Balance Your Reading of Good books | Clip from Recommended Reading for 2022

Well, let's talk about balance when it comes to good

Christian books. So maybe, I usually give lists of don'ts.

I find those easier to focus on, but I'm going to try to be positive this morning, and I'm going to give a list of do's, all right?

Do. Some good things to do to balance your diet as you read, okay? Let me just run through these real quickly.

Number one, do read from different periods of Christian history. So Jeremy, let me just,

I think probably if I can run through this, and then if you could pick out a few that you found most helpful for you, then we can hit them that way.

So do read from different periods of Christian history. Number two, do read some of the more, you know,

I'm going to call them brainy books, you know, more intellectual, as well as the simple, warm books of Christianity.

Number three, do balance those categories that we mentioned before, objective truths, you know, warm devotional books, and very practical how to live out the

Christian life books. So do try to hold a balance of all three categories. Number four, do try to have a way that you maintain or retain things that you're learning as you're reading.

So I have my own little system. It's not very high tech, you know, but if each person will kind of try to develop a system for retaining what they're learning.

And finally, do read before the face of the Lord, asking

Him, you know, engaging with God while you're reading a book that a man wrote. And one of my favorite illustrations, well, a couple of them, one is

Tozer. Tozer said that he used to read Shakespeare on his knees.

Tozer did not have a good education. So he was trying to educate himself on how to communicate. And he said he felt the best way to do that would be to read the great communicators throughout the centuries.

So obviously, Shakespeare was a wordsmith. So Tozer read him, but Tozer said,

I would read him on my knees and plead with the Lord to teach me how to express truth, even through a man that, you know, isn't really speaking about the gospel at all.

Another example is McShane. McShane at university was struggling with math, maths.

And he said he would do his mathematic problems, praying to God and talking to God all through his maths lessons, asking the

Lord to help him. So it doesn't have to be a particularly spiritual task, but we do it before the face of the

Lord. And certainly that ought to come into our Christian reading. So, Jeremy, of those things, any of those kind of jump out at you as things that you found helpful?

Absolutely. Yeah, two or three for me in particular. You mentioned reading from different periods of Christian history.

I think that's vital. I would particularly encourage people to get back also to the church fathers.

Now, I know there are some dangers there and some of that's cropping up today. But read across the span of Christian history, not just, as you say, a particular century or a particular person or a particular author or a particular school or a particular area of theology.

You know, you'll get, guys, what have you been reading? I've been reading covenant theology. Well, for how long?

For a couple of years now. Anything else? No. So how are you going to connect that to, or I'm more of a systematics than a biblical.

Well, actually, you don't want to become an imbalanced reader.

So I think across the range of history and then across the range of theology, not in the sense of good and bad, but in the sense of different disciplines, different aspects and sometimes certainly different schools.

I'm not saying you want to drink poison alongside of the tonic, but you don't always have to read people that you always entirely agree with.

And that's where I come on to the second thing that I think is particularly helpful. Read the books. Sometimes think of it in three levels.

Read the books that just offer everything up on a plate. All you've got to do is put it in your mouth and the good stuff's right there.

Read some things that exercise you. You feel yourself developing a bit of a sweat, but it's doing you good.

And then read some of the stretching books. Read some of the ones that you feel are beyond you because that will develop your capacity.

And then the third one that I find particularly helpful is really almost have a conversation with that book.

Now, sometimes you don't want to do that. Sometimes you just, I just want to be taught. I just want to be,

I just want to sit here and take. And that's not wrong. But what I would call a kind of a critical reading.

So develop a system whereby you can almost have a conversation with the book and you're asking questions and you're saying,

I agree with this, or I'm struggling with this, or how does this tie in with this? Or where does this fit into the argument?

So that as you're working through the text, it's not a passive process, but one in which you are actively engaged.

And that's where I think, again, to go back to your last point, pleading with God for illumination, asking for light, especially when you're reading something that is more difficult, more demanding, that is perhaps more humbling, more instructive.

Lord, press these things into my soul. Give me understanding that I may keep your law. I think one principle behind what you just mentioned is, you know, we could ask ourselves this question, am

I reading just for pleasure? You know, so am I using good Christian books for like, you know, a quick pick me up, an emotional bump, or am

I reading for the glory of God? And that will mean that sometimes I do have to read people that are hard work.

I mean, I just find myself drifting into lazy reading where I read the same era.

So 18th century or Puritans, because like you said, it's like they give you so much so quickly and you're used to the way they speak.

I've often encouraged folks in the church who are picking up reading for the first time, don't give up in the first three chapters.

I have to say that to myself when I pick up an author I've never read before. Now, I don't mean that I can't understand his

English, but I may not like the way he expresses truth. It's not the way that, you know, it's not the way that the

Puritans did. And I have this, I find this emotional reaction. I think, why do you say it that way?

Why didn't you just get to the point? Why do we have to have all these stories about your family before you even say anything spiritual?

You know, and I get frustrated and I find that you can become kind of an old codger, an old grumpy old reader, you know, where you're very self -indulgent.

Yeah. And it's not just, there's a style thing lower down as well. There's the sort of the rhythms of speech.

And again, that can reflect the period in which you're reading that, you know, you read these sentences that are as long as paragraphs and paragraphs that last for three or four pages and pages that, but you say, okay, but if I get the hang of it, it's like listening to a new preacher perhaps, or you're finding the rhythm.

Okay. This is how he writes. These are, this is his kind of vocabulary. This is how he constructs his sentences.

And even if you're not formally analyzing that, there's a familiarity that develops and your speed and your comprehension both pick up.

Yeah. And we've talked before in podcasts, I've talked about, you know, like you mentioned, there are some books that we read that we will not fully agree with, and we're not reading them to bring everything they say into our home of our soul.

We're meeting a lot of them on the front porch, you know, and we're discussing there, but you know what you mentioned about really entering into a book, really having a conversation with the author that is hard work, but it is some books require that.

And some books will pay great dividends. If you'll do that, I remember a very popular book, um, about 20 years ago from a good guy, but not a book that I could agree completely with.

And I, everyone was reading it. And so I thought, okay, so I'll read it. I read it through. And there were, there were a lot of ways that he expressed himself that bothered me.

So I was tempted to just close it and say, I'm going to go read someone I trust completely, but I stuck with it.

I read through it. And there were, there were things that bothered me. I went back and then I read through it.

Like you say, having a discussion with the author. I'm not, this was a good, this is a good man, you know?

And so it's not like I'm antagonistic to him, but I'm questioning a lot of his phrases.

Why, why, why would you say it this way? What do you mean when you say it this way? And I found that it took months to work through the book that way.

But when I got to the end, I had answers for every question that I had for the author and I had real benefit from the book.

So yeah, lazy reading doesn't always help. One of the things that from my little list that I gave, one of the things that I have found most beneficial to the point that I find it difficult to read without is

I do generally keep a reading journal and I'm fairly unsystematic about that.

You know, if I were systematic about it, I don't know, I wouldn't even know what to do with it, you know, how I'm not organized.

So I've got a journal and maybe it's, you know, dated. So, you know, in 2021 things

I was reading. Other times I use, you know, a journal and I'll just say, well, I'll put on the front of the journal, which authors are recorded.

I always write down things that I'm learning. If you give me a book and I'm not allowed to have a pen in my hand,

I feel like I have no way to benefit. So it's just become a habit.

And if I don't have a notebook, I just write in the book. Now, some people feel that this is a horrible crime, but I can tell everywhere

I've read in a book because there is writing all up and down and around and, you know, symbols everywhere.

And so I can quickly go back, but that's how I try to retain it. Others probably have a more systematic and, you know, updated version.

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