kirk's Assassination?

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Why Didn't We Preach About Charlie Kirk's Assassination?

Last week, on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. The founder of Turning Point, USA, Kirk was an outspoken Christian conservative.

On Sunday, before our sermon, we prayed for our country in light of the assassination, the religiously motivated shooting in Minneapolis, the racially motivated murder in Charlotte, and the school shooting in Denver. We kept the rest of the service as planned. We preached on the planned text in 1 Corinthians 7 and shared the same announcements that had been planned.

On Sunday afternoon, I spent an hour and a half with a family member processing their upset that their church spent most of their Sunday service focused on Kirk’s murder.

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Preaching and Perspicuity

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Preaching and Perspicuity

Monosyllabic.

Inflammable.

Abbreviation.

Phonetically.

Every one of these words are ironic. Monosyllabic means one syllable but contains five syllables. Inflammable means “easy to catch fire,” but looks like it means the opposite (not flammable). Abbreviation is not an abbreviation. And don’t phonetically should be spelled funetically, don’t you think?

Perspicuity means clarity or “ease of understanding” and yet isn’t very easy to understand. We’ll return to that later.

Roman Catholic theologians during the Middle Ages argued that the scripture was not perspicuous. Scripture was too veiled and obscure for the average person to understand, they contended.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. To be almost saved is to be completely lost: Tim Challies begins, “Along the coast of New York is a little town called East Hampton. And I recently read that there is a cemetery in East Hampton where you can find 12 identical graves that have been laid side by side. There’s a story behind them, of course.”

  2. All the ways I’ve hated myself: Brittany Allen shares, “This bully has been berating me for years. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever been rid of her. Because, as you probably already guessed, she is me.”

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Why Would I Go to Counseling?

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Why Would I Go to Counseling?

I’m more faithful with oil changes than I am with annual visits. I’ve missed more annual well-checks to the doctor than I’ve made. It seems like a waste of time to tell the doctor that I’m not experiencing any physical difficulties, have him check my blood pressure only to confirm it is within the healthy range, and then pay on my way out the door for what I already knew.

Many of us feel the same way about counseling. Why would I go to a counselor unless things are falling apart?

There is a grain of truth in this impulse.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

  1. When safety becomes a god: Christopher Cook warns, “We’re living in a cultural moment where safety has been enthroned as the highest virtue. You hear it everywhere: “I need to feel safe here.” “I need to feel seen.” “I need to feel welcome.” On the surface, these phrases sound kind. Compassionate, even. But beneath the sentimental polish, there’s often an unspoken expectation: ‘Don’t challenge me.’”

  2. A biblical pathway to emotional wisdom: Dan Brewer says, “Our emotions are not a flaw in God’s design. They are not a curse either—they are a gift.

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Hurt Feelings

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Hurt Feelings

Feelings matter. Even if we are certain that truth is firmly in our grasp, it isn’t appropriate to use it like a whip on the back of the skeptic.

In a desire to restore the balance of perceived power, contemporary Western culture has offered a wider berth for those who have historically wielded less power. Our culture declares that our privilege determines whether or not we are allowed to share “our truth.” Intersectionality doles out chips based on a group’s power. Those who come from advantaged portions of society are given fewer chips in order to balance the conversation.

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My Wandering Eye and Jesus' Single Eye

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My Wandering Eye and Jesus' Single Eye

Who among us, if given the possibility, wouldn’t take an extra hour in the day or an extra day in the week?

We stuff life to the fullest and then sprinkle more on the top. Why put your kid in one club when you can put them in a club and a sport? Why follow one sport, when you can follow all the major sports? Why be smart, when you can be smart and healthy? Our flesh tempts us to pack more in; Jesus tells us to live with single priority.

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