Pay close attention to the title. This is not a list of books I think every Christian should read but books that changed me personally. These volumes challenged my thinking, moved me in the deep bowels of my soul and delivered huge payloads of revelation to my spirit. They changed the gait and pace – and at times direction – of my walk in Christ.
You’ll notice titles like Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Packer’s Knowing God are missing. And Augustine’s Confessions. Plus almost anything by Keller.
While these and a host of others deserve their own billing, I wanted to offer you a glimpse into the reason I am me. I am significantly made better by welcoming these books into my heart.
But remember, these 21 – as good as they each are – are all trumped by the holy scriptures, of course.
Just needed that out in the open.
So, that said, here’s my group, in no particular order of importance:
God’s Smuggler
Brother Andrew
The Normal Christian Life
Watchman Nee
A Tale of Three Kings
Gene Edwards
Where Is God When It Hurts
Philip Yancey
Redeeming Love
Francine Rivers
The Gospel of the Kingdom
George Eldon Ladd
Make Haste, My Beloved
Frances J. Roberts
They Found the Secret
V. Raymond Edman
The Practice of the Presence of God
Brother Lawrence
The Word and Power Church
Doug Banister
Shepherding a Child’s Heart
Ted Tripp
Waking the Dead
John Eldredge
The Applause of Heaven
Max Lucado
Rees Howells: Intercessor
Norman Grubb
Improving Your Serve
Chuck Swindoll
A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23
W. Phillip Keller
The Normal Christian Birth
David Pawson
Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
Jerry Bridges
Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire
Jim Cymbala
The Bush Is Still Burning
Lloyd John Ogilvie
Studies In the Sermon on the Mount
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
I think it’s obvious what I’d like from you. I’ll make this easy: how about one, two or even three books that have challenged and changed you? I assure you, you’ll want to keep adding. My blog started as five, then ten, expanded to twenty and needed one final flourish.
Have you ever wondered if the Lord leans over to the Father and laments, “I wish My Church would stop putting words in My mouth”?
“Few people have been misquoted as often as Jesus,” says Michael Hidalgo. It’s easy to say stuff and attribute it to people when they’re not around. Such a ploy helps lends credibility to the speaker, or enables them to manipulate the listener or even, at times, pass the buck.
“I didn’t say it, they did.”
No wonder the followers of Jesus love this strategy. It’s been shaping and honing the Church for generations.
At the end of this post I’d love it if you’d contribute to my list by adding one – or a few – of your own.
Here’s mine:
God will never give you more than you can bear
Why, of course He will. And He’ll do it for the very good reason that He’s after your trust. He wants you to fall under the weight of life so you’ll turn your eyes upward and cry, “Lord, I can’t but You can!”
Lord, I believe (you are able)! Help my unbelief ( because this is so hard)!
He thrives on being your Savior. Rescuing you never tires Him out. He loves being a Good Father to you and your responding to Him in faith. He gets a kick out of it.
Pray this prayer and you’ll go to heaven
Sorry. Not in there. The essence of saving faith is – as we just saw – ongoing faith and certain hope in Christ’s saving Love. When the New Testament addresses “faith” or “belief” (πιστεύω) in the context of being saved, it doesn’t quantify it as a thing but as a repetitive condition of the heart.
Sometimes such faith looks like: “Lord, I’ve done it again. I’m such a screw up! Help me out of this…I turn to You!” Sometimes it’s little more than, “I’m sorry.” At times, “I can’t do this without You!” resonates as mustard-seed faith to Him.
Yes, I know. Faith is in a Person, not an idea or spiritual mirage. The gravitational pull of Saving Faith is in Jesus the Christ, in His finished work and in His ongoing ministry of sustaining grace, sanctification and the perfecting of our weak faith.
And yes, my own faith story began with a crisis of belief where I cried out for Him to save me – I may have even prayed the classic “sinner’s prayer”* – but my salvation from bondage to sin and self-godship to Christ and His Life is due to a participial love affair. His Love toward me is exceedingly more perfect than mine to Him, but He knows My heart. And He’s merciful and intimately close to screw-ups who turn to Him.
God helps those who help themselves
I think this ones on everybody’s list. You can find its origins in Aesop’s Fables, a variant in the Quran (13:11) and in a Benjamin Franklin attribution, but it’s not in scripture. So…moving on.
Actually, God would say…
Yikes, be careful here, Scotty-boy…
God (might) say:
I help those who come to the end of themselves.
Boom.
You need more faith to be healed
Oh boy, have I – a paraplegic – heard this, almost as much as Romans 8:28 (which is true, but still) from various well-meaning saints in 33 years of disability.
When the disciples were feeling convicted about a certain teaching, they responded with “We need more faith for this, Lord!” He didn’t say, “You’re right fellas.” Instead He told them, in essence, to act on what they knew and believed and they’d grow into this too. When it comes to healing, sometimes He healed based on the afflicted person’s (weak) faith, sometimes when He saw (hopeful) faith in others, and sometimes just ‘cuz.
Who decides how much faith is enough? Not you, not me. So stop that nonsense and putting obligations on people when Jesus died and rose again to free us from all that!
He heals…when He’s ready. And when He’s ready, I’ll be ready.
Then, lastly,
And I’ll probably lose some followers here, but it’s worth taking a shot.
Okay, here goes.
Jesus also never said – or implied:
The Republican Party will solve all your nation’s ills
Well, obviously He didn’t reference a political party that wouldn’t come into being for another eighteen or nineteen hundred years yet, but still.
The hope of America is not a republican super-majority in Congress with a sitting president from the party of the elephant. I mean, I’d like those things because I’m a ‘steadfast conservative’ according to the recent Pew Research poll, but still.
The hope of our nation is…are you ready to hear it? The hope for this country is for the Church inside her to be a true City on a Hill.
What does that mean, you ask?
The phrase is taken directly from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:14. At first blush it’s important to know the “you” is plural and suggests that a “city” of unified (not uniform) followers of Christ will be noticed in its cultural setting by living by the law of love and spiritual liberty – with each other, and those outside their faith as well.
When the Church in America practices righteous justice (for the poor, defenseless and innocent) and self-giving love to all, the nation will be blessed.
Okay, off my soap box.
I saw where Scot McKnight made his own list over at Patheos and ended with, “Jesus didn’t say, ‘You are my friends if you do what I didn’t say…'”
Nice.
Don’t forget: use the comment box below to add to this list of Things Jesus DIDN’T Say. Comment now, comment often…and you might end up with a free book at the end of the month! (See sidebar at bottom)
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*Classic sinner’s prayer:
Dear Jesus, I know I’m a sinner and am deserving of hell because of my sins. But I know you died and rose again to save me, so I’m asking You to forgive my sins, come into my heart and save me, and take me to heaven when I die.
The main point I make with this is that saving faith is a relationship built on ongoing trust and belief, not in a prayer uttered once upon a time, but in a Person you believe is your Hope and Stay.
This is a newly edited version of a prior version of this post (written 7 years ago)
33 years ago this month I ‘tithed’ my legs to God. You don’t believe me? The righteous Lord is my witness, I asked the Father to change my whole life – my ways and destiny – and offered my legs on the altar of surrender as a sign I recognized Him as the owner of all of me.
Just as Christ was three days in the tomb and Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish, I was in limbo for three days, waiting on the Father to act. And on Friday night – three days later – He did. (Read about it in My Story on the menu bar above)
When I was a severely ‘backslidden’ college junior, my eldest sister was deeply burdened for her miserable brother and sent a brief epistle outlining her sisterly concern. Her words spoke life to my dead bones and fueled my desperation to leave my wretched, lost condition far behind and pursue that for which Christ had pursued me.
Dearest Scott, my heart hurts for you—it’s no fun when you’re miserable. But it may be partly my fault. You see, I’ve been praying seriously that this would be a year in which God makes you a ‘man after His heart’—a man of God—I love you so much that I want to see you reach heights that so few ever really reach. Maybe our Faithful Father is taking you through the ‘refining fire’ to become that man who knows Him intimately—Scott, I known I’m preaching, but please let this be a year where nothing or no one is more important to you than God Himself—this year may be a humbling one for you—and if you don’t want any more of the ‘fire’ maybe I should stop praying for you…
“Man after His heart.”
“Heights.”
“Refining fire.”
“Fire!”
These are my companions through life and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m living the life I could have only hoped for 33 years and a different lifetime ago. My wheelchair is an asterisk and paralysis a footnote.The real narrative of my life tells the Story of a faithful God who is using my brokenness as a means of taking me from glory to glory.
Thank you, Lord, for entrusting me with this life and teaching me about Your ways.
Here’s 33 things* I’ve learned about God in my school of suffering:
1. The refining process is tied to His purpose of our transformation and glorification
2. God is always faithful in the furnace; you may not always know what He’s up to, but you can always know He’s for you
3. God is always good and enduringly kind
4. He wastes nothing in making us holy
5. He redeems out of us each and every flaw
6. I am strongest when I’m utterly dependent on Him
7. When I weep, He weeps along with me
8. He never leaves me to face the dark valleys alone
9. Every trial and all suffering has a redemptive purpose
10. In the heat of adversity, God keeps His hand on the thermostat and His eye on the thermometer
11. Faithfully enduring trials invites us into deeper intimacy with the Father
12. It is not in suffering itself that brings glory but our voluntary, joyful acceptance of it
13. Broken people release the aroma of Christ’s love, healing and mercy
14. God only allows suffering when He is intent on birthing something new out of it
15. When we run from trial, or fight against it, greater works and blessings in us will be aborted
16. Each trial and hardship is accompanied by sufficient grace to enable us to overcome
17. To voluntarily endure suffering is proof that we belong to the Age to Come…it is the hostility of THIS age that works against us (and is the doorway into future glory!)
18. Suffering is the will of God
19. Suffering does not occur in a vacuum. It’s purpose is to unveil dedicated vessels to all creation to show forth the glory of God, so that all creation–every created thing–will know God has no equal and is infinitely wise, good and holy.
20. Our suffering adds greater punishment to the adversary’s destiny in eternal hell
21. When we faithfully stand in trial, the enemy is humiliated
22. The heavenly realm looks on in awe and reverence when the people of God express surrendered joy through trial
23. Our faithfulness in adversity strengthens the church as a whole and increases faith in others who witness it
24. When we suffer – and come through it – God will give us a platform to help others in their trial
25. Experiencing God’s faithfulness through our suffering makes sin and the sheen of this world less attractive
26. Our sufferings are always captured in prescribed, momentary seasons and the blessings are exponential and eternal
27. Suffering subtracts pride and multiples humility
28. The more you triumph in trial, the more courageous you become and the threats of the enemy become less intimidating
29. There’s no greater evangelical “tool” than for the unsaved to encounter a broken vessel that let’s the Light of Christ shine into the darkness!
30. The afflictions of this lifetime will determine the affluence of my eternity and the pains I endure here will reciprocate to pleasures compounded daily for eternity
31. Until faith has been tested in fire it cannot be trusted in life
32. God is more focused on my character than my comfort – but not at the expense of His being my Comforter!
33. Joyfully embracing brokenness leads to patience, gratitude and infectious hope
*Incidentally, I composed this list parked at my son’s graveside, having a chat with my boy
