Whether your summer includes a week at the beach, afternoons spent chasing your kids around the neighborhood pool, or quiet evenings on the back porch watching the fireflies, there's a good chance you'll have a book in hand at some point along the way. To help fill your summer reading list, Pastor Mike Honeycutt has gathered a few of his favorite recommendations for you to enjoy.

C.S. Lewis -- A Life: Eccentric Genuis, Reluctant Prophet

by Alister McGrath

I found this biography of C.S. Lewis hard to put down. Alister McGrath is a brilliant scholar; he has done extensive research into the life of Lewis; and he has written a very readable, very honest, but very uplifting life of C.S. Lewis. I loved every minute of it, especially his discussions of joy, the Inklings, and the concept of mere Christianity. If you have any interest in C.S. Lewis, and I hope you do, this is the biography I recommend.

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Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good

by Amy L. Sherman

If you want to develop a bigger understanding of the gospel, if you want to develop a bigger picture of your life and work, Amy Sherman will help you get there. I love this book because Sherman handles the Scripture well, providing a biblical basis for her vision of life in God’s kingdom. Then she gives example after example of every-day people making a difference through the every-day work God has assigned them. It will stretch you and encourage you as you see how important your life and work can be.

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God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs

by Timothy and Kathy Keller

As I shared recently in a sermon, the purpose of the book of Proverbs is to impart wisdom and understanding. But sometimes making sense of Proverbs can be a bit bewildering. The Kellers have done an amazing job of making the individual proverbs understandable and practical. And they have put them into a year’s worth of brief devotions. I encourage you to include this in your time alone with God. You will grow wise.

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Communion with God

by John Owen (abridged and made easy to read by R.J.K Law)

My faith has been deeply impacted by my favorite Puritan, John Owen. But he is very verbose in his writing. Law has solved that problem in this short volume by getting to the point and updating the language. Owen’s original version of this book made my communion with God so much richer by helping me understand how to relate to each member of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Communion with God has the potential of revolutionizing your worship, especially your personal time with God.

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A Faith to Live By: Understanding Christian Doctrine

by Donald Macleod

Donald Macleod is one of my two favorite Scottish theologians of the last fifty years—Sinclair Ferguson is the other. Macleod is profound in his thinking, and you may run across some words you will need to look up, but it will be worth it. In this book, Macleod takes the biblical truths summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith 400 years ago and makes them applicable to our daily lives. Take your time as you read through A Faith to Live By, and you will come out the other side well versed in the most important truths of God’s word.

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