A mom of toddlers saw me reading at our neighborhood pool and asked me if the day would ever come when she would be able to sit at the pool and read. I laughed and told her I remember wondering the same thing when my boys were little. I happen to be in a season of life where I read nine books (pictured) in nine weeks. It’s okay if you’re not in such a season, and it’s okay if you can take on more reading. The point is to learn and grow from what you are able to read. And as you’ll read at the end of this post, the main point I want to encourage you toward is to learn and grow from the one book that has authority over your life.
The nine books in the featured image for this post are great reads filled with much wisdom. (The only theology book listed that I differ from at points, with the exception of his first chapter on the problem of evil, is Strobel’s The Case for Faith.) I could go on and on about each of these books.
- My fifth grade son’s literature book was The Westing Game, a similar storyline to Knives Out or Clue. His class finished the school year with the book, and he enjoyed it so much he wanted me to read it over the summer so we could dialogue about the twisting, humorous, and heartfelt plot.
- Why Should I Believe Christianity?, Covenantal Apologetics, and Foundations of the Christian Faith are books I read to prepare for the Bible classes I’ll be teaching this upcoming school year. I read The Case for Faith because I was curious how it compared to Rebecca McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity, which I read during the school year and highly recommend. McLaughlin gives a more copious approach than Strobel to the main questions that can keep people from placing their faith in Christ.
- The Girl Who Smiled Beads, written by a refugee who fled Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, was my school’s required summer read. This true story will break your heart, and if it doesn’t, you probably should ask yourself why.
- Sissy Goff, author of Raising Worry-Free Girls, is one of my husband’s co-workers. My niece asked me at the beach why I was reading this book since I’m a mom of boys. I smiled and told her it’s because Sissy is a brilliant counselor and understands girls, and I teach a lot of girls.
- Dear White Christian (I mentioned in my last blog post) and The Color of Compromise address systemic racism. Racism is an issue. To ignore it is not Christian, but we must center the discussion around the gospel.
I read over 2500 pages this summer, wrote one Bible course for the upcoming school year (using Boice’s Foundations of the Christian Faith), had two amazing vacations with my family, and watched plenty of baseball, but nothing compares to the time I spent with the Lord. These nine books I’m highlighting on this post are worthy of ordering from Amazon right now. They, however, are not authoritative over our lives and the Christian authors would agree with that statement. The sixty-six books which make up God’s spoken Word to us are our authority. Even people who suppress this truth know this truth because
- We are created beings, which means we are not in charge. We want to be the authority in our own lives but that is not our design. We were all created and made in the image of God. We bear his thumbprint. If my own children denied my husband and me as their parents, our DNA still makes up their DNA. Denying us as their parents does not mean we are not their parents just as someone denying the God of the Bible does not mean he is not their Creator.
- We are told we are created beings in the Bible, and the Bible itself claims to be authoritative and the very spoken word of God. In Foundations of the Christian Faith, Boice writes about how there is no distinction between “the Bible says” and “God says” (p.28-29). God reveals himself to us in his Word. The Bible is God’s speech. He is speaking to us about himself through the Bible. As if that weren’t enough, he then brings himself to us through the person of Jesus, both fully God and fully man. Jesus testified to the authority of the Scriptures. He proclaimed the Scriptures are God’s spoken word and he proclaimed he was the Word of God in the flesh. Then he showed he was the authority on the subject by conquering death and raising himself from the dead.
These two points are why people instinctively know that behavior such as murder and rape are evil and wrong. The authority of the Bible tells us that such evil acts do not reflect the image of God in us.
So, why do I bring up the Bible? Because as important as it is to be well-informed and to grow in knowledge, nothing compares to how God’s Word speaks to us, moves us, changes us, and causes growth in us.
I want to leave you with this quote from Anderson in Why Should I Believe in Christianity? “Speech is the primary means by which we relate to one another . . . [Since] God is personal and unlimited in power, then surely God is also able to speak, even if the manner in which God speaks differs from ours. How could God create us with the power to verbally communicate and yet lack that power Himself? . . . If a personal God is going to enter into personal relationships with His personal creatures, and the normal means of initiating and sustaining personal relationships is through language, then we should expect God to speak to us” (p.146-47).
God is initiating and sustaining a personal relationship with you by speaking with you through his written Word. Please read it. Seek out the source of your life by reading his words. He has so much he wants to say, so much he wants to reveal, so much love he wants you to experience to where you don’t run to other things or other relationships because you’re so filled up with him.
Read. Read a lot if you’re not chasing around toddlers at the pool, but understand that only one piece of literature is authoritative over your life because it is the very Word of God.