The one who reads good words… becomes more like the Word.
If you read good words that have been tried & proven, it turns out that when your life is tried, it will be proven good.
The more you read, the larger your soul grows, and the more your soul encompasses, the more joy you’ll come to know.
And if you read good words that have been tried and proven — it turns out that when your life is tried, it will be proven good.
Summer is for hammocks and campfires and growing beauty from the earth and dipping toes in water — and for daily reading retreats, just setting a timer for 30 minutes, and curling up with rich reads that feed the soul.
And even better yet?
Rich reads that are read aloud to you.
10 Soul-Good Spiritual Formation Reads for this summer —
that change the very shape of your life:
For Grief: A Grace Disguised
(I have lost count how many times I have returned to this one, underlined this one, written down quotes, and felt comforted by this one.)
“The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting son, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise.”
For Soul Refreshment: As Kingfishers Catch Fire
(I return to this book and listen to this book on the regular, an absolute lifetime favourite)
“The Christian life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence — congruence between ends and means, congruence between what we do and the way we do it, congruence between what is written in Scripture, congruence between a ship and its prow, congruence between preaching and living…”
For Doubt: The Reason For God
(I have recommended this book countless times, shared several copies, listened to multiple times… brilliant!)
“The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”
“It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right — than to claim that one way to think about all religions (namely that all are equal) is right. We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion — but in different ways.”
For Life: CS Lewis Essential Audio Library
(The complete works of C.S. Lewis lives on my desk — this is a volume to do life with. A lifelong friend.)
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.”
For Healing: Gentle and Lowly
(I have shared so many copies of this book & my own copy is worn right down. Bound to be a classic. Five star.)
“The deeper into weakness and suffering and testing we go, the deeper Christ’s solidarity with us. As we go down into pain and anguish, we are descending ever deeper into Christ’s very heart, not away from it.”
“If you are part of Christ’s own body, your sins evoke his deepest heart, his compassion and pity. He takes ‘part with you’—that is, He’s on your side. He sides with you against your sin, not against you because of your sin. He hates sin. But he loves you. We understand this, says [Thomas] Goodwin, when we consider the hatred a father has against a terrible disease afflicting his child—the father hates the disease while loving the child. Indeed, at some level the presence of the disease draws out his to heart to his child all the more.”
For Fear: Rejoice and Tremble
(This author is a favourite who has profoundly shaped me formationally)
“For the filial fear of God is the soul of godliness and the essence of the new life implanted by the Spirit.
It is the ultimate affection and the very aroma of heaven.
It is the affection that expels our sinful fears and our anxieties.
It is the affection that expels spiritual lethargy.
To grow in this sweet and quaking wonder at God is to taste heaven now.“
For Understanding the Gospel: The Day the Revolution Began
(This book was a read for my Master’s at Wheaton and it was provocative and paradigm shifting in profound ways. Unforgettable.)
“Jesus died for our sins not so that we could sort out abstract ideas, but so that we, having been put right, could become part of God’s plan to put his whole world right. That is how the revolution works.”
For Interior Work: The Way of the Heart
(My copy of this is so worn — a true companion on the Way.)
“Only in the context of the great encounter with Jesus can a real authentic struggle take place.
The encounter with Christ does not take place before, after, or beyond the struggle with our false self and its demons.
No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us and says, as he said to the old man in the story: ‘As soon as you turned to me again, you see I was beside you.’”
For Joy: The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life
(Reading this was transformative for me — and now witnessing the change in our daughter as she’s reading it, carrying it everywhere? A must listen!)
“It is a law of the spiritual life that every act of trust makes the next act less difficult. Trusting becomes like breathing, the natural unconciousness of the redeemed soul.”
“You have trusted Him as your dying Savior; now trust Him as your living Savior. Just as much as He came to deliver you from future punishment did He also come to deliver you from present bondage. Just as truly as He came to bear your stripes for you has He come to live your life for you.”
For Brilliance: Orthodoxy
(A must read that I keep returning to year after year.)
“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”
“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”
“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.”
The words you make time to read when you don’t really have much time, will be what makes you when you really have much trouble.
The words you make time to read when you don’t really have much time, will be what makes you when you really have much trouble.
So choose the life of a reader — who gives up lesser things, to support your habit of turning pages to turn your one life around, who makes shelves and stacks by the bed and bath and backseat to hold ideas and dreams and stories and whole beautiful and better worlds.
Choose the life of a reader who reads words that have marinated in minds and on pages long enough that they have catalytic power to resonate and detonate into glory that you can’t overestimate.
Pick the life of being a reader who hungers for beautiful words more than baity-headlines, who lingers with deep ideas more than simply scrolling shallow streams, who lets the quiet of a book be a shell to hold up and hear the reverberation of one’s own soul, more than letting the crashing waves of all the incoming of life sweep one’s soul further out to sea.
Of all kinds of lives? Pick the life of a reader who reads lovely lines out loud and writes them down to get them into neurons and marrow, who works and walks while listening to words because you know your soul was made by the Word for words.
Listen to Free Audio Books this summer!
Make this the summer of your own easy daily Reading Retreats — just a few minutes a day of your own retreat, listening to a book, and choose the life of reader! Audible is offering a 3 month free trial, for both new customers or past customers, which means you can get any of these books, (or all of my books absolutely for free), or listen to millions of other books that are available to you with this free offer!
Click here to get the free trial & free audio books
You will be able to download one free book a month, for three months — perfect for your own reading retreats this summer!
(And if you decide Audible isn’t for you? You can easily cancel with the click of just one button, but the books are yours for free, forever!)
HAVE YOUR OWN DAILY READING RETREATS: Just 30 Minutes a Day
- Echo Dot — put it any room and just tell it to “Read my book” and it will start reading aloud your next Audible read. (At this kind of sale, we have a few, to read books to in bedroom, kitchen, window seat etc!)
- Our absolutely favourite (indoor or outdoor … & inexpensive) hammock – to curl up and read or listen to a book.
- We just flip a quiet 30 minute timer — for our own Reading Retreat and read for just 30 minutes!
- This blanket! I have literally given away dozens — my favourite gift to give! — and we have at least 3 and curl up together on the couch with this blanket for our 30 minute reading retreats!
- I gave this 100 Books Poster to 2 of my favourite voracious readers this year — and it was received with glee!
- Best headset for listening –after much research, the Farmer has this headset and listens daily with these!
- This Reading Journal is perfect to track the progress of your 30 minute reading retreats, as it has space for an index, reading tracker, book review, favorite books & authors, books read & still to read, list of want-to-reads and book challenge section.
