A long time Christian once came to me to confide that his spiritual life was as good as dead; it was so lack luster that he had abandoned all attempts to get alone with God, to read the Bible or to pray.

He said, “I feel like I am walking alone in a desert, with no sight of water. I am fairly desperate.”

This was a young man who to all outward appearances had it all together. He was active in ministry and showed great enthusiasm in the things of God. Yet I could see in his eyes that he was earnest about his true spiritual condition.

As he was talking to me I was silently asking God for wisdom as to what to say to him. After listening to him for a few minutes, a question popped up in my mind.

I asked him, “May I ask, what is the last Christian book you ever read?”

I could tell the young man was more than a little surprised by my question. He answered that he once enjoyed reading, but now did not read much Christian material at all.

I pressed him further and he told me the title of the last Christian book he had read. I won’t mention the title here, for that is not really the issue. It could have been one of any number of books. I was familiar with the book he mentioned, and then asked him, “If I ask you to read something, would you do it?”

In desperation he said, “If you think it would help me Pastor, then yes, of course.”

I then said, “I have a book” and reached behind me to the shelf in my bookcase and pulled one down. “For the next month or so, please just take 10-15 minutes each day, and read this.”

He took the book and his face took on a very puzzled expression. It was not really a book about Christian devotion, per se. It was not a book about how to climb out of a spiritual rut.

The more he gazed at the book now in his hands, the more confused he became.

He asked, “What has this book got to do with my present struggle?”

I said, “Well, it does not address the issue you have directly, but I want you to trust me. Just commit to read it for 10-15 minutes each day until you get through it.”

He paused for a moment before saying, “ok, pastor, I trust you, and I promise, I will do it.”

We talked a little more, but within a few minutes he left my office. I remember praying that God would restore this young man’s spiritual fire and zeal… and that seemed to be that.

Less than three weeks later, I encountered this young man after a Church service. He looked very happy and asked, “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course,” I said.

He then proceeded to tell me that his spiritual life was back on track and that his best time of the day – the time he most looked forward to – was his alone time with God and His Bible.

I asked, “What happened?”

He said, “I’ve been reading the book you gave me. It has opened up to me treasures I have never seen before. I read something and then for the rest of the day, my mind is captivated by what I have read, and I find I am thanking God for the insight, and… well, I just feel so close to God just now. I am a different man from the one you saw in your office a few weeks ago. But Pastor…?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Can you explain to me what has happened?”

I said, “Well, God has been very gracious to you to draw You closer to Himself.”

“Yes, I know that, but can you tell me what happened to me?”

I said, “Well, I think so.”

I then went on to explain that when he told me what he had been reading previously, I would have to categorize the book like a spiritual meal without any vitamins. It was a book that had very little content – a lot of fluff – and although popular, was merely like a pep talk rather than something of substance.

I said, “Can you imagine a 21 year old coming home from a full day at work and being excited to sit down and watch Sesame Street?”

“No,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “the book you were reading (and many like them before) were, spiritually speaking, like watching Sesame Street. Like the TV show, it’s great for kids, but there’s something wrong if an adult finds all he needs in that show. There comes a time when someone needs to move on – a time to enjoy more than “C is for Cookie.” Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of the Cookie Monster. I think every child should get to know the Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie and the Count. But there comes a time when you put away childish things and reach for the things of adulthood.”

I went on, “The book I gave you was an introduction to an adult form of Christianity. In reading it, I knew it would challenge both your heart and your mind. It would show you things you had never seen before. It was easy to read, and not the arduous thing you might have imagined.”

“Wow, I can see that now. Thank you so much Pastor. Would you write down maybe 4 or 5 book titles that I can read over the next few months?”

“I would be glad to… Come to my office and I will write a few titles down for you.”

As Christians, we are called upon to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Of these, very little attention is given to the mind. Yet we love the Lord with our mind by thinking right thoughts about Him, learning and discovering treasures in His word, allowing our thoughts to go from the A, B, C’s of childhood, to the more weighty and meaty things of God.

“When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” 1 Cor. 13:11

Here is a short article by Pastor Joel Ellis entitled “The Books That Shape Us” – original source here – http://joelellis.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-books-that-shape-us.html

Some people do not like to read, but that is usually not their fault. They have never been taught how to read or given the permission to discover what they will love to read. I was fortunate to grow up in a reading household and to have considerable liberty in my reading selections–maybe too much, at times. I did not ask my parents if I could read a book. I simply found one on the shelf that looked interesting and plunged in. I didn’t enjoy school very much, but I loved the school library. The yearly visit of the Scholastic Book Fair was almost as good, and sometimes better, than Christmas, and when my elementary school class was not very interesting I found that I could hide an interesting book inside my textbook, at least, until the kid sitting behind me ratted me out. (I probably learned the book inside a book trick from reading about it… in a book.)

Everyone should enjoy reading because reading is one of the most important ways to grow as a human being, and if you don’t enjoy the discipline, you won’t do it for very long. That does not mean you should enjoy reading anything. Some of us have very eclectic tastes and can be happily occupied with many different types of literature. But just as every one should have a job at some point in their lives that is so unpleasant it clarifies for them the reasons they want to work hard so as not to end up in that kind of career, so everyone should read some books that help them learn what a good book is not and why we ought to be willing to work hard to find the good ones to read and enjoy.

People approach reading in different ways. I remember hearing an interview with John MacArthur several years ago in which he expressed astonishment that anyone would ever want to re-read a book. I was astonished by his astonishment. Have you really enjoyed a book you never want to read again? I might understand if the first taste was so perfect the reader dare not return because of the certainty of disappointment. But my own philosophy of reading was shaped largely by C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Mortimer Adler, so my reading life is largely a search for those “great books” that I plan to re-read for the rest of my life. A considerable percentage of my yearly reading is devoted to re-reading books I have read before, and there is a list of books I re-read every year. I don’t consider a book very valuable if I will only profit from reading it once, and there are many books you must read once to discover they were worth reading at all. But that being said, we cannot afford to be too picky if we enjoy reading and read widely. Some reading should simply be mind candy, the kind of book whose only profit is the entertainment that it brings. Oreos can be enjoyed–and are always best enjoyed dipped in a cup of coffee–but they should not be eaten too frequently or in great proportion compared to the rest of one’s diet. The same is true of the kind of reading that passes the time but does not speak to the soul.

Great books are our teachers, and good books are our companions. Poor books are obstacles we meet along the way. If you are a Christian, there is one book you will love, even if you do not love any other. That, of course, is the Bible. But if you know the value of reading, there will be many others you also find profitable. Books contain the wisdom of the ages, and its foolishness. They allow us to participate in conversations with those wiser than we are and to discover that neither publication nor the passage of time can make a poor thinker or bad writer (which are actually the same thing) into a good one. We dare not trust our own wisdom or the very limited pool of people each of us knows. We love our friends and associates, but not many of them are writing books or emails or Facegram posts that will be read one hundred years from now, much less a thousand. No matter how wise and good-natured you may be, you probably do not want me calling to chat at three o’clock in the morning, but Chesterton never seems to mind when I do so.

Life is too short to read everything, and most of what has been written is not worth reading anyway. One must be selective. If you care to depress yourself, you can easily calculate roughly how many books you have left to read in whatever is left of your lifetime. We do not want to waste too many of those, so I prefer to continue conversing with the authors I know will not disappoint me and the works that no matter how many times I have read them still have much to teach me. We should never grow tired of visiting Narnia or trudging through Middle Earth on the way to Mordor. We need to be regularly reminded not merely of Christian and Christiana’s story, but that their story is our story, and that other saints have walked the path our feet are following today. We have much still to learn in the school of Calvin and the Puritans and Bavinck and Schaeffer. There are more questions to ask Aristotle and Plato, and we need to hear more stories about the history of God’s providence in the events of this world. We can do all of this simply by picking up a book and reading it well.

We are not reading for entertainment, though we should find it entertaining. We read because we are incomplete, ignorant, and cold-hearted, and it is the stories and truths we find in great books (and some good ones) that teach, shape, equip, and sustain us. They are instruments in the Redeemer’s hand. I do not spend so much of my life reading books because I enjoy it, I enjoy so much of my life because I spend it reading.