Four Consistent Reads

There are four things I think every Christian should consistently read about.  If they read no more than four books a year, those four books should deal with the following subjects:

1. God or Theology proper – Read books on the attributes of God and the nature of God.  If worship is intense without this, it is false.  If it is apathetic, this is where to begin.  When people encounter God the last thing they are is bored.
2. Sin – Know the bane of your soul.  If affections for Christ as your Savior are small I would venture that you know little of the horrors of sin you were rescued from.  If you don’t want to study sin, ask yourself why.  I believe the answer, the true answer, will be deeply convicting.
3. Jesus Christ (His life, death, and resurrection), The Cross, Soteriology – It is no shame for a new Christian to have to learn some terminology that is foreign to them; it is a shame for aged Christians not to have an understanding of justification, redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, regeneration, and penal substitutionary atonement.  If you read only one book a year, make it a book about the cross of Christ.
4. Christian Biography – Especially missionary biography.  Hero standards have been dumbed down.  Reading good Christian Biographies will elevate them.  Christian Biography is a great balm for both pride and discouragement.   Pride because when I think I have really done something a glimpse, just a glimpse of someone like John Paton will waken me to my foolishness; discouragement because they were just men.  What He has done once in a Whitefield he can do again through some humble servant.  Admire not the men of God more than the God of men.  Admire them not in themselves, but in their reflecting – they are all lunar, God is solar.