Don't Buy Christian Books from Amazon! | 10ofThose

Opening Giveaway and Episode Introduction

Well, hello everyone. I know that you clicked on this episode expecting to see Sean's beautiful face and hear Jonathan Carswell's amazing accent, and you will. But first, I have to tell you about a giveaway that we're doing, because the kind people at Ten of Those have offered to give away 10 sets, that's right, 10 sets of J .C. Ryle's Expository Thoughts on the Gospel.

That's seven books cloth bound with bookmarks and a really nice case to you if you do three things. One, you got to share this episode. Get the word out. Two, you have to like and follow us on all social media.

That means YouTube too. You got to subscribe. And then three, you got to tag somebody in the comments so that they can do the same thing and have an opportunity to win this set. I hope you'll do it. I hope you enjoy the set.

If you win it, we'll make sure to get in contact with you and let you know. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode of Ten of Those.

Returning Guest, Prayer, and British Accent Banter

Number two. We're back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean DeMars,.

And I'm here with a return guest. Yeah, having me once, it means you've forgiven or forgotten me to have me back. Is this just in life? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you want to tell people your name? Yeah, I'm Jonathan, Jonathan Carswell.

Will you open us in prayer, brother? Gladly, yeah. Thank.

You. Father, we thank you for your goodness to us, your love and mercy and grace, which we don't deserve, but we're so grateful for it. Thank you for the Lord Jesus, his death for us, his resurrection.

We long for his return. We pray as we talk now that you would help us pray. Our tongues can be helpful or divisive, but we pray, Father, that our conversation would be seasoned with salt and the things we say would be pure and true and helpful, God-honoring.

We pray this in your.

Powerful name. Amen. Amen. There's just something about somebody praying in a British accent. I just.

Feel like I make you more godly. I need all the help I can get. I'm just a little closer to the.

Throne, I feel like. Do you know William McKenzie? I do, yeah. The guy, the owner of Christian Focus? Yeah, yeah. I've prayed with him twice now, and I'm just like, brother, don't ever stop.

No, well, that is holiness rather than accent, because I can't understand what he's saying, but I know he's holy. You can't understand what he's saying? Oh, no, it's a whole different place. Oh, man. Yeah, I know you think it's just all the same, but he's actually from a different.

Country. I think we're going to have to subtitle what you're saying right now, because I'm very

Please do. I was given advice when I first came to the States. Somebody said, um, never let on that you're common, because in America they'll think you're posh, and so I've never told anybody that actually I'm very common, but

What do you mean by that, common? Common, so like a working class or kind of not very educated. So that's me, but so I'm not like, I'm not related to the king. Right, yeah. Well, I'm related to one king, but not King Charles, that's right.

So, but yeah, and so people think I speak very eloquently and English-like and

Yes, now you remember from our last interview that I can do accents from all over the UK.

How could I forget? I mean, it's marked in my memory. Let's just do one more. Name a region.

Well, why don't you do Birmingham? Okay, now you got to listen carefully for this one. Yeah, I remember it was very careful last time. Yeah, very nuanced. Hello, governor? Oh, there we go, uncanny. That was Birmingham.

It was Birmingham, of course it was. Nailed it. We didn't even have to say. Now, I can also do like, um, Australia or South Africa. Right. I can do really any, you know. Indian, can you do Indian? I can, but I'm afraid.

Yeah, that's why I suggested it. Yes. All right, we did not bring you back on just to riff about how terrible your English accent is, although we could continue to do that. It's just, America took your language and made it better as we took so many things from your tiny.

Little island and made it better. Do you know, I'm a guest here, so keep going, brother. Well,.

Don't you live here now? I do, yeah. Yeah, so I live in Chicago. So you're not really a guest.

In the States? No, I'm not. Well, ask the TSA agents. They'll say I'm a guest. Okay. Oh, I tell you. Do you not have your citizenship? Oh, no, it's a long old process. So, no, I'm on a five-year visa that just got extended, though that process took four months, including a couple of shakedowns from the TSA, but if they're listening, you know, we love you and thank you for your help and your service.

But, no, so I'm on a five, another five-year visa and, and then, then you go green card for 10 years and then it's citizenship. So, yeah. Long.

For the best. Now, for your sake, yes. All right. So we brought you back on the show to talk more about books. Yeah. The title of your last episode was The Christian Book Guy. Yeah, yeah. Did you.

Feel the weight of that title on your shoulders? I did. It's why it's taken so long to, well, it's one of the reasons why it's taken so long to come back because I was just recovering from that,.

But yeah. Yeah, I think your episode was one of those surprise hits, like, you know, we've had Rosario Butterfield on and, you know, Jonathan Lehman and, and, and we have, like, Al Moller's.

Coming out soon. You have big names and no names and I'm one of the no names. That's what I'm.

Saying. Yeah. Essentially, you just brought us right to the point. But, like, I just, like, Matt Schmucker's interview was like that. Like, I did not expect Matt Schmucker's interview to be so widely appreciated and a lot of people were like, man, that Christian Book Guy interview was awesome.

They didn't remember your name, by the way. Have you spoken to my mom? Because she loved it. Did you love it? Yeah. And so I figured let's, because I love Christian books, you love Christian books, we think that the Lord really uses Christian books.

You've kind of given your whole life. This is your ministry because you think the Lord uses Christian books. Let's bring Jonathan back on and talk more about that. Well, bless you. Thank you for having me.

What 10ofThose Is and Why Christian Books Matter

Now, before we get into individual Christian books, if in case, because we've grown a little since your first interview, in case anyone doesn't know what 10 of those is, give them the rundown.

Yeah, so it starts as a hobby in my bedroom. I was a youth pastor and it came really from a passion to see people reading books that hold to the Bible. There's loads out there and a lot can take you away from scripture, even though it's kind of Christian publishing and these sorts of things.

And so we wanted a place where people could shop knowing that maybe they hadn't heard of the author or the publisher or they'd not seen that book before, but they knew they could trust what was there because there was a team who were carefully vetting it.

And so we do, we road test what we sell. We know it holds to the Bible. We discount it with the idea that more can go out. And then we use our profits to support areas in the world that otherwise, you know, resources couldn't be afforded.

So we like to say people are tithing when they shop with us. If they shop with us in the States, it's only a dollar shipping. Again, we do that and people say, how do you do it? Well, you kind of, yeah, we lose every time we do it, but it's to try and make it as frictionless as possible to get stuff that will point you to Jesus.

It's our firm belief that if you can be reading things that are going to point you to Jesus, that can have a significant impact on your Christian growth and therefore on your life and your godliness, how you go about day-to-day living, the decisions you make, whether it be money or the person you marry or where you live is all impacted as you get to know God and understand Him, relate to Him and then worship Him differently.

And that's what we're seeking to do with books. We want people to grow in their knowledge of Him, not so that they're just puffed up in knowledge, but that it impacts their daily life. And so, yeah, everything from how they wake up in the morning to what they talk to their about is being shaped by the books they're reading.

Now, number one, we want people to be reading God's Word. We never want people to be reading Christian books at the expense of reading their.

Bible. And I think that is a danger. Spurgeon said, visit many good books, but live in the Bible.

Yeah, that's right. And that is a challenge. Sometimes it is much easier to pick up the, you know, the latest release from your favorite author, but actually meet God in His Word and then use books to support your reading of God's Word.

And so that's what we want to do. Christian books push people back to the Bible. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're wanting to get as much out as as is possible. There is one underlying passion for us, though, that all of what I've said is kind of the foundation.

But if I could only sell one type of book in the Christian world, I'd want to sell evangelistic books because, you know, came here today, sat next to somebody. If she doesn't know Jesus, she will spend all eternity in hell.

And I have an opportunity in the day and age that I live in that not only can I speak to her, but I could give something that when we're long gone and gone our different ways, she has the means of the gospel still being spoken to her because I can put something into her hands that would point her to Jesus.

So we have a deep passion for that. And we could perhaps talk.

About that later. Did you give her anything? You know, I didn't. She wasn't too interested,.

But I did have one this week. We were trying to get a quote for some windows and a guy came and we have a big yellow 10 of those van parked out front. And they always say, oh, you know, what's 10 of those?

And the way it reads is it looks like a hundred foot hose. So they think that I'm a plumber or something, but yeah, I got chatted with him. I was able to give him something. He emailed later on that day and said, you know, I have a commitment to read a book a month.

So I'm going to make this my book this month. And I just don't know, you know, he says that maybe he was just trying to sell me something, but who knows? It's just little seeds. And if I can scatter.

A lot of little seeds, then maybe the Lord will water and bring fruit. I used to keep in my trunk copies of different books based on who I thought they would be a better fit for. So I kept more than a carpenter by Josh McDowell.

I kept their reason for God by Tim Keller, mere Christianity, a couple other ones. And I would just always like, okay, I think this guy probably needs to hear from Keller. He'll probably speak to him more than a carpenter is probably better for this guy, but I would just always want to have a book on hand because you're exactly right.

I can only talk to this guy for so long, but that book can stay with him. I gave the reason for God to my tattoo artist. I've been working her over for a couple months and I finally was like, this is my last tattoo that we're going to have together.

If it means you can share the gospel, just cover up. But yeah, I feel with literature, whether it's tracks, booklets, books, whatever kind of is appropriate. I think they can do three things. I think they can open the door of conversation.

So you can get started by offering something. They can continue the conversation. So that example of, you know, once they're long gone, they can keep reading it. Or maybe you're in a relationship with somebody and you see them regularly, a neighbor, a colleague, you can perhaps read it together and say, hey, why don't we meet for a coffee?

So it can continue the conversation. It can also close the conversation. So yeah, the salesman, I probably never see him again, not with the price he gave me anyway, but you know, it's, I can close the conversation by saying, thanks for coming and, and, and giving you a quote, et cetera.

But you know, here's what I could give you. And those three things, opening, continuing and closing the conversation, I think literature can do.

This is going to sound self-promotional. Interpret me at your best, at my best, the rebel to your will. It has been so easy for me to give away. I just been, it's been, it's been such a fantastic evangelistic tool.

I can just tell people like, Hey, I wrote a book. I know this is kind of whatever, but like, it's my story and we're friends. And if you want to know more about me, like read it. And I wrote it in such a way that they're going to get the gospel five or six times in there.

So interestingly, you might think that a book that I wrote about my own life would make it more difficult to give away, but actually it's kind of freed me up.

And the length is good because you know, that's not daunting. It's not, Hey, can you commit 10 hours to this? It's like actually two to three hours. You're going to get this and you get the, get the gospel.

I'm not a fan of self-publishing at all. I think if it's good enough, get it published, but that's, that can be a different episode. Well, let's have a conversation about.

That. Okay. I am writing just me and you. Yeah. Nobody else. Well, it's the episode I'm on, so it will be nobody else. So I have written two books that I think are good that I don't think any Christian publisher is interested in publishing.

Right. And I don't know what to do about that. Okay. One of them, I think I've changed the name of the title, Luke, by the way, funny for Jesus. Imagine if rebel to your will, we're not like really dark and tragic and painful, but actually like really funny, sort of like a self, like a memoir, but like hilarious.

And are they your, are they your jokes that are in there? They're my, they're my jokes, all original to me. I think you're right. I'm not sure anybody would want to.

Ouch and well played. But the, but, but in all seriousness, well, I guess a little bit more seriousness, the jokes are intended to communicate a theology of humor and I've kind of sent it around to the usual suspects and it's just so outside of the box for Christian publishers that they're just not interested in it.

You know, I love this quote. Do you know the name Warren Wearsby? Sounds weird, sounds weird, but no. No. So he was, he was at Moody church in.

Chicago before Lutzer was on back to the Bible when that used to exist. And they said that 10 people a day listened to him preach. But anyway, he has a line of, in ministry, there is rarely room. Oh no, let me get this right.

There is no room for comedy, but there is room for humor. And I've thought about that many times because when we do our book plugs at conferences and churches, we seek to use humor in a, in a correct way because it connects people.

You know, you talk with somebody, you talk with somebody and you make them smile, you make them laugh in an appropriate way, humor rather than comedy. Actually, it's often an opening of their, of their heart or the conversation to be able to then share of serious things.

I think what is difficult is switching from, from comedy to serious. And so when it comes to evangelism, it's why an evangelistic evening that's preceded by a, a comic or a, you know, open mic night often doesn't work because we're talking about something very serious, but there is room for humor in, in ministry, I think so.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I'm trying to do is use humor as a device to actually teach on a theology of humor because it just, it wouldn't match. Have you got an example? I'll send you the manuscript, but it wouldn't match the warp in the woof of the book to teach a theology of humor as like, well, point number one, humor is ontologically this and point number two humor is teleologically this.

It's kind of like, if we're going to talk about a theology of laughter and joy and mirth and funny things, we have to do it in such a way that I think actually embodies that. But again, it's just so outside of the norm of how Christian publishers are thinking about publishing theology books, you know, but like, I know that there's a market out there for it.

Like there are some fantastic humorists who sell a lot of books, you know, we need to take our theology very seriously, but not take ourselves seriously. That's right. Quote Mark Driscoll much or is that what he says?

Yeah. He's the first person I heard it. Right. Okay. Yeah. I, well, there you go. There you go. That's that'll help the ratings. We're just going to clip that just, yeah. Okay. Enough about me back to you.

Why Christians Should Not Buy Books from Amazon

Hey, real quick before, Oh, by the way, if you have any more questions about Jonathan Carswell and 10 of those and all of that, go back and watch our first episode. Cause we talk about it for like two hours and I thought it was a really great interview.

Real quick. Tell us why Amazon is from Satan and why people should buy from 10 of those.

It's not necessarily from Satan. I do like they, they have no interest. Wait, wait, wait, hold on.

You are trying to softball this, but when I posted an Amazon link on my Facebook page, one time you emailed me and you were like, what are you doing? You are feeding the beast. Yeah.

All right. They have no interest in your spiritual health whatsoever. Why would you? Sounds like Satan. Yeah. Why, like, why would you entertain that now? Okay. They're convenient. I get that, but you can live without buying from Amazon.

I haven't bought from Amazon for 17 years. You can survive. Um, they, they, so they are convenient. They, they are behind the scenes. There, there's a dark arts of them marginalizing and pushing out Christian publishers and, and good theology.

They do it deliberately and they do it subconsciously, but they have no interest in your spiritual health. What I would say is I don't care where you buy your Christian books from, but give it some consideration as to how more Christian books are going to go out.

And, and that isn't by feeding their space mission. It is by going directly to the publisher. It is going to places like ourselves and others that, that are investing their money in things that you care about.

And you are just giving them money to invest in things that are, are against what you fundamentally believe. And if, and if you have not seen this.

Interview or the previous interview, you could say, Oh, I just didn't know that things like this existed. But now you do know there's, and you, I'm sure would be happy to promote like Westminster books.

And yeah, just if you're going to give your money, if you have the ability to give your money to one or one of these two companies, give it to the Christian one. Right. And we can do.

Things that Amazon can't do and don't, don't do. So. Such as? So you have a seven-year-old son who's, who's not engaged with the Bible. Call us up, ask us, what would you get my seven-year-old son to help him get into the Bible?

Give me some advice. Would you send me a sample to have a look at? These sorts of things. Have you been to a Christian conference? Is there a bookstore there? It's not Amazon who are trawling around the country to put up bookstores of carefully curated Christian books at those events.

Those, those sorts of things. Supplying your church bulk discount. Amazon don't offer bulk discount. Supporting missions around the world that couldn't afford it. Amazon are not writing a check to, to those, to those places.

In fact, even their charity, their, their not-for-profit work smile, they scrapped. They're not even doing that. And so I, yeah, I, I've started off British. I'm now going to go all out American. I would encourage you with all my might, don't shop at Amazon.

Shop at places that are going to support ministry. They're going to further the, the, your heart of, of ministry and do it in ways that is.

Way beyond Amazon and other places. I like the American you better than the British you. Do you?

Okay. All right. We'll go for it. Let's see. I prayed at the start that we'd watch our tongue.

And so I'm not sure the two fit, but yeah, no, no, no. You've not said anything unbecoming. Okay. Not yet. Yeah, not yet. Yeah. Keep listening. All right. So we're going to talk about books that we love, authors that we love and for the rest of this episode, we're just going to try to get people excited about certain books.

Does that sound like, so let's just start off. Well, I think we're, we're going big. Well, I just figure based on your patter so far, people are probably going to tune out pretty quickly. Great. Yeah.

Let's just right at the outset, highlight the thing that I think you're most excited about right now, which is for, I'm going to try to hold this up for the camera, the JC Ryle commentary on the gospels.

So you love JC Ryle in general, but you are particularly love in love with this JC Ryle gospel set. I'm holding it up. The cameras can see it. Uh, it, the quality is, I mean, yeah, you tell us about this, but let me just say whatever you say.

I agree. It's true.

Bless you. All right. Well, JC Ryle, so he was a Brit. That isn't the only reason to like him. But if you haven't heard of JC Ryle, he was an evangelical Anglican Bishop in, he was the first Bishop in, in Liverpool.

He, in terms of his personal life, he was married three times, I believe, two, two of, three of his wives died. All three of them, well, of course they died, but they died while he was alive. And he, he suffered, his father went bankrupt and he had to work to kind of help his father financially.

But I think he was one of the finest expositors that certainly Britain has ever had. Um, what he was able to do was to present deep truth in a way that the average person could understand. Um, and so he, the books that people know, like holiness or thoughts for young men, uh, simplicity in preaching.

Yeah. And that's just a little booklet. I mean, most of these were booklets. Buy a hundred of those and give them away. Yeah. Um, but his expository thoughts, he goes through all four gospels in seven volumes.

Yeah. We've tried to do it really nicely. They've got it's cloth overboard, ribbon marker, gold foil comes in a box set. We've sought to keep the price really, really low. So I think you can get it for $99 or you can get a couple for, I know 99, which is super cheap for people.

People may not understand how nice this actually is, but that's a really good deal.

It's a great, it's a great price, but the content. So what he does is in each section, you have, uh, maybe seven to 10 verses and then he just, he just walks you through it, but it is not, it's not heady and heavy.

It is, it's light. It's it's, but it's rich. I describe it as like a steak dinner that you've, you've, you know, you're going out for an anniversary meal. It is a, you know, the best meal of the year.

And then it's just chopped up nicely into digestible pieces. Whenever I go to the gospels, I have this, I think I've gone through it maybe three or four times now. And every passage there's just, Oh, you know, I read back to my wife, Oh, listen to what he just said here.

It's just there's great depth in it. Our passion, I mean, you can get versions of this, particularly in the older English though, his English isn't, it's not like Spurgeon and kind of a bit treacly. It's kind of, you know, you can get through this anyway, but we've sought to just lighten the text a little, modernize it a little bit.

And, um, but our passion with this was how can we get a young generation using Ryle as not only a sort of devotional commentary for their own edification, but also for an example of what it is to, to exposit scripture closely and carefully, but in a way that is at the level that the average person can understand.

And I think probably more than anybody of his generation, Ryle did that. There are examples today of people who do that superbly, but I just, I love how Ryle does it. You read him and you think, is this guy wrote this last week?

You know, it is that sort of level. I.

Love it. So, well, uh, it's available on 10ofthose .com and you can go on and buy 10 if you.

So please. And what I would say, and I mean this with, with all my heart, if you look at anything, I'm not convinced or I can't afford it or whatever. My email is Jonathan at 10ofthose .com. Tell us what you can afford and we'll send it to you.

We genuinely mean that.

Amazon won't do that. There you go. They've got a space race to pay for. What they will do is they'll say it's Black Friday. Here's a deal where they, they artificially inflate the prices by 40 and then reduce them by 45 and then say, here's a deal for you.

And what they will,.

What they will do is they'll say to us, you ship it to us. We'll sit, we'll sit in our warehouse. We'll pay you 60 days after we've sold it. And Oh, by the way, we can return it at any point.

At 10 of those is expense. Oh no. Yikes. Okay. Well, um, let's just go, let's do a little back and forth on books that we love books that have changed our lives. Hopefully books that are.

Available on 10 of those. Sure. Cause you read widely and deeply. You like, how often, like how.

Many books are you reading a year? Uh, last year I read 130. There you go. But, uh, many of those were audio books. Okay. I think it counts too. I'm dyslexic. It definitely counts. You need.

Everything you can get. Yeah, that's right. And how do you approach your reading? Do you like map out? This is what I want to read in the year, or this is my next two, two months. How does it,.

I would really love to be able to be the kind of person that could do that, but I am just not now being a pastor means that very often, uh, I will have my reading dictated for me a small percentage of it.

But like, if our elders are going through something for an issues meeting, I'll have to read that book. And that will kind of push up, push aside certain books that I might be more interested in at a given moment.

If we're doing like elders training, I'll read that stuff. And that will kind of push us to. So like, uh, earlier this year, we read through all of Wayne Grudem's like thousand plus word ethics textbook.

Wow. Even Wayne's not read that. I agree. Yes. Um, helpful. Was it good? Dude, it's fantastic. It's it's yeah, it was superb. Obviously you don't agree with every conclusion he reaches, but the clarity, the rudeness in scripture, so on and so forth.

But I would say even on that, if you're reading people that you agree with every word on, I think there's an issue because there's only one book that has no error in it.

And even then sometimes you're going to read it and you'd be like, I don't know if I agree. Bible confronts you, of course. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, and then, um, like if I know that I have an interview coming up with like a guy who like, I know that this book is going to be good.

I want to help him promote it. Then I'll read that book if I were not to otherwise read it. But then other than that, it's basically just whatever I'm interested in at the moment. So it could go history.

It could be fiction. It could be theology. It's just whatever. No, not all Christian. Um, I would say probably 50 Christian and then 50 other stuff. Right. Yeah. Okay. So back to books that have changed our lives.

You want to do another one?

Uh, yeah. So, um, I read years ago, true discipleship by McDonald.

I don't agree with everything in it. It's now McDonald. Yeah. Like Ronald. No, not Ronald.

Uh, I only said his last name cause I couldn't remember his first name, but thank you for highlighting that. I couldn't, um, uh, I want to say it's gone from me. So it's okay. Anyway, it's gospel folio press who publish it.

And, um, no book has challenged me as much as that book. And some of that is because, yeah, I didn't agree with it and I don't agree with it. Um, but it's probably a book that I should read again. Um, I read it when I was an early Christian.

Um, and so it shaped some thoughts. I probably should read it again and just kind of see where I'm at.

That's right. It's fun to go back and reread old books and see how much you've changed.

Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully what you've, what you're reading is, is changing you. I don't know who said this. Maybe it's, uh, uh, anyway, I will see who said it, if you can remember, but basically the books we've read have shaped us.

The books we buy, uh, are going to be the person we want to become. It's something along those lines. And so when it comes to book buying, thinking, who do I want to be in five years time? Um, is a really good question to ask, you know, is this book going to take me in the direction of the person I want to become?

Because books, if, if they're, well, all books will shape us for good or for bad. So yeah,.

Picking which ones. Um, so that was an old one. That's an old one. Okay. We'll go back and forth. No, it's a, it's, it's McDonald's. McDonald's. Anyway, you didn't get either one of the names, right? Sorry.

Yeah. Um, so this one, since you started with a bad one that forms you when you.

Were young, it wasn't necessarily bad. I just didn't agree with all of it because I just, I,.

I'm nervous that it, it veers towards legalism. That's why. Well, don't read it then. Uh, if you're listening, uh, another book you probably shouldn't read, but the Lord in his providence used in my life.

Uh, do you know who Philip Yancey is? Yeah. Uh, the Jesus I never knew. So when I first got saved, I couldn't sit down and read something for 30 seconds. I mean, I was a drug dealer. I was a hustler. I ran the streets and, um, my grandmother who was an atheist Catholic, uh, uh, she was one of the founders of narcotics anonymous, like the drug rehab.

Yeah. She could quote the 12 step thing the way that old other grandmas can quote the Bible, you know? So that was the world I grew up in. So she saw me in drugs and all this other stuff. And when she saw me get clean, she saw that it was because of Jesus.

She didn't believe in that, but she was just so happy that I had found something that had gotten me off the streets that had gotten me clean. So she went to the bookstore and probably just asked someone, what would be a good book about Jesus?

And so she got this book and she gave it to me and I took it and I threw in a closet, you know? And then I remember after I think we were moving, I had joined the military. We were getting ready to move.

Uh, I was going to go to basic training. I pulled it out of the closet and I sat down and I went to go read it and I was in raptured. I mean, he's a very good writer. He's a very good writer. And for someone who didn't know much about the Bible, who basically only knew like the thinnest veneer of the gospel, but believed it with all of his heart to have someone sort of bring Jesus to life for me in this way, even though certain parts of it now looking back, we're not as accurate as they could be.

Uh, it really blew me away. And I think that was the beginning of me becoming a reader. I was like, Oh, I know Jesus better now because of what I've read in this book. And if this can be replicated, if I can do this again, if this book will help me understand this part of Jesus better, well then I'm going to do that.

So yeah, the Lord used it. Yeah. Imperfect though it is. And I think for those who aren't.

Big readers and you know, I'm dyslexic, I find reading really hard work. See, God does have a sense of humor in this role. But if you're not a big reader, then one, go for something that's going to excite you, that's going to grab your appetite.

So for me, it was biography, but, and also like, we're not going to judge how well you're doing spiritually by the size of book you're reading. Correct. You know, I'm sure the Pharisees read huge tomes, but spiritualized them.

Yeah, probably. And so, um, so don't always think that it's the thickest, fattest book that is going to spiritually enrich you the most. It may, but equally get something that you know is going to get your eyes onto the person of Christ.