What are your plans for the summer? For many, summer is a time of slowing down, resting, and taking a trip to the beach, putting your toes in the sand and diving into a good book. Before the season gets too hectic, the staff and pastors at Providence want to provide a list of recommended books (some older, some more recent) that will help you grow stronger in your faith and a life on mission with God. Even if you’re not traveling to the beach (or slowing down), we want to encourage you to consider picking and reading one or two books over the next few months.
Of course, these are merely supplemental books. Spending time in God’s Word should take priority each day.
A Praying Life by Paul Miller
The book shares how to connect the broken pieces of your life and allow prayer—even poorly delivered—to fill the gaps with meaning and substance.
Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin
This book focuses readers on the essentials of God-honoring worship, combining biblical foundations with practical application in a way that works in the real world.
Surprise The World by Michael Frost
Integrating the five habits in the BELLS model―Bless others, Eat together, Listen to the Spirit, Learn Christ, and understand yourself as Sent by God into others’ lives―will help you spread the gospel organically, graciously, and surprisingly.
None Like Him by Jen Wilkin
Our limitations are by design. We were never meant to be God. But at the root of every sin is our rebellious desire to possess attributes that belong to God alone. Calling us to embrace our limits as a means of glorifying God’s limitless power, Jen Wilkin invites us to celebrate the freedom that comes when we rest in letting God be God.
The Imperfect Disciple by Jared Wilson
For the believer who is tired of quasi-spiritual lifehacks being passed off as true, down-and-dirty discipleship, here is a discipleship book that isn’t afraid, to be honest about the mess we call real life. With incisive wit, warm humor, and moving stories, Jared Wilson shows readers how the gospel works in them and in their lives.
Delighting In The Trinity by Michael Reeves
This is a great, approachable book on a foundational Christian doctrine (the doctrine of the Trinity), but one that often comes with confusion and mystery. Reeves helps us see why knowing God as Trinity has everything to do with our faith from creation to consummation.
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family by Paul David Tripp
Incredible big-picture view of God’s plan for parents. While this book has practical wisdom, it is a beautifully clear call for us (as parents) to return personally to the life-giving grace of the Gospel for all that we need to shape how we view our children and the biblical responsibility to parent them.
The Knowledge Of The Holy by A.W. Tozer
This book shows us how we can rejuvenate our prayer life, meditate more reverently, understand God more deeply, and experience God’s presence in our daily lives.
The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
Within the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus reveals God’s prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.
12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke
Can we think biblically about our smartphones? Should we? For the sake of our souls we must! A great read to challenge us to consider carefully how we use and perhaps how we are used by the technology we hold in our hands.
Roots Of Endurance by John Piper
John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce suffered lifelong opposition and endured for the causes of gospel truth, missionary zeal, and political justice. They found, in solid doctrine and humble joy, the tough roots for habitual tenderness in response to their adversaries without doctrinal or moral flinching. They are examples of remarkable grace.