For many, summer means a slightly slower schedule, maybe because of less school, less homework, less sports programs and practices, and maybe less time in the car.
However, if you have teenagers, perhaps summer means spending more time in the car driving kids to and from social activities, or taking the family on vacation requiring long car rides.
How will you fill the time? A more important question is, how will you as a Christian “[make] the best use of the time” for the sake of Christ’s name (Eph 5:16)?
Suggestion: Read (or Listen) to Christian Biographies!
Christian biographies are incredibly helpful in the life of God’s people. As weird as it sound to some, in reading Christian biography, it’s like we are introduced to a long-lost uncle or auntie in the faith who can help us walk after Jesus, insofar as they do the same (1 Cor 11:1).
In diving into their lives, we gain role models as we see how Christians in current and previous generations entrusted themselves to God while living for Christ and his cause. We learn how they held fast to the faith against heretics and persecutors, and went on to love them with the truth of God’s grace and forgiveness in Christ. We find examples of those who entrusted themselves to their sovereign God in prayer, and those who have suffered deeply in this fallen and sinful world but who came to trust in Jesus who rights all wrongs and makes all things new. And in meeting all these people, we are reminded that God is our God of steadfast love and mercy in Christ.
I can testify that reading Christian biographies has spurred me on to greater trust and faithfulness to Jesus. This is what reading these types of books mean to me. It’s not first and foremost not an academic venture.[1] To me it is primarily an effort of the soul—a desire to be led to higher ground (especially when I’m in the metaphorical spiritual mud), by a brother or sister in the faith, so that I might see the glories of God in Christ, through the life of one who has gone before. Reading Christian biography for me is a spiritual and practical venture. God has blessed us with ancestors in the faith that we might stand on the shoulders of these giants, and be helped to see our eternal treasure in Christ with greater clarity, while navigating this world with greater Christlikeness.[2]
Do you desire to redeem the time? Do you desire to be encouraged in the faith? Consider reading or listening to Christian biography this summer.
Some Recommendations
Here’s a decent place to start if you are looking for recommendations.
For older children and young teens, check out the 10 Girls / 10 Boys who Made a Difference books by Irene Howat. Readers will be treated to brief introductions (15 pages or so) to major Christian figures in church history. Amazon indicates these books are for 7-12 year olds.
If you are a teen and are up for reading 160 pages or so on a particular individual, see also the Trailblazers set, in which Howat is also an author. There are so many encouraging Christians to read about in this series so it’d be great to take advantage of it.
For more experienced readers, check out this biography (200 pages) on John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific. I just finished it and WOW!, what a story this was! Be spurred on as you read how Paton and his family went to dwell amongst, and evangelize cannibals! Despite the cannibals’ self-professed worship evil, and their attempts to kill him and his family more than once (thank God they failed), they persisted for Christ their sufferings, and came to see many come to know salvation in Jesus.
Pick up Sharon James’s book entitled In Trouble and In Joy: Four Women who Lived for God, where you’ll read about the lives of four prominent Christian women from the 17th and 18th centuries. James also has a full-length treatment of Ann Judson: A Missionary Life for Burma. To encourage you in your reading, know that one of my seminary history professor’s most cherished books in his library was a 1st edition of Ann Judson’s memoirs.
Of course, don’t forget John Piper’s biographical essays in 21 Servants of Sovereign Joy. Each of the 21 chapters is around 35-40 pages (one chapter covers one individual). And for all you who love listening to books and messages, all of this content can be found in audio form as Piper’s book is an edited version of a series of talks he gave to his church. How exciting!
What are You Waiting For?
Grab some people from church, read and discuss together, and be encouraged! Then pray that God would help us by his Spirit, live for the fame of his name.
[1] Academic study of Christian figures in the past is certainly a worthy venture as Christian biographies is a result of the academic study of a particular individual.
[2] I love the language of standing “on the shoulders of giants.” This specific phrase and concept in general comes from John of Salisbury (12th century) who actually paraphrases another saying, “We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants….we are able to see more, and further than they, not indeed by the sharpness of our own vision or the height of our bodies, but because we are lifted up on high and raised aloft by the greatness of giants.”