Joseph F. Radosevich

I heard many years ago about gratitude journals or being thankful every morning. Even now it sounds like a ridiculous new age meditation practice to me, but I have made thankfulness a priority and everyday practice. Several years ago, my counselor assigned me to write down 10 things everyday that I was thankful for. I only do seven now (the number is doable but still significant), but I do it everyday. During our family bible time on Sunday nights, we take turns saying things that we're thankful to God for.  I have found two reasons that thankfulness is so important in the Bible.  First, thankfulness protects us from anxiety. Philippians 4:6-7 " Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.   And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Thankfulness (and putting our needs on God's to-do list) has a protect...

I almost gave up on Hebrew vowels last summer. I took two semesters of Hebrew in college and two in seminary. I still didn't understand vowels and vowel changes. I just took them by faith and where possible memorized them by force. Then I went to the Greek and Hebrew for Life Conference at my alma mater last year, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I went to a breakout session by Dr. T.J. Betts where he explained in 30 minutes what I had never learned about the vowel system and why words change the way that they do. I had taken Hebrew at Southern from a teacher using a different method than Dr. Betts and Dr. Adam Howell use. I also picked up a new Hebrew grammar by Howell (Dr. Betts' student) and have been working through it.  There are so many language learning apps that promise to help you learn a language (even biblical language apps). I've tried a bunch of them. Here are some hacks better than any app that I'm using to help as I work on my Hebrew (and Greek ...

Our local library has tables with recommended books on all sorts of topics. One of my dreams in life is to curate one of those tables.  A good book is worth so much because it can change your life. I'm starting this series as a digital version of those tables. I'm going to take pictures and share a few words about books in different categories.  My first in this series is on fiction worth rereading. This is literary fiction. All of these are books that I first read in college. I've reread all of them in the last three or four years, except O'Conner. We only read some of the stories of Flannery O'Connor in college, but I have read the whole book recently. These are not necessarily uplifting books or beach reads, but I've enjoyed all of them at least twice.  Cry the Beloved Country is probably my favorite from these right now. It's a beautiful book. Very hopeful too.  The Plague and All the King's Men  are the most cynical and jaded. I still think of the...

I remember the first Honeycrisp apple I ever ate. My wife and I were newly married and somebody in our church told us about this new apple that we should try. It was the largest apple that I had ever seen and cost more than I'd ever paid for a piece of fruit. When we cut it up and I took one bite, my world changed. I tried eating apples off and on over the years. I remembered eating good apples. If I got an apple at the grocery store, though, like a Red Delicious or a Golden Delicious, it was always soft and gross. The Honeycrisp apple changed that for me. After that giant, sweet, crunchy fruit, apples were not just apples. I looked for names. All these years later, I still look for new apples and try different ones at the grocery store or the local orchard if I can find one. I can tell you about Cosmic Crisp, Mutsu, Opal, Envy, Wild Twist, Ludacrisp, Winecrisp, Evercrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Snapdragon, Sugarbee, Lady Alice, Ruby Lee, and Crimson Crisp. That apple changed more than ...

I attended a seminar on pastoral burnout several years ago by mistake at Exponential Conference in Orlando. The organizers changed the topic without notice. I don't remember what seminar I expected, but a pastor got up and said that he was asked to speak on burnout. He shared that he recently (as in that week) finally hit a wall in ministry after being warned by a good friend for along time that it was about to happen. He described his life as a pastor and confessed that he had no authority to speak on the topic assigned to him. He asked his friend (also a pastor at his church) to share on that topic. Everyone seems to be talking about pastoral burnout. There are books, podcasts, seminars, etc. I find it revealing when the pastors with big platforms give interviews where they explain their breakdown after they spent the last 10-20 years telling pastors how to pastor like they do. Brian Croft and James Carroll share an original insight into burnout in their book Pastoral Perseveranc...

Last year, I started preparing sermons four weeks in advance. Now that I've done it for a while, I thought I would write on why I started, how I began, and what I think about it. I decided to try it while reading Paul David Tripp's book Dangerous Calling . He writes in one section about the seriousness of the pastor's calling to preach and warned against preaching without meditation and personal application. He strongly advised preparing further out.  I never did the Saturday night rush sermon. I thought I was doing well since I prepared on Monday (all day) and Tuesday (morning). That felt as far out as I could do. I decided to try it anyway and see what the results were. I always use a checklist for sermon prep. I have it broken down into 10 or so steps. I decided that I could do the first half of my checklist four weeks out and then the second half the week I will give the sermon. The first half of my sermon prep involves translating, outlining, rereading, studying notes,...