The key book at the right moment can dramatically alter the trajectory of your life. Here are some that did thus for me:
During the year leading up to my conversion, The Cost of Discipleship made me aware that pledging allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ was not a trivial matter, but a commitment of my whole life.
The Taste of New Wine made it plain that God wanted my will.
God’s Smuggler demonstrated, in vivid language, what a life lived for the glory of God could look like, in terms of high adventure.
Mere Christianity displayed the rationality and reasonableness of Christianity.
As a new Christian, I fell prey to Hal Lindsey and his acolytes. Since Jesus was, indeed, coming back “any day now,” who had time to finish a college degree, master a vocation, or build a family? Time was short, and “only what’s done for Christ” will last. Particularly “witnessing.”
This notion was reinforced by Jamie Buckingham’s hagiographies, which represented true spiritual commitment as finding some form of “full-time Christian service.” Like many of my peers, I had a go at “living by faith,” but ended up living on the charity of the productive people around me.
I thought I’d reached the epitome of godliness when I joined forces with a hospitality ministry modeled on Francis Shaeffer’s L’Abris.