Help for Worrying

 

 

(Cancun sunrise)

I still worry too much. My worry comes from losing spiritual focus. 

I can mentally acknowledge that God is with me. But there are times when this truth does not capture my heart. At that point, I am susceptible to worry.  

Here are things that combat worry.

• Spending solitary praying time with God. This restores my heart to its proper place. In His presence, my agitated soul finds rest.
• Being in community with my brothers and sisters. Authentic Christian community absorbs worry. (Thank God for the small groups Linda and I have been in over the years!)
• Reading Scripture and meditating on it. Scripture escorts my heart into His presence. 
• Listening to experienced Jesus-followers, and learning from them. Many of my mentors and spiritual counselors have dispensed wisdom that has defeated worry.
• Remembering how God has been with me.
• Counting my blessings. (I often carry a list of them, looking at them, and giving thanks to God for them.)
• Organizing and doing. Taking action, where I am able and available. 
• Walking in obedience. Living righteously secures my attachment to Jesus.
• Worshiping. When my soul sings, worry flees.

Doing these things recapture my heart.
My renewed heart experiences God with me,
working through me,
assuring me that I am not alone,
and that He is with me.

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters tom the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas

Dysfunctional characteristics of toxic leaders

(Rift Valley, Kenya)

When I was in Kenya doing a pastors conference I spent a day with a friend who was a PhD student doing research on African political leaders. One book he recommended to me was The Allure of Toxic Leaders, by  Jean Lipman-Blumen.

Here are Lipman-Blumen's... Dysfunctional characteristics of toxic leaders.

• Lack of integrity that marks the leader as cynical, corrupt, hypocritical, or untrustworthy

• Insatiable ambition that prompts leaders to put their own sustained power, glory, and fortunes above their followers’ well-being

• Enormous egos that blind leaders to the shortcomings of their own character and thus limit their capacity for self-renewal

• Arrogance that prevents acknowledging their mistakes and, instead, leads to blaming others

• Amorality that makes it near impossible for them to discern right from wrong

• Avarice that drives leaders to put money and what money can buy at the top of the list

• Reckless disregard for the costs of their actions to others as well as to themselves

• Cowardice that leads them to shrink from the difficult choices

• Failure both to understand the nature of relevant problems and to act competently and effectively in leadership situations

My Christmas Devotional Book

 

This is a 31-day devotional book, based on the life of Jesus.

The book's thesis is: the more we know about Jesus, the greater our worship of Him will be.

This book offers a deep dive into the story of Jesus.

Thirty-one days that will enrich the Christmas season!

Non-Discursive Experiences of God

                                                    (Lake Erie, a few miles from our house.)

Howard Thurman writes:

"The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The descriptive words used are varied: sometimes it is called an encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence. What is insisted on, however, without regard to the term used, is that in the experience defined as religious, the individual is seen as exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation. He is face to face with something that is so much more, and so much more inclusive, than all of his awareness of himself that for him, in the moment, there are no questions. Without asking, somehow he knows." (Howard Thurman: Essential Writings, pp. 38-39)

Thurman is describing the quality of what I refer to as non-discursive experiences.

A non-discursive experience is an experience that is felt and "known" as real, but which cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language. One has such experiences, but cannot discourse about them. (On religious experiences that "I know that I know that I know" but cannot speak of, see James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues.)

I experience God in a variety of ways, many of which are non-discursive. This is how it should be, right? None of us has epistemic access to the being of God. We fail to fully understand what it's like to be all-knowing, or all-loving, or all-powerful.

The expression of a non-discursive experience is confessional and testimonial. There is a sense in which it cannot be refuted. What does this mean? Say, for example, that I now feel joy. I make the statement, “Now I feel joy.” It would be odd, in a Wittgensteinian-kind of way, for someone to say “You’re wrong.” That would be leaving the language-game I’m now playing. (Wittgensteinian “playing” is what I have here in mind.)

Consider the statement, “I felt God close to me today.” Even a philosophical materialist could not doubt that today I had some kind of numinous experience which I describe as God being with me. They could doubt that what caused my experience was “God.” I understand this. But their doubt has no effect on my experience and the interpretation of it. Their doubt does not make me a doubter, precisely because I am not a philosophical materialist. I see no reason to disbelieve my experiences because others do not have them. This relates, I think, to Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's "principle of credulity."

At this point I’m influenced by theistic philosophers Alvin Plantinga and William P. Alston. For them, belief in God is properly basic if the noetic framework of Christian theism is true. Plantinga’s work on “warranted belief” and Alston’s work on the “experiential basis of theism” is helpful here. Alston writes: 

“the relatively abstract belief that God exists is constitutive of the doxastic practice of forming particular beliefs about God's presence and activity in our lives on the basis of theistic experience.” 

For Alston, experiential support for theism is analogous to experiential support for belief in the physical world. He explains what he means by “theistic experience.” He writes:

I “mean it to range over all experiences that are taken by the experiencer to be an awareness of God (where God is thought of theistically). I impose no restrictions on its phenomenal quality. It could be a rapturous loss of conscious self-identity in the mystical unity with God; it could involve "visions and voices"; it could be an awareness of God through the experience of nature, the words of the Bible, or the interaction with other persons; it could be a background sense of the presence of God, sustaining one in one's ongoing activities. Thus the category is demarcated by what cognitive significance the subject takes it to have, rather than by any distinctive phenomenal feel.”

For Plantinga, if the noetic framework of Christian theism is true, then I can expect to experience God. God exists, has made us in his image, has placed a moral consciousness within us, has revealed himself in the creation, and desires for us to know him. Plantinga, of course, believes this noetic framework is true. As do I. One then expects experiential encounters with God. They come to us, as Alston says, like sense-experiences.

This is to argue for the rationality of theistic experiences. One can have “warrant” for the belief that such experiences are from God. But these experiences do not function as “proofs” of God’s existence.

Non-discursive experiences, and experiences in general, cannot be caught in the steel nets of literal language. “Experience” qua experience has what French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has called a “surplus of meaning.” “Words” never capture all of experience. All experiencing has a non-discursive quality. Here the relationship of words to experiencing leads to volumes of discussion in areas such as linguistic semantics and philosophy of language.

Even a sentence as seemingly simple as “I see a tree” is, phenomenally, incomplete. Consider this experience: sitting on an ocean beach watching the sun set with the person you are falling in love with. Ricoeur called such experiences “limit-experiences”; viz., experiences that arise outside the limits of thought and language. But people want to express, in words, these events. For that, Ricoeur says a “limit-language” is needed, such as metaphorical expression. So-called “literal language” cannot capture limit-experiences.

Every person has limit-experiences that are non-discursive.

Experience, not theory, breeds conviction. Theorizing either for or against God is not as convincing as the sense of the presence of God or the sense of the absence of God. This is why I keep returning to my “conversion experience.”

Among the God-experiences I consistently have are:
- A sense that God is with me
- Numinous experiences of awe and wonder (not mere “Einsteinian wonder”)
- God speaking to me
- God leading me
- God comforting me
- God’s love expressed towards me
- God’s Spirit convicting me
- God directing me
- Overwhelming experience of God
- God revealing more of himself to me

These experiences are mediated through:
-Corporate worship
-Individuals
-Solitary times of prayer
-Study of the Christian scriptures
-Observing the creation
-In difficult and testing situations

Sometimes I have experienced God in an unmediated way.

I discern and judge such things to be experiences of God because...
-I spend many hours a week praying
-I have heavily invested myself in prayer and meditation for the past 42+ years
-I saturate myself in the Christian scriptures
-I study the history of Christian spirituality
-I keep a spiritual journal and have 3000+ pages of journal entries concerning God-experiences
-I hang out with people who do all of the above
- I've taught this material in various seminaries, at conferences, in the United States & elsewhere around the world. I've gained a multi-ethnic perspective on the subject of experiencing God.

All this increases one’s diacritical ability (dia-krisis; “discernment”; lit. “to cut through”). Spiritual diacritical ability is mostly acquired. It is in direct proportion to familiarity.

The more we live in connection with God, the more familiar we will be with the presence of God. We will speak of it, and our words will fall short of expressing it, which is how it should be.



***

My books are:

The Great Invasion: Thirty-One Days of Christmas

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

Universalism - The Opiate of the Theologians

                                                            (Sterling State Park, Monroe)

Years ago, when I was teaching as an adjunct professor at Palmer Theological Seminary, I was talking with Craig Keener (Palmer, at the time) in his office. I asked him, what are books you recommend on the subject of Christology? He went to a bookshelf and pulled out Michael McClymond's Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth. Craig said, "This is very good."

So, I bought another book. And have come to value McClymond as an excellent scholar.

His recent book is The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism. Here's a synopsis.

"Will all evil finally turn to good, or does some evil remain stubbornly opposed to God and God's goodness? Will even the devil be redeemed? Addressing a theological issue of perennial interest, this comprehensive book (in two volumes) surveys the history of Christian universalism from the second to the twenty-first century and offers an interpretation of how and why universalist belief arose. The author explores what the church has taught about universal salvation and hell and critiques universalism from a biblical, philosophical, and theological standpoint. He shows that the effort to extend grace to everyone undermines the principle of grace for anyone."

And, from the book...

"Will all people eventually be saved? Will all evil finally turn to good, or does some evil remain fully and stubbornly opposed to God and God's goodness? Will even the devil be redeemed?

The question of the devil's final salvation has been continuously debated since the time of Origen. This comprehensive book surveys the history of Christian universalism from the second to the twenty-first century and offers an interpretation of how and why universalist belief arose. Michael McClymond explores what the church has taught about universal salvation and hell and offers a critique of universalism from a biblical, philosophical, and theological standpoint. He shows that the effort to extend grace to everyone undermines the principle of grace for anyone."

Wow. And... wow, $58. Some day, hopefully, in the near future.

Craig Keener reviews the book and writes:

"A timely and fascinating book on a crucial topic that probably only an omnicompetent historical theologian like Michael McClymond could write. McClymond shows that while the notion of universal salvation has attractive features, it does not have a very encouraging spiritual or theological track record in the history of the church."

Amos Yong (Fuller Theo. Sem.) writes,

"Erudite! Encyclopedic! Exhaustive! A universal discussion that leaves no stone unturned, no stream uncharted, and no argument untouched. Even as McClymond is unflinching in defending the historic orthodox consensus against the idea of universal salvation, his is a generous orthodoxy, the persuasiveness of which undoubtedly rests at least in part on his having taken time to listen to marginal voices and seriously grapple with the broadest extent of their claims within local and even global contexts. It will be a long time before universalist theologians will be able to make a compelling case that is as comprehensive as that of The Devil's Redemption."

CT interviews McClymond here - "How Universalism, 'the Opiate of the Theologians," Went Mainstream."

A Disciple of Jesus Grows in Discernment

 

I began taking guitar lessons at age five. I have taught and played guitar for seventy-two years. (How old am I?)

I have some familiarity with guitars. On a basic level, I am able to discern whether a guitar is in tune, or out of tune. I can hear chords played, and without looking at the guitar being played, tell you what chord it is. (Mostly, not entirely…) I can listen to a song for the first time, and (mostly) immediately play it. (Really accomplished guitarists do this better than I can.)  

I became a disciple of Jesus just before my twenty-first birthday. I have talked and walked and lived with Jesus for fifty-five years. (How old am I?) Jesus became to me, as one scholar calls him, a “familiar stranger.”

From the beginning, Jesus was familiar to me. I felt safe, at home, with him. Coming to Jesus was a great homecoming!   

Just as the first disciples found the ways and words of Jesus strange, like his use of parables, so did I. Yet I, like those disciples, was, and remain, attracted to him.  

I am familiar with Jesus. This is important, since...   

Discernment is a function of familiarity.

Discernment is in direct proportion to intimacy.  

Apprentices become familiar with the thoughts and ways of their teachers. My Teacher has taught me this: The more I know him, the more I see and understand him.  

This is what happens to disciples of Christ. May it be so, in you.

DECLARATIONS  

I am becoming more familiar with Jesus every day.  

I am able to discern spiritual realities.  

I can separate the good from the evil.  

Revelation from Jesus is increasing in me.  

It excites me to think there is so much more to Jesus waiting for me to comprehend.  

There is no greater privilege than knowing Jesus my Lord!

(From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship)

Start Your Morning with This! Phil Driscoll - You Are So Beautiful

Billy Preston wrote "You Are So Beautiful" as a worship song. Here, Phil Driscoll explains.



Then, Driscoll does a phenomenal rendition of it. Stay with it to the very end!

The Discipline of Gratitude Thwarts Catastrophic Thinking

 

Monroe County

I'm enjoying reading Loving God with Your Mind: Essays in Honor of J. P. Moreland. It's only $2.99 on Kindle! 

In his concluding remarks, J.P. has some important things to say, for the future of the Church, and its leaders. I was especially helped by his comments on practicing the discipline of thanksgiving. He writes:

"I practice the discipline of gratitude. Due to my heredity and upbringing, I have a predisposition to anxiety and depression. One way to avoid these is to train yourself to see the glass half full and not half empty, that is, to habitualize a positive, thankful approach to life. And the best way to do that involves a negative and a positive step. Negatively, learn to spot early on any catastrophizing or totalizing thoughts you have in which you take fears and so forth, blow them up out of proportion, and engage in fearful, negative self-talk. When you spot the negative thought, tell yourself that it isn’t true, that it is overstated, and seek to undermine the thought. Then, positively, turn to God in prayer and thank Him for, say, five to six things in your life, ranging from little things like the taste of coffee to large things like friends and family. I will do this around one hundred times a day, and by now, such expressions of gratitude have become a habit and they have colored my perception of life. The discipline of gratitude keeps one from becoming sour on life and is very, very life giving." (p. 225) 

In Philippians 4 Paul tells Jesus-followers to "not be anxious for anything. (v. 6) The biblical word for 'anxious' is often used in contexts where persecution is happening. For example, in Matthew 10:19, where Jesus counsels his disciples. He said, "When they arrest you, do not be anxious about what to say or how to say it."

When Paul counsels the Philippian Christians to not be anxious, it's not like he is sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner. He's in prison! The context is: persecution! These Jesus-followers were suffering under opposition fro their pagan neighbors, just as Paul and Silas had suffered when among them (Acts 16:19-24; Phil. 1:28-30).

I know what worry and anxiety are like. I have, in troubling times, felt consumed by them. So I ask - how realistic is it to be told “Be anxious about nothing?” Paul’s answer, and his experiential reality, is found in his rich, ongoing prayer life. He writes: ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

I have proof that this works, (following Henri Nouwen, in his book Gracias!): When I don’t pray I am more easily filled with worry, and fear. In the act of praying I enter into the caregiving of the Great Physician, who dials down the anxiety.

In everyday prayer-conferencing with God, I present my requests to him. I lay my burdens before him (See 1 Peter 5:7). I have a Father God who loves me, in whom I trust. Where there is trust, there is neither worry nor anxiety. A person with a praying life grows in trust, and diminishes in anxiety. A praying person discovers, experientially, that trust and anxiety are inversely proportionate. 

Paul writes that our prayers should be accompanied “with thanksgiving.” Ben Witherington writes: “Paul believes there is much to be said for praying in the right spirit or frame of mind.” This is significant for the Roman Philippians, since pagan prayers did not include thanksgiving. Roman prayers were often fearful, bargaining prayers, not based on a relationship with some loving god.

Witherington adds: “Prayer with the attitude of thanksgiving is a stress-buster.”

John Wesley said that thanksgiving is the surest evidence of a soul free from anxiety.

J. P. Moreland counsels that the discipline of gratitude thwarts catastrophic thinking.

The antidote for worry and anxiety is: praying, with thanksgiving.

Nine Common Cognitive Disorders, and Taking Thoughts Captive

 

                                                                     (Our back yard)

I am interested in connections between Pauline thinking and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The apostle Paul writes:

"Finally, brothers and sisters,

whatever is true,

whatever is noble,

whatever is right,

whatever is pure,

whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable

-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy

-- think about such things

and the God of peace will be with you."

Philippians 4:8

Examples of Pauline thinking include the "declarations" given by Steve Backlund of Bethel Redding Church, and the identity statements of Neil Anderson. Both are about thinking on identity truths, using verbal repetition.

For example, I am God's child and deeply loved by him. As followers of Jesus, that's true, right? So, why not meditate on that truth so that, as Henri Nouwen says, it might descend from your mind into your heart.

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt advocate Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as a cure for maladies such as anxiety disorder, depression, OCD, anger, marital conflict, and stress-related disorders. CBT is uncannily similar to Paul's instructions in Philippians 4:8.

CBT treats cognitive distortions, such as "I'm no good," "My world is bleak," and "My future is hopeless." (Lukianoff and Haidt, 36) CBT breaks disempowering feedback cycles between negative beliefs and negative emotions.

They write:

"With repetition, over a period of weeks or months, people can change their schemas and create different, more helpful habitual beliefs (such as "I can handle most challenges" or "I have friends I can trust.")" (Ib., 37) This is remarkably like Backlund's identity declarations. (See also James K. A. Smith's excellent You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit.)

Cognitive distortions empower negative emotions. Put in a Pauline way, repetitive thinking on "whatever is false" distorts our emotions. Lukionoff and Haidt are concerned over our universities and the cognitive distortions they produce in our students. While to my knowledge neither Lukionoff nor Haidt are Christians, they refer to CBT as the "thinking cure." I see the Pauline "thinking cure" of Philippians 4:8 as combating these distortions in ways that are similar to CBT.

They list nine such distortions. Here they are, direct from the book, with my comments on logical fallacies added. (38).

NINE COMMON COGNITIVE DISORDERS PEOPLE LEARN TO RECOGNIZE IN CBT

EMOTIONAL REASONING

Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.

"I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out."

(In logic this is an example of the fallacy of false cause.)

CATASTROPHIZING

Focusing on the worst possible outcome

and seeing it as most likely.

"It would be terrible if I failed."

(This is similar to the slippery slope fallacy in logic.)

OVERGENERALIZING

Perceiving a global pattern of negatives

on the basis of a single incident.

"This generally happens to me.

I seem to fail at a lot of things."

(In logic this is called the fallacy of hasty generalization.)

DICHOTOMOUS THINKING

Also known as "black and white thinking,"

"all or nothing thinking," and "binary thinking."

Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms.

"I get rejected by everyone," or

"It was a complete waste of time."

(In logic this is called the fallacy of false dichotomy. But note: logic is the reaqlm of binary thinking. Which is good, and true, even beautiful as related to simplicity.)

MIND READING

Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts.

"He thinks I'm a loser."

LABELING

Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking).

"I'm undesirable."

"he's a rotten person."

NEGATIVE FILTERING

You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives.

"Look at all of the people who don't like me."

DISCOUNTING POSITIVES

Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment.

"That's what wives are supposed to do - so it doesn't count when she's nice to me."

"Those successes were easy, so they don't matter."

BLAMING

Focusing on the other person as the source

of your negative feelings;

you refuse to take responsibility

for changing yourself.

"She's to blame for the way I feel now."

"My parents caused all my problems."

Lukionoff and Haidt claim that universities encourage students to use the distortions listed above. (40)

GOD’S COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

Meditation on truth transforms the human heart. It breaks lies, and heals.

I have discovered that, when I carry my 3X5 cards with me, on which I have written what God thinks of me, the truths of God slowly descend from my mind into my heart. They become my heart.

This is a Henri Nouwen idea, a James K. A. Smith idea, a Dallas Willard idea, and a Pauline idea. Philippians 4:8-9 reads: 

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

I view this as a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, supernaturally empowered by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps, mind-of-Christ Behavioral Therapy.

"Cognitive" - how we think; what we set our mind on. 

"Behavioral" - what we do; how we live and experience life. 

"Therapy" - from the Greek word therapeuo, which means "to heal."

What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

"Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a common type of talk therapy (psychotherapy). You work with a mental health counselor (psychotherapist or therapist) in a structured way, attending a limited number of sessions. CBT helps you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so you can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way.

CBT can be a helpful tool in treating mental health disorders, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or an eating disorder. But not everyone who benefits from CBT has a mental health condition. It can be an effective tool to help anyone learn how to better manage stressful life situations." (From the Mayo Clinic.)

When we add the Holy Spirit to this, we have an effective therapy that transforms and heals. I'm calling this God's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This involves two biblical concepts: 

1) Intentionally think on (meditate on) whatever is true, right, noble, lovely, and admirable. 

2) Take captive whatever is false, wrong, ignoble, unlovely, and unworthy of praise. 

Paul writes: 

We do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 

Defeat falsehoods by intentionally meditating on God's truths. The Holy Spirit champions and empowers this. We are promised that "the God of peace" will be with us. This means an invasion of peace into our hearts. God's truths, which you mentally acknowledge, become your heart, your way of being, your way of seeing things, and even seeing yourself. Our thoughts become "obedient to Christ." All this is healing, transforming, and liberating.

Eighteen Books That Have Influenced Me

I came across an Anglican website that listed "The 100 Best Christian Books." It's a great, comprehensive list. It got me thinking about Christian books that have influenced me. Here's eighteen of them, not in any special order.

Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster. In 1981 this book kick-started a prayer revolution in me.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. I became an Annie Dillard fan after reading this. Can anyone write better than her? My eyes were opened wider to God's presence found in my backyard.

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. This book introduced me to Christian apologetics, and I've never looked back.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O’Connor. Maybe Flannery O'Connor can write better than Annie Dillard. I've read everything I can by her, including a few books interpreting her vision of the presence of Christ in the lives of ordinary, flawed humanity.

New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton. This book solidified the great truth that, in one's spiritual life, being precedes doing. Through this book Merton became one of my spiritual directors.

The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, by Henri Nouwen. Through Nouwen's deep, transparent writings I experience the love of God and find healing for my troubled heart. Nouwen is an invaluable guide in my spiritual life.

A Testament of Devotion, by Thomas Kelly. I underlined so much in this book that a friend suggested I use spray paint. Kelly helped me see earth, through heaven.

Caring Enough to Confront: How to Understand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Towards Others, by David Augsburger. I have used this little book countless times in helping to heal broken relationships.

Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don't Deserve, by Lewis Smedes. Smedes helped me understand the grace of God and experience healing from self-hatred and shame. 

Silence, by Shusaku Endo. This story of early missionaries to Japan broke my heart, and helped me understand the cost of following Jesus.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone. It was good and hard to read a book that exposed areas of spiritual blindness in me.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. This book affected me deeply. I can't find words to describe what it's like when a book interprets your heart's deepest longings. I must take a deep breath and go away to a quiet place and read it again.

Thinking in Tongues, by James K. A. Smith. I am Pentecostal, and Smith's book has gifted me with an epistemology to go with it.

The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, by Eugene Peterson. I have read this book three times, thoroughly. 

Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation, by Dallas Willard and Gary Moon. I spoke at an Evangelical Friends' pastor's conference in 2017. Two pastors recommended this book to me. Here is a model of everything I desire to be, in Christ.

Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups, by Ruth Haley Barton. This might be the best book on presence-driven leadership I have ever read.

The First Epistle to the Corinthians, by Gordon Fee. This is the greatest biblical commentary I have ever read. It is a rare combination of brilliant scholarship and anointed inspiration.

Knowledge and Christian Belief, by Alvin Plantinga. Contains the best chapter on "faith" I have ever read.