Tag: christianity

Reading Roundup for October 2025

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

I finished 7 books this month for a total of 53 so far this year.

I’ve had the honor of preaching some of the sermons in our series at church on Paul’s letter to the Philippians so I finished reading 4 commentaries on that beautiful letter.

The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians by R.P. Martin is from the Tyndale series. The very first commentary I ever owned was from Tyndale and I have always appreciated their concise and accessible format and writing style and this one was no exception. No matter what book of the Bible I am studying, you will likely find one of the Tyndale commentaries in my stack of study materials. I find them to be an excellent resource for personal Bible study as well as sermon prep.

Philippians: Rejoicing and Thanksgiving by David Chapman is from the Focus on the Bible Series and I thought it was excellent. I had not heard of the FOTB series of commentaries before I picked this up, but I will be adding all of them to my library if they are all this thorough and easy to read and understand. This volume was a cross between scholarship and devotional. You don’t need training in ancient Greek to understand it and yet the scholarship in it is rich. I highly recommend this one.

Philippians by Frank Thielman is from the NIV Application Commentary. It has been my experience that some of the NIV Application commentaries are better than others and this is one of the better ones. I like the way the whole series attempts to bridge the gap between what the Scriptures meant to the original readers and what they mean to us today. This one was more devotional than scholarship, and that’s fine. The only downside to this one was that it was sometimes hard to follow which verse the author was expounding on. Still, though, a solid resource.

Philippians by Dennis E. Johnson is from the Reformed Expository Commentary series. I love every volume of this series I have in my library. They are all excellent and Johnson’s volume on Philippians is right on track with all the others. This one is also a robust blend of Biblical scholarship and devotional literature. You can sit down and read these books straight through and be encouraged and convicted and walk away with a deeper understanding of God’s Word. I haven’t read them all, of course, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of them.

Encouragement: The Unexpected Power of Building Others Up by Larry Crabb and Dan Allender was a nice little book that was…well, encouraging. As Christians we are missing out if we are not seeking ways to encourage and build up our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is a way we can serve others, be active members of the church, and receive blessings ourselves. There are great blessings for those who encourage others, as well as those who are being encouraged. This book is a slim and helpful volume of inspiration and instruction on this kind of “every member a minster” work.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I think I want to write a longer review of this one. I have a lot of thoughts on it. This was my second reading of this book and it lands differently in a second reading. The writing is excellent and the story is captivating and the characters, every single one of them, are fully realized and stay with you long after you finish the last page. What interested me the most was the constant theme of the guiding hand of Providence even in those who do not believe.

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. Okay, I want to be so careful here. I read this for my book club and many of them, and SO many others, absolutely love this book. I am not one of those people. I respect Levi for the work he put into this self-published novel, and apparently it has struck a chord with many people because it is hugely popular. In fact, I started to wonder what I was missing just based on its popularity but it just did not strike that same chord with me. I didn’t think it was well written or plotted and it was so sugary sweet I felt manipulated instead of moved. And I found the ending unsatisfying and a bit forced. I’m sorry to those who love this book and I wish the author all the best. This kind of thing just isn’t for me.

On My TBR for November

Here are some of the books I hope to finish next month.

  • The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maas
  • The Affections of Christ Jesus by Nijay K. Gupta
  • Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls edited by Gary W. Moon and David G. Benner
  • Hideki Smith and the Omukade by A.J. Hartley
  • LEAD by Paul David Tripp
  • A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  • Foster by Claire Keegan

Be Quiet My Soul

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

Be quiet my soul, you’re talking too much. – Guigo II, The Carthusian

I am quieter now than I was as a younger man. That may shock some people who know me, but it’s true. I used to talk way too much, dominating conversations, showing off, trying to be the center of attention, and keep everyone entertained and engaged…with me, of course.

My journey to keeping my mouth shut started when I was playing Bible Trivia with a group of friends in college. I regaled them all with my knowledge of the Bible, answering every question correctly. No one stood a chance.

The problem is that I had not been invited to join them. I just inserted myself into the group and started playing. Another problem was that I wasn’t giving anyone else a chance to play.

Yeah. I was THAT guy.

Finally, a girl in the group, clearly tired of my bombastic attitude shut me down hard. Glaring at me she said, “This would be a lot more fun if someone didn’t take over and we all had a chance to play!”

No one contradicted her and no one defended me. They just looked at me. Clearly, they all felt the same way.

I offered my apologies, and made a hasty exit, tail tucked between my legs, my face red from shame.

Could the young lady have handled the situation in a more gracious and kinder way? Of course. But she wasn’t wrong. I was an unwelcome guest, and worse, I was a rude guest.

The event caused me to think about how I came across to others and that I did not make room for them. Bottom line: I talked too much and listened too little. “[L]et every person be quick to listen, SLOW to speak” James reminds us. I was the opposite.

I wish I could say I learned the lesson once and never had to learn it again, but that would be a lie. I still have to remind myself to be still and quiet and to make room for others. To welcome others to open their hearts and let me truly HEAR them for a while. And in doing that, I am loving them.

A quiet soul helps us live a quieter life. A life that makes room for others. A quiet soul also makes room for God. It’s hard to hear the voice of God when our soul is talking too much.

I was on my way to church, where I was scheduled to preach as part of our Summer series, Saved: Stories of Redemption and Grace. I was wrestling with an illustration I included. I wasn’t sure it should be in there. It felt contrived to me but I couldn’t convince myself to cut it. I was beating myself up because I assumed I was being prideful (which is not a bad assumption to make, really) but I could not get a peace either way.

Finally, I quieted my soul and listened for a moment.

And that’s when I realized that the story was fine. It was just missing a piece. It was missing the part where I pointed back to Jesus. Once I realized that I gave thanks to God and used the story with a sense of purpose and peace.

I just had to be still and quiet enough to listen.

A quiet soul, the one that hears God’s voice, is one that is still.

Tyler Staton writes:

Stillness is the quiet space where God migrates from the periphery back to the center, and prayer pours forth from the life that has God at the center.

Prayer, that conversation between us and the one who created us and loves us.

A still and quiet soul is hard. It has always been hard, but it seems even more difficult in our cultural context. As R. Kent Hughes writes.

Americans seem obsessed with the need for unending sound…But silence slows the frantic pace and gives time for reflection and individual dialogue with God.

When was the last time you sat in stillness and silence? No screens, no people, no projects or books or journals or music. Just still and silent?

A dear friend of mine said he tried that recently for just two minutes and he felt overwhelmed by the experience.

It’s harder than you think. But everything worth doing is.

Of course, being still and silent does not magically make God show up and speak to your heart and mind. He is God. He cannot be coerced or manipulated or forced. He will do what pleases him and what pleases him is always right and perfect and loving. What we are doing in stillness and silence, is making room for him. We are making him the priority. We are letting him set the agenda.

Brennan Manning was telling his friend Larry Crabb about a silent retreat he had coming up. One that he did every year. Crabb questioned him about the retreat.

“What does God show you on these retreats? What has he said to you in your silence?”

“You know…I don’t think God has ever spoken to me during one of these retreats.” Brennan said.

“Then why do you go?”

“I think God just likes it when I show up.”

From The Commonplace Book: Useless Prayer

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

From Spiritual Formation by Henri Nouwen.

The world says, ‘If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.’ Jesus says: ‘Come and spend some useless time with me.” If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us–what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel–God cannot easily speak to us. But if we can detach ourselves from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to ‘waste’ as precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find our ‘useless’ time will transform us, and everything around us will be different.

Prayer is being unbusy with God instead of being busy with other things. Prayer is primarily to do nothing useful or productive in the presence of God. To not be useful is to remind myself that if anything important or fruitful happens through prayer, it is God who achieves the result. So when I go into the day, I go with the conviction that God is the one who brings forth fruit i my work, and I do not have to act as though I am in control of things. I have to work hard; I have to do my task; I have to offer my best. But I can let go of the illusion of control and be detached from the result. At the end of each day I can prayerfully say that if something good has happened, God be praised.

Films Christians Should Watch

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

I’m starting a new regular feature on the blog called Films Christians Should Watch.

The idea came from a Letterboxd List I curate (if you are on that platform, please connect with me there). And the list is based on this quote from Alan Noble in his book DISRUPTIVE WITNESS:

Christians should choose aesthetically excellent stories, whether or not they are the most popular. These stories will tend to be darker or more depressing or heavy, which sounds unpleasant. But Christians should be known for their appreciation of tragedies, because in good tragedies we must reckon with our place in the world, the problem of evil, and the struggle of meaning…We do not need to only participate in dark or troubling stories, but we do need to give priority to stories that unsettle us, and expand us, whether through beauty and delight or tragedy.

Each Friday I will review one of the movies from my list and recommend some resources and discussion/reflection questions to help you think about the film in deeper and more meaningful ways as a follower of Christ.

I am beginning this new project because of Jeffrey Overstreet’s book THROUGH A SCREEN DARKLY, which I highly recommend.

Next week, I will begin with the first film on the list THE POWER OF ONE. I am looking forward to viewing it again and writing about it. I may not go down through the list in order, but this is a nice place to start.

I hope you will join the conversation by making comments and recommending movies you think Christians should see.

Paying Attention to Meaning in Art

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

“Things mean things.”

That’s what Jeffrey Overstreet‘s high school English teacher taught him about poetry and literature and films and art and he has carried that lesson with him as a movie critic and author and teacher.

Objects and words and images have meaning. Sometimes the creator uses them intentionally to convey specific ideas or truths, and at other times, the meaning is personal to the one who is engaging with the art. The work speaks to us in ways the creator may never have intended, but we get the message nonetheless.

Years ago, I visited an Annie Leibovitz photography exhibit at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. I only remember one portrait. It’s the one in the White House of members of the Bush Administration’s war time cabinet. Something in that portrait jumped out at me and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

It was a band-aid on the thumb of Donald Rumsfeld.

The way his hand is positioned in the portrait told me I was MEANT to see the bandage. Leibovitz seemed to be saying “look at this!”

Here was this huge portrait of some of the most influential and powerful people on the planet at that time and one of them had a boo-boo. The meaning, to me at least, was that these are human beings, just like me. They are fallible and weak and easily injured, just like me.

It was a powerful experience with art and one I hope I never forget.

As a Christian, I believe that Scripture is the only infallible source of authority for faith and practice. I also believe God’s voice can be heard in art and nature and through others. God, the ultimate Creator, speaks through the creations of his image bearers. But we have to be curious and we have to engage and we have to slow down and pay attention. We have to remember that things mean things and that requires something of us, some effort to discover the meaning.

Works of art, whether a novel or painting or a play or anything else, has an impact on the way we see ourselves and the world and maybe even God. As Paul Klee says, “Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.” And I would add that it broadens and deepens and changes what we see and HOW we see.

But we have to pay attention.

In his excellent book, THROUGH A SCREEN DARKLY, Overstreet talks about “the God Room”. That’s what Hollywood people call the room where they meet with the Christian journalists and movie critics. At first it was an insult but those who have been in the God Room with these believers have discovered that they often have the deepest and most profound conversations about art there.

That’s because Christians see the world differently. We are looking for God and truth in what we see on the screen and when we see it, we point it out and ask meaningful questions about it. And in doing so, these Christian film critics have often shown the artists themselves something they didn’t realize was in their own work.

When was the last time you engaged art looking for the voice of God?

Change the way you see.

LEST WE DRIFT – A Review

~ Joseph McBee ~ 1 Comment
  1. The whole Bible is about Jesus.
  2. People change by grace, not law.
  3. Our ultimate validation is found not in our performance, but in Christ’s.

These three claims provide the substance of gospel-centrality. – Jared Wilson

Jared Wilson has written many gospel-centered books. This is not his first, and God willing it won’t be his last. But out of all the ones I’ve read so far, and they have all been good, this one in particular stands out.

Wilson writes with the mind of a theologian, the heart of a pastor, and the passion of someone who knows he is a great sinner in need of a great Savior. In fact, he is very open and honest about his own weaknesses and the ways he has drifted from the gospel and the consequences that came with that and how the gospel of Jesus Christ was and is good news to him.

In LEST WE DRIFT, Wilson deftly reveals the ways the modern evangelical church has drifted away from the true gospel and into victimhood, dryness, superficiality, pragmatism, and what he calls “the new legalism.” I cannot point to a single one of these and say, “THIS, this is the one I drift toward.” I cannot say that because I have been guilty of them all.

As Wilson shows us, this is because it’s so tragically easy to drift away from the good news of Jesus into other things, even important and good things, and point to them and say, “this thing is of first importance” and when we do that, we are missing it. We are missing where true life really is and we are pointing others away from Jesus too.

The author is primarily writing to people in ministry, especially pastors and those in training to become pastors, but I genuinely believe every Christian will benefit from this book.

Personally, I don’t like to say that any book other than the Bible is a “must-read” but if you’re in ministry in any capacity, LEST WE DRIFT should be added to your list quickly, read deeply, and discussed thoroughly with others in ministry with you.

As Wilson warns…

Whatever her pastors are, a church will become. If we do not much find the gospel resilient, over time our people won’t either. If we do not find it a versatile resource, neither will our congregation.

Pastors, lead the way back to the gospel and help your people stay in awe of Jesus by being in awe of him yourself.

The impetus for LEST WE DRIFT seems to be the way the gospel-centric movement among evangelical churches has faded and many of its primary voices have been silenced because of moral failings or because they have moved on to other ideas. They have “drifted” away from the gospel.

Sometimes, as I read this book, I got the feeling that Wilson is one of the few people left at a party everyone else left, not wanting it to end, or not realizing it’s over. There was a feeling of sadness in the way he wrote. Not self-pity, genuine sadness that the ones who left, are missing where the real joy is and he’s calling for them to come back. And, he’s inviting others to come along too.

Wilson’s writing in LEST WE DRIFT packs some punch in a lot of places. Take this passage from his chapter on drifting into victimhood for example:

The therapeutic centering of the self is not simply a perpetual deification; because every person now walks around believing him-or herself to be the center of the universe, we are inevitably and continually aggrieved by everyone else’s violations of our sacred self. The therapeutic insistence of self-centrality is by necessity an insistence on victimhood.

But while Wilson writes strongly, there is no harshness in the way he writes it. The strength of his words are based in love for Jesus and for the people of God. You may feel convicted but you won’t feel condemned.

I think, LEST WE DRIFT is a timely and beautiful book. I was more in love with Jesus after I read it, and I also feel more aware of the ways I have often drifted away from the gospel in my own life. But I don’t feel ashamed. I feel invited back to the heart of God.

Idolatry, Repentance, and Peace

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. – 1 John 5:21

Yesterday I was struggling to find peace. I was torn up in my heart about something and the anxiety was building and with that, shame and anger.

As I usually do when things feel overwhelming, I took my journal and started to write about it.

Journaling helps bring clarity.

This time I couldn’t get clarity on why I felt so torn up in my heart, though. Of course, that just added to my frustration. I wanted the stress and anxiety to go away!

I stopped for a moment and asked myself, “What’s REALLY going on here?”

Then I wrote down…

“I don’t trust God. I don’t believe he can be trusted with this.”

Then I begin to write out a prayer about how wrong that was and that God was sovereign and good and loving and kind and that he would always do what was best for his glory and my good.

I repented for my sinful thoughts about him and confessed his goodness and grace.

And all my anxiety vanished. There was peace.

My circumstances have not changed at all. I am still exactly where I was. But my heart is different. The real issue was not my circumstances, it was my lack of faith and trust.

It was my idolatry.

We all want a god we can control, one that bows to our whims, our own personal genie that behaves exactly the way we want. And we build up that god in our minds and hearts and give that idol God’s name.

Then, when that idol let’s us down, and it ALWAYS will, we think we cannot trust the one true God.

And that brings anger and frustration and fear. But God is not the problem. It’s our wrong understanding of who he is. It is our idolatry that is the real issue.

And until we confess that and repent, we cannot know peace.

Thankfully, God is kind and his kindness and his patience lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

In his love, God also reproves and disciplines us to bring us to repentance as well (Revelation 3:19) but the goal is always to bring us back to himself.

It is an invitation to come home to him and to know him as he truly is, which is infinitely better than our self-made idols.

You are NOT God, and That Sets You Free

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

We are not designed to be sovereign but to be dependent on the one who is.

I love this quote from Alan Noble:

“One of my concerns about contemporary society is that it suffers from a lack of agency…Alain Ehrenberg notes in his book THE WEARINESS OF THE SLEF, that inhibition is one of the symptoms of contemporary depression. He ties it to the burden of being a sovereign self, an overwhelming experience for most people that often leaves them frozen and feeling unable to move in the world.”

The belief that you are completely sovereign over your own life can be a paralytic.

  • What if I take the wrong path in life?
  • What if I never fulfill my potential?
  • What if I just live an ordinary life and never do anything great?
  • What if I fail?
  • What if I look foolish trying to do something?
  • What if my life doesn’t go EXACTLY like I want it to?

The belief that a good, loving, and kind God is sovereign over all things liberates us from the paralysis of self-sovereignty. It sets us free to risk and to advance and to try. And yes, to fail too. Because failure is a part of living. A BIG part of it.

If God is sovereign, then I am free to live without fear.

If God is sovereign, then I am free to take risks.

If God is sovereign, then I do not have to be afraid of whatever trials may come or what their eventual outcome may be.

When we don’t keep God’s sovereignty in mind, we put far too much pressure on ourselves to achieve certain outcomes and it can paralyze us into doing nothing.

A lack of faith in God’s sovereignty can also cause us to procrastinate on things we know we should be doing.

It is arrogant to believe I will always have the time to do what I know I should be doing right now. I don’t control the length of my life. My days are quite literally numbered (Psalm 139:16) and only God knows when they are up.

That fact should create a sense of urgency but without fear.

I am absolutely immortal until my days are done because they are in God’s book and I cannot add even one hour to their length (Luke 12:25-26).

So why worry?

Urgency without fear. We must do what we can. And leave the results with God.

Christians should be some of the boldest risk takers and doers and leaders and creators on the planet. We can risk and do and lead and create without fear, because we know we are not sovereign and that God is.