Book Recommendations

Looking for something to read but not sure what?  Why not give some of these titles a try.  They are a mix of all kinds of books with a Christian or historical theme.  We will be adding to this list so check back often.

Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris Multnomah Books A growing movement of young people is rebelling against the low expectations of today's culture by choosing to "do hard things" for the glory of God. And Alex and Brett Harris are leading the charge. Do Hard Things is the Harris twins' revolutionary message in its purest and most compelling form, giving readers a tangible glimpse of what is possible for teens who actively resist cultural lies that limit their potential. Combating the idea of adolescence as a vacation from responsibility, the authors weave together biblical insights, history, and modern examples to redefine the teen years as the launching pad of life. Then they map out five powerful ways teens can respond for personal and social change. Written by teens for teens, Do Hard Things is packed with humorous personal anecdotes, practical examples, and stories of real-life rebelutionaries in action. This rallying cry from the heart of an already-happening teen revolution challenges a generation to lay claim to a brighter future, starting today.

Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent and Barbara Hughes, Crossway Books Covers such topics as establishing a solid family heritage, promoting affection between family members, encouraging godliness in children, using appropriate discipline, and helping children cultivate enriching lifelong habits.  Also includes tips for affordable and fun family vacations, creating family traditions and starting a prayer notebook. Families will find the extensive appendices particularly useful covering such topics as: -Aids to Christian Education for Use in the Family -Advent Tree instructions (and devotions for all 24 days of Advent) -Resources for Celebrating a Christian Passover -Various prayers and songs -An outline of the Two Ways To Live presentation of the Gospel -Making a Prayer Notebook -Common Sense tips Regarding Discipline -Suggested Reading Lists For Children -Suggestions For Assembling a Home Video Library -Vacation Spots and Their Historical or Literary Connections -Selected Recipes -Answers to Common Questions

 

Treasuring God In Our Traditions by Noel Piper, Crossway Books Demonstrating the value of God-centered traditions, heirlooms, and family patterns, “Treasuring God In Our Traditions” is a profound and inspirational meditation with insights highly recommended for all Christian readers regardless of denominational affiliation. -Midwest Book Review Chapter Titles Include: -Heirlooms -What Is Tradition -What Makes Tradition Important -How Do Traditions Teach -“Everyday” and the Ultimate -“Everyday” Traditions, the Family, and the World -“Especially” Traditions -Especially Christmas -Especially Easter -What Now? Also includes a really excellent Appendix entitled “The Family:  Together In God’s Presence” that talks about how to introduce your children to corporate worship.

The Family Worship Book by Terry L. Johnson, Christian Focus Publications Answers four key questions:                    -What is family worship?        -What have other people done?        -Why should I do it?        -How can I start? The book is divided into eight sections -Section 1:  What family worship entails -Section 2:  Why you should get started and how -Section 3:  A sample outline for family worship -Section 4:  Develops the points of the outline -Section 5:  Demonstrates how all this works                    together in a family worship session -Section 6:  Additional resources:       -Three year family record of Bible reading       -The Children’s Catechism       -The Shorter Catechism       -50 Bible passages for memorization -Section 7:  Historical resources:       -From Isaac Watts       -From Thomas Manton       -The Directory for Family Worship published by the        Church of Scotland -Section 8:  The texts of 50 psalms and 50 hymns

 

The Heidelberg Catechism: A Study Guide by G.I. Williamson, P&R Publishing One of the finest creeds of the Reformation period.   It is still today one of the best tools available for learning what it means to be a Christian. Extra nice for Sunday family worship, because it divides into 52 sections of questions and answers…that’s one for every week of the year!  These can then bridge to deeper studies during the week. The study guide contains all 129 questions of the catechism along with answers, clear exposition, and questions for review, further study, and discussion. Quite useful if you have teenage children.

Training Hearts – Teaching Minds: Family Devotions Based On The Shorter Catechism by Starr Meade, P & R Publishing This is a book of daily readings based on the text of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  This book of devotions:        -Aids memorization of the catechism by           devoting six days per question.        -Explains the catechism using simple language        -Provides six different meditations on the main           points of each question        -Includes key Scripture readings        -Takes just a few minutes each day, allowing           time for discussion and review.

Using a catechism can be a truly excellent way to expose your children to the deeper points of Christian doctrine, but catechisms are also thorough, and may present some points with which you may take issue.  So if you use a catechism, make sure you do your homework and be prepared to address issues of denominational divergence when and if they arrive.

A Prayer For Owen Meany (1990) John Irving

Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. 

The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (1988) Arthur Bennett 

Puritans wrote down their prayers as a way of keeping a record of God's dealings with the soul. Included here are prayers of Bunyan, Watts, Spurgeon, and others. Arranged by theme -- from the awesomeness of God to the awfulness of sin -- you'll find promptings for your own heart's dialogue with your heavenly Father. 224 pages, softcover from Banner of Truth.

The 5 Minute Theologian (2004) Rick Cornish

What's your theological IQ? Too embarrassed to say? Don't feel bad. Millions of Christians are as intimidated by theology as you are.

Divided up into one hundred easy-to-understand readings, 5 Minute Theologian will help you gain a better grasp of God, grace, Satan, sin, election, and many other essential concepts of your faith. In three months, you can become dramatically more informed than the average Sunday churchgoer.

The 5 Minute Apologist (2005) Rick Cornish

Part of being a Christian is telling others about your faith. Sounds easy, but do you know how to answer the tough questions? Are you prepared to respond to skeptical friends and family? With this book, answers to the difficult, honest questions you face are organized topically and marked with tabs for instant access. In daily, five-minute readings, Rick Cornish gives you powerful yet humble words to defend your faith.

The 5 Minute Church Historian (2005) Rick Cornish

Learning about 2,000 years of Christian history doesn't have to be a long, laborious process---especially when Rick Cornish, the 5-Minute Church Historian, is your teacher! Imparting maximum truth in minimum time, he provides brief, easy-to-read entries on key people, movements, and events that shaped our faith over the millennia.

For the Love of God (2006) D.A. Carson

In a world that views absolute truth, right and wrong, and salvation as being subject to individual interpretation, the Bible’s unwavering proclamations and miraculous stories seem obsolete in modern times. But it is not God’s Word that has changed. Indeed, its relevancy and its power to transform lives are intact. What has changed is the number of people who consult it. Now more than ever the need to read the Bible, to understand the big picture of its storyline, and to grasp the relevance this has for your life is critical.

As with its companion volume, For the Love of God—Volume 2, this devotional contains a systematic 365-day plan, based on the M’Cheyne Bible-reading schedule, that will in the course of a year guide you through the New Testament and Psalms twice and the rest of the Old Testament once.

In an effort to help preserve biblical thinking and living, D. A. Carson has also written thought-provoking comments and reflections regarding each day’s scriptural passages. And, most uniquely, he offers you perspective that places each reading into the larger framework of history and God’s eternal plan to deepen your understanding of his sovereignty—and the unity and power of his Word.

Ordering Your Private World (2002) Gordon MacDonald

Is there a genuine inner life, a private, inner world that each of us possess? The Scriptures and the experiences of the great saints say that there is and that the inner life can be ordered and regulated. Where people live with disorder within, there is anxiety and little growth, but where the private world is constantly realigned to the image of God, there is remarkable personal development and Christian witness.

Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins When Family and Work Collide? (2003) Andy Stanley

Work. Family. Church. Hobbies. Fitness. Housekeeping. Socializing. Sleep. With only 24 hours in each day, we simply can't fit everything in. And what we choose to cheat is a clear announcement of our values. When you come home an hour earlier, miss a round of golf, or let the dishes sit while you play with your child, you make your family feel valued and secure.

Created to be His Help Meet (2004) Debi Pearl

Somewhere over the passing years and changing culture, women have lost their way. This book is written to lead them back home. Regardless of how you began your marriage or how dark and lonely the path that has brought you to where you are now, I want you to know that it is possible today to have a marriage so good and so fulfilling that it can only be explained as a miracle.

It took four years, thousands of hours, many tears, revisions and distractions, but I finally finished my book. I had no idea God had so much to say to us ladies until I began going through God’s Word verse by verse, writing the different sections of Created to Be His Help Meet.

I'll Do It Tomorrow (1999) By Jerry and Kirsti Newcombe

Procrastination robs us of many of the great things life has to offer. Clearly there are millions afflicted with this problem. Ask any accountant on April 15.

A new book addresses this affliction in a light, but powerful way. I’ll Do It Tomorrow provides habit changing principles in a non threatening way to both serious and occasional procrastinators (and everybody in between). I’ll Do It Tomorrow was written by a (mostly) former procrastinator and his wife (who was born organized) and features more than 80 comic panels from world famous cartoonist Johnny Hart’s B.C. (Johnny is the most widely syndicated cartoonist when you add the combined circulation of his B.C. and The Wizard of Id.) 

Don't Waste Your Life (2003) By John Piper

A quote from the author:

"Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud - just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend - woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more."

MERE CHRISTIANITY  (1956) By C.S. Lewis,

Arguably the 20th century's most influential Christian writer, C.S. Lewis sought to explain and defend the beliefs that nearly all Christians at all times hold in common. His simple yet deeply profound classic, originally delivered as a series of radio broadcasts, is a book to be thoroughly digested by believers and generously shared with skeptics.

KNOWING GOD (1973, 1993) J.I. Packard

J. I. Packer's Knowing God has become a classic of the Christian faith. Why? While it gives us information about God with clarity and grace, it does much more---it aids us in actually knowing him, in building our relationship with him, and helps draw us closer to him in love and worship.

TRANSFORMING GRACE  (1993) Jerry Bridges

Funny how the exceeding riches of God's grace seem to run out the moment we're saved. From then on, we tend to base our relationship with God on our performance rather than on His grace. In the process, we forgo the abundant freedoms that come from not having to measure up.

The product of over 10 years of Bible study, Transforming Grace is a fountainhead of inspiration and renewal that'll show you just how inexhaustible and generous God's grace really is. You'll never be able to ask for too much, need too much, hope for too much, or even sin too much. Like a never-ending stream of ocean waves crashing on the shore, God's grace is available for you without measure.

THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD  (1982)  Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence was a man of humble beginnings who discovered the greatest secret of living in the Kingdom of God here on earth. It is the art of "practicing the presence of God in one single act that does not end." He often stated that it is God who paints Himself in the depths of our soul. We must merely open our hearts to receive Him and His loving presence, where ever we are, be it in a bustling kitchen or on our knees in prayer. A classic in Christian literature.

If you have a book that you would like to suggest, please write to recommendations@gibcleimen.com