Bailey begins by stating, “God uses whom He chooses, and He equips whom He calls.” That one statement is packed with so much truth. If you look at my mentor, Dr Johnny Hunt, this truth is screaming. He was a high school drop out living in the projects. He managed a pool room, and made his living hustling pool. He was an alcoholic living with no direction and purpose in life. Then on a snowy Sunday night in January he met Jesus. God radically changed His life! Now the high school drop out went back to school, became a pastor, and is now the Southern Baptist President. That’s the abbreviated story, but if you want to read more I’ll send you a copy of his testimony just contact me. Trust me it’s incredible. If you would have seen Johnny in those days you would have written him off, but God had other plans. God called and Johnny obey!

I think about it often in my own life. Why would God choose me to become a pastor/church planter? Am I qualified? Is there something in me that He saw? No! God called me on no merit of my own, and now He is equipping me to become the man He wants me to be. There is nothing to note in my life other than God. It’s only by God’s Grace I am where I am today. I know the propensity of my evil heart. I know where that evil could take me, but God’s grace keeps me from it.

Bailey continues his devotion by stating that God chose us first and foremost to be obedient. Through that obedience He will make you into the leader He desires for you to be. You must stay submitted, surrendered, and obedient, and He will fill you with His Spirit. “It’s a heart hungry for wisdom that He chooses. It is a ‘want of wisdom’ that opens up the windows of heaven’s resources.” (Bailey) Remember John 15:16, God chose me and I must spend my life doing His work!

• Lost and Found – Ed Stetzer
• Essential Church - Thom and Sam Rainer
• Leading with a Limp -Dan Allender
• High Stakes – Kathy Herman
• Liberating the Ministry from the Success Syndrome – R. Kent Hughes
• Crazy Love – Francis Chan
• High Call High Privilege - Gail MacDonald
• Building Your Leadership Resume – Johnny Hunt
• Voices Behind the Veil – Ergun Caner

If you have any other books you’d like to add to this list you can do so by leaving a comment.

“It’s been said that five years from now, we will be the same people we are today except for the books we read, the people we meet, the places we go, and the risks we take.”

As I think about this statement, the reality of it is glaring back at me. Think about it in your own life! Where were you five years ago? How did you view the world? Have you changed any of your views in five years? The difference in my own life is staggering, and I have to give a lot of credit to the many authors who have influenced my life. I have literally read hundreds of books in the last five years. Remember this is coming from a guy who didn’t like to read in High School. If I can learn to love reading, so can you!

This brings me to my next point. It’s not just about reading, but about reading intelligently. Reading at its core is an exercise designed to make you think. This sounds obvious, but rather than processing the truth and validity of what they are reading, many people store it away only to regurgitate a pre-packaged viewpoint. I am guilty of this in the past, but when we read, we must make an intelligent assessment of the literature before us. I want to recommend a great book from which I will quote to make my point. The book is entitled How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. It’s a classic book on reading comprehension and critical reading.

“The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements-all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics-to make it easy for him to ‘make up his own mind’ with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effective that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and ‘plays back’ the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having to think. – How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading – page 4

This quote alone is worth the price of the book, but if you desire to learn to read intelligently as well as increase your reading comprehension get this book!

I write this post because more and more I see this very thing happening. Adler and Doren tried to warn us about it, but it continues. It extends beyond the scope of reading to TV and Radio as well. It’s easy to take the pre-packaged thoughts that are presented to us and repeat them. After all, we even sound intelligent when we do so. I am challenging think! Think about what you read, think about what you hear, and think about what you see. There are thousands of opposing opinions in the world, and they cannot all be right. Check the facts! Think and pray over what you read, and I promise that it will be an exercise you will not regret.

And with that, I will close for today. I promise the next post(s) will be practical in nature. I’ll talk about what to read, how to read, and maybe list some advantages of reading. Some of the information will be from Between the Times so check it out if you haven’t already.

“Wait a minute,” you might say. “I do read!” Really! What? Are you reading magazines, journals, novels, fiction, non-fiction, theology, or a number of other categories? All those genres are good, but are you limiting your reading to just one?

I must confess that the idea for this post came from reading another blog entitled Between the Times. It’s a blog written by several of my former seminary professors at Southeastern. Dr. Bruce Ashford wrote a series of six blogs on Disciplined Reading. If you have the time, I encourage you to read them. I found them extremely helpful. Reading has been a personal struggle for me over the years. In my younger days, reading was not a priority for me. I missed out on so many great opportunities in my middle and high school days. However, in college, when I entered the Word of Bible Institute, I was forced to read, and read I did. At first it was difficult, but then I found that I enjoyed it. As I continued through my under-grad and graduate education that enjoyment turned into a love!

I want to spend the next few posts talking about what I learned from Between the Times, as well as some of personal thoughts or experiences. I will leave you with a quote that has stuck with me for quite some time. I have heard it quoted many times, and I’m not sure who the original author is but here’s the quote:

“It’s been said that five years from now, we will be the same people we are today except for the books we read, the people we meet, the places we go, and the risks we take.”