This week we're talking with Pastor John about book reading. On Monday we looked at the

seven ways books have impacted your life, Pastor John, and there you give us a brief theology

of reading as well, looking at that incredible text in Ephesians 3, 4. And as you are talking

about all the ways, the seven ways that books have changed your life, I can hear you very

eager to give specific recommendations. So let's do the who today? Who do you read? That's

today's question for the listener named Sam. Hello, Pastor John and Tony in a recent

solid-joice devotional I listen to. Pastor John, you mentioned the practice of reading

rich doctrinal books. That's the quote, rich doctrinal books. What would you consider

to be your top 10 rich doctrinal books that have helped you grow over the decades?

Well, I have an awful time answering top questions or most questions, but I can't answer 10 rich

doctrinal books that have made a walloping impact on my life. Whether I leave one out that's

in the top 10, my memory's not good enough to say. Here's what Cius Lewis said about our longing

for the heart, our hearts, to sing with joy over what we see about God in our devotions.

He said, for my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion

than devotional books. And I rather suspect that the same experience awaits others. I believe

many who find, quote, nothing happens when they sit down or kneel down to a book of devotion

would find that the heart sings unbidden when they are working their way through a tough

bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. So my response to

is, well, you can leave the pipe aside. You wouldn't get mouth cancer on your way to devotions.

You'll leave the pipe aside, but do pick up the pencil and a doctrinally rich book and see what

happens. So here are 10 authors who have done this for me, made my heart sing because of what they

showed me of God and his ways from the Bible. Number one, Jonathan Edwards. No historic theologian

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