Read Hard Books

I want to encourage you to read hard books.  What I mean by that is to read something that will stimulate your mind & cause you to process it for a while before you can fully grasp, understand, or maybe even agree with it.  Do this with your quiet time in God’s word, & also with other books that you read as well.  Don’t just read the easy or well-known bits & pieces that goes down like milk.  Don’t get me wrong, we need that from time to time, but most people neglect chewing on meatier topics & heavier readings.  My exhortation to you is to read hard books.  Don’t let your mind, heart, & concentration settle just for easy reading, simplistic theology, & mere cliche teaching.  Read hard books!  Allow yourself to be pushed & challenged.  Read something that you cannot just breeze through in a few minutes without ever giving it another thought for the rest of the day.  Choose to take the time, energy, & focus to read something deeper today.  Here are a few tips to encourage you to read hard books:

Read Slowly
I am a very slow reader.  I never rush through a book.  I’d rather understand it than “get through it” in record speed.  When choosing a book, I like to pick topics & authors that will stir my thoughts & stimulate my spirit.  This is another reason I am a slower reader.  Sometimes I come across a sentence or section that I have to read 2, 3, or 10 times… & just look up & concentrate on it for a while.  If a book doesn’t cause you to read sentences again & again, it probably isn’t causing you to think at all.  It isn’t challenging you.  Fiction is usually easy for me.  I can breeze through it fast if I put in the energy.  But I rarely read fiction personally.  The reason is that fiction rarely satisfies my hunger for knowledge, for growth, & my passion for sanctification in Christ.  The Christ lover ought to have a zeal for wanting to know Him more.  Fiction, in & of itself isn’t bad, & I’m sure some out there love to read it.  It simply doesn’t do much for me personally.  If I can read a book fast, my mind isn’t as engaged as I desire it to be.  I am to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind & strength. That means that reading must engage my heart, my soul, my mind, & my strength (energy) & cause me to ponder into the holiness of God & spur on my desire for His glory.  Read slowly, take your time.  Try not to impress people with how fast you can read a book or the Bible.  Seek to understand, not just know.  Seek to ponder mysteries rather than simply confirming the obvious.  Begin the process of becoming a student again.  In your thought processes, be comfortable being uncomfortable once again. Enjoy the process, not just the destination.  Read slowly, & pray often.

Challenge Me – Or Be Gone!
I try to make it a rule to never read a book on a subject that, while reading, I wouldn’t consider throwing across the room in the process.  If a book isn’t worth my frustration of understanding & agreeing with it, then it isn’t worthy of my time garnethillcoupons.com & energy.  If you are like me, your time is limited, especially your free time when you get to do what you want to.  So I refuse to waste such precious rarities with simplistic readings that won’t challenge my thought processes.  Tell me hard things.  Teach me theology about God that I don’t know, that I need to understand more, or never even knew existed.  Show me things in Scripture that I never saw before, even though I may have read the text a hundred times.  If God’s ways are not my ways, & His thoughts are not my thoughts, then stoke my fire with a poke into my doctrine, my theology & my comfort zone that will cause me to stir!  Listen, if I am reading a book & it doesn’t make me want to throw it down on my coffee table, take a deep breath just in trying to process the deep thoughts, frustrating words, or penetrating doctrine that is is presenting me, then it simply is not worth my time.  Challenge me or be gone!  Its that simple.  I don’t have time to have my ears tickled or my elementary ideas propped up to pet my ego.  One who truly hungers & thirsts for righteousness will not settle for mere entertainment or soft, fluffy obvious & lofty ramblings.  If you are a book wanting my consideration, you had better be a word-smith and articulate such that I need to look up in a dictionary just to get an idea of what you are communicating.  You better cause my spirit to stir.  You better teach me things about my God that force me to go to the Scriptures to see if you are not absolutely insane or heritical in your teachings.  Rock my foundations with truth that I had never stumbled upon before!  A book worthy of my reading will be demanding of my studying.  Challenge me to grow & know more… or be gone!

Destroy The Books You Read
Maybe its A.D.D acting up, but if I am reading a 1st chapter, and yet to find any need to grab my highlighters, or a pen to take notes, that book will probably never get picked up ever again.  It will never be blessed with the oil on my fingers again.  Why?  Because it is not engaging me for some reason or another.  If I’m reading a book & it does not look completely messed up with sentences highlighted with various colors, statements underlined, words circled, lines drawn to connect thoughts, & notes scratched into the margin, then this book has failed to grip my soul.  I had someone borrow a book from me once who jokingly said “Wow, you don’t just read books, you destroy them!”.  They were musing at all of my markings, notes, & coloring.  Choosing to borrow book from my personal library usually isn’t the best option, because if I’ve already read it, it has me written all over it.  I’m an external thinker.  I have to mark up in order to be fully arrested with a notion.  If the book has won the attention of my highlighters & pens, it has earned my devotion to engage in thought & the slow process of understanding.  I will take the time to comprehend & wrestle with what it is attempting to present to me.  If you own the book, destroy it healthcareaide.net while you read it.  I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way (Please don’t burn books) but rather in a quirky way to remind you to be engrossed in the words you are contending with, & do battle using the weapons you are equipped with.  Fight to understand, wage contemplative war with what you assume is heresy, & prayerfully push hard to comprehend what you are seeking to take in.  I encourage you to use pens of all textures, & highlighters of all colors like an artist who is attempting to manifest what his mind is striving to grasp.  Feel free to outwardly interact with your chosen syllabus , as your mind is inwardly being formed by its ideas.  Destroy the book so that you are not simply reading it, but you are putting all of you on its paper as well.  A book that is read by me, should have me written all over its pages, whether I fully find agreement with it or not.  Mark it up!  Highlight, circle, underline, take notes, fill the margins with thoughts, build your case to support or argue against the ideas proposed within.  Scripture references should abound in your handwritten margins. If you are reading hard things, you should interact with your book like never before.  Don’t just read them, destroy the books you take in so that they become a part of you, & you become a part of them.

Support Beams
One of the dangers in beseeching you to “read hard things” is that you may then avoid reading about subjects that you think you know very well already.  This danger is brought on by presuppositions about ideas, doctrine, etc.  We assume we know something very well, therefore we have no need to take the time or energy to be taught on this subject any more.  This danger can result in tragedy causing you to only read exciting, over-stimulating books that will shock you with “razzle-dazzle” performance.  Do not be deceived into entertaining your mind, rather than what I am suggesting – challenging your mind.  One of the best books I have read in the past fews years was “Finally Alive” by John Piper.  When I first saw this book, I wasn’t going to read it because it was on the subject of being “Born Again”.  When I saw it, I thought to myself “This is a subject I already know a lot about.”  Going forward with this incorrect assumption, we are then tempted to to surmise such thoughts as: “I will be bored with this book”, “I don’t need to learn anything more on this subject”, or “I am supposed to read hard thing, not simple like this one”.  Nothing could be farther from the truth about this book, by the way.  Like I said, it ended up being one of the best books I’ve read in years!  It surprised & challenged me in ways I could have never expected.  Listen carefully, do not read just for new information.  Read for new insight!  Read to have your heart & mind fueled to know & love Jesus Christ more.  Read to cherish more of how He has saved you & as a result, you will worship Him in heights & depths of love you could have never imagined before.  Read so that words have more meaning as you express your devotion to Christ & meditate on coffeecouponsnow.net the salvation which has been lavished upon you.  Do not always require new & thrilling subjects to impress yourself.  Most times we don’t need God to build new foundations for us, but rather be open to Him building stronger, deeper, wider support beams underneath doctrines & theology that we assume we already know.  Desire to have ‘what you already know’ to be said in different ways & wordings to allow fresh nuances to invigorate your soul on such important precepts.  Don’t always try to add on new substance, which could thin your wisdom rather than grow it.  Instead aspire to strengthen your foundation by asking God to build sturdier support beams underneath the great truths He has already entrusted to you.  How deep & how wide is the love of God, and blessed is the man that might venture to discover such a wonderful revelation.

Walk with the Wise & Avoid The Counsel Of Fools
One of the dangers of reading this article might be to seek to read from authors you wouldn’t normally read from. While this can be very good, this can always be very hazardous.  This could open up doorways more problematic than you could imagine.  Be warned not to stray off into myths.  Be a discerning reader, but be an even more discerning chooser of the books that you read.  Not everything that claims to be godly is good or for that matter, godly.  To be practical, avoid a lot of preachers who appear on TV.  As a rule of thumb, if they have a TV show, ask me or your local elders before investing your mind in something that could be harmful to your sanctification process.  Unfortunately most preachers who frequent the “boob-tube” tend to live up to such a monicker.  To name a few: Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Rob Bell, Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Ed Young Jr, Paula White, Creflo Dollar, Miles Monroe, Kenneth Copeland, & lots of other silly circus acts should be avoided at all costs.  Most of the lost world who is mired with sin loves these preachers because they offer them what their fallen heart most desires – money & temporary happiness in this life.  A last bit of caution would be to “walk with the wise” & avoid the counsel of fools. 1 Corinthians 15:33 warns us: “Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals.”.  So do not be over-confident in your discernment in this area.  If I am unsure of the author of a book, I check the publisher.  Sometimes you can tell a lot about a book & the author based on who has chosen to publish their teaching.  Seek to be challenged in your thought life, but do not allow yourself to be put in a position to be tempted into believing heresy or giving in to sin.  Please do not hesitate to contact me to answer any questions about a potential book, author, or publisher.  If you need a few recommendations for challenging books that will stir your thoughts & shape your faith in Christ, I’ll be glad to help.

Remember - Christian books are basically sermons in written format.  They are teaching you something.  So you should seek teaching that expounds on the Scriptures, edifies the church, furthers your sanctification in Christ, & honors your Lord & Savior.  Read hard books… for the glory of God & the joy of His people!