tough questions – aTransParentMom

by John Busacker

In his latest book, John tackles some of the questions that Jesus asked while He was here on earth. Jesus was often responding to questions with a question of His own. He liked to make us actually think for ourselves…When John the Baptist’s disciples pointed Him out, Jesus replied saying, “What do you want?”. Ha!! I love that!

The layout of this book is great. John points out a question that might be easily missed in the vast text. For example, I had never noticed Jesus’ reply to those disciples. He then challenges us to really think about how to answer that. There are quotes from many good scholars like Oswald Chambers, Brennan Manning and St. John of the Cross. Overall, great book with eye opening statistics and stories. At the end of each chapter, there is a Reflect and Respond section to dig deeper.

Pick up a copy for yourself and a friend! Link is in the pic above. And, remember, you can “look inside” of a book on Amazon and see if it’s something you are interested in.

Thanks, Worthy, for this great book! As always, this is my honest opinion. Here’s to many more!!

by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

Since September, I have been teaching a class on Tough Questions with some youth. I thought I would check out this book and see what it had to say on some of the hard things we talk to our kiddos about. I really love that they are clear from the start:

— We don’t have all the answers. (Who can know the mind of God?)

— We are not in control of their salvation by answering something wrong.

— We should not avoid tough questions out of fear.

I think it is so important that we, as parents and leaders, make sure we are the ones answering these questions. If our kids aren’t learning from us, we are allowing them to be taught by someone else that we may not even agree with.

This book has a lot of great answers and points. I love that they give you responses that are age appropriate. Of course, you, as the parent, should seek God’s wisdom on how to answer. Obviously, not every child is the same. Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson have done a great job digging into these questions and backing up their answers with Scripture.

Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me this great resource in return for a review. Here’s to many more!!

I teach a high school/college/graduate student Bible study about Tough Questions. The most often asked questions is…

Well, what’s your guess? If you guessed:

“How can a loving God send someone to Hell?”

you were right!

I find that I can’t even comprehend the question. I mean, I totally don’t get it. It’s so backwards that we would never apply that question to anything else in our lives and think that it made sense.

Why in the world would it be considered “loving” for God to force us into a place we’ve spent our lives trying to avoid? Why would it be “loving” for God to force us to spend time with the One we spent our lives hating? Why would it be loving for God to force us into an eternity that we spent our lives denying and calling a fairytale? In what other situation would you ever call that “loving”?

If I spend my life hating God, why in the world would I want to spend an eternity in His presence? Somehow, that makes God cruel? To give us what we spend a lifetime striving towards is heartless?

NO!!!!! Like I said, it doesn’t compute. A loving God cares enough to give us what we desire even when it breaks His heart.

This verse has a whole different meaning when you look at it from that perspective. An everlasting love. A love willing to give us up to our desires despite the pain it causes Him. Even though He gave up everything to show us His love, He will ultimately give us our desires in the end.

Stop questioning God and His love. He proved it. He proved it in a big way.