12 Books That Will Catalyze Your Spiritual Growth
Equipping churches to pursue Gospel-driven spiritual growth is a core facet of our mission. Ideally, we love building Gospel-driven relationships that enable us to disciple others and grow together. Other times, we have to equip the Church from afar. So, we’ve prepped a reading list for you! We’ve previously used several of these as tools during staff training and hope you can spend some time soaking in the ideas.
We’d rather have this conversation with you in person so we could share our passion and experiences tied to these books. But until then, pick one and start reading today. Shoot us a message and let us know how it goes. We love to hear your thoughts.
If you like this list and want to see our top picks in other categories, then go over and download our Favorite Books of SWO document. Over 129 titles are included!
“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:28–29)
Here are 12 that equip Christians for continual spiritual growth:
The Pursuit of God
By A.W. Tozer
“Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.” ―
Don’t Waste Your Life
By John Piper
“I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth “home.” Before you know it, I am calling luxuries “needs” and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don’t think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.” –
Do Hard Things
By Alex and Brett Harris
“Our willingness to obey God even when it’s hard magnifies the worth of Christ, because in our hard obedience we’re communicating to the world that Jesus is more valuable than comfort, than ease, than staying safe.” – Brett Harris
Humility: True Greatness
By C.J. Mahaney
“Truly edifying words are words that reveal the character and the promises and the activity of God. They’re cross-centered words. They’re words rooted in and derived from Scripture, words that identify the active presence of God, and words that communicate the evidences of grace that you observe in others. They’re words that flow from a humble heart.” –
The Religious Affections
By Jonathan Edwards
“A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken-hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable and full of glory, is a humble broken-hearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior.” – Jonathan Edwards
Radical
By David Platt
“The modern-day gospel says, ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.’ Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, ‘You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, & in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.” – David Platt
The Cost of Discipleship
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.” –
The Way of the Cross
By Roy Hession
“The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within us is broken.” –
The Life You’ve Always Wanted
By John Ortberg
“For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.” – John Ortberg
Pilgrim’s Progress
By John Bunyan
“Not that the heart can be good without knowledge, for without knowledge the heart is empty. But there are two kinds of knowledge: the first is alone in its bare speculation of things, and the second is accompanied by the grace of faith and love, which causes a man to do the will of God from the heart.” – John Bunyan
True Spirituality
By Francis Schaeffer
“I am not a Bible-believing Christian in the fullest sense simply by believing the right doctrines, but as I live in practice in this supernatural world.” – Francis A. Schaeffer
We’ve prepped this list of recommended books from our Snowbird teachers to help encourage the habit of learning! We also encourage you to read critically, evaluating every book, Christian or secular, through the lens of the Bible.
