Today, we are sharing the final blog in our series on Spiritual Formation. If you would like to continue on this journey, I have made a list below of the books that have impacted me the most in my walk with Yeshua over the last couple of years.
I hope they will be a blessing to you as well!
After I returned from Scotland, I changed my cognate (focus) for my doctorate to spiritual formation. That summer, I read many books on the subject to keep the fire burning. Over this past year at Liberty University, I came across a couple more that spoke to me. Below are the seven books that impacted me the most.
Sittser, Gerald L. Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries. Downers Groves, IL: IVP Books, 2007.
This is by far my favorite book. It’s not as well-known as the others, but it’s every bit as powerful, if not more. As I shared earlier, Jerry Sittser suffered a horrible tragedy mmore than two decades ago, losing his wife, daughter, and mother in a fatal car crash. Jerry has been interviewed on many podcasts about this tragedy and how he rebuilt his life. He wrote a beautiful book called A Grace Disguised, which deals with loss, grief, and new life.
Sittser is an authority on the history of spiritual formation or Christian spirituality. Water from a Deep Well is more than a history book—it is a book of exhortation. He starts with the courage and depth of spirituality of the first Christian martyrs. Chapters three and four were my favorites, where he unpacks the history of the Desert Mothers and Fathers and the birth of monasticism. From there, he continues through church history with a writing style that connects to regular folks. It’s one of the few books I have ever read that I did not want to end.
Foster, Richard. Streams of Living Water. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001.
Foster is considered one of the fathers of modern spiritual formation and is best known for his book Celebration of Discipline. But it is Streams of Living Water that I really fell in love with. Foster explores six different spiritual themes in 2,000 years of NT History: contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational. Each chapter begins with a powerful story of a great historical figure who embodied one of the themes, such as St. Antony or Francis of Assisi. Foster then teaches from the NT on that particular theme. He adds powerful stories of modern believers who changed history in each of the particular themes. In most of his characters, there’s a crisis moment that leads to a decisive breakthrough.
Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world. Colorado Spring, CO: Waterbrook, 2019.
John Mark Comer has become one of the most prolific voices on spiritual formation. You can find tons of compelling videos and interviews on YouTube. In his New York Times best-seller, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, he will help you slow down. We live in a world that not only the saints of the first century could not comprehend, but neither could the saints of the last century. There are so many things competing for our time, from streaming channels to social media.
The book’s title is based on a quote from another father of spiritual formation, Dallas Willard, “There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” 1 And you’re going have to be ruthless to take back your life.
Comer, John Mark. Practicing the Way, Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did. London, UK: SPCK Group, 2024.
Comer’s most recent book, Practicing the Way, is a handbook for spiritual formation. Comer writes, “For Jesus, salvation is less about getting you into heaven and more about getting heaven into you.” 2 In a conversational style, Comer teaches you just that—how to get heaven inside of you. The book is full of anecdotes and stories from history that leave you wanting to rebuild your devotional life.
In our last blog, we quoted Comer as he discussed the trellis and the vine. He also expanded on why monks would have former monks' skulls on their desks in our blog on the monastic movement. Tyler Staton, our next author, says of Practicing the Way, “It is an invitation deeper for the lifelong follower of Jesus, and the perfect primer for the new believer.” That’s because Comer is not writing for seminary students, but you and me.
Staton, Tyler. Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer. London: John Murray Press, 2022.
I didn’t expect to like this book. Staton is young; he’s got cool, messy hair that I could only dream of, and I just assumed that he was excited about something that he didn’t yet possess the maturity to understand. I was wrong. Staton has done his homework and is a student and apprentice of prayer. He’s painfully honest about his frustrations with God and laments that he would prefer scripture to be laid out like IKEA instructions.3 “Prayer can’t be mastered,” he shares, “Prayer always means submission. To pray is to willingly put ourselves in the unguarded, exposed position. There is no climb. There is no control. There is no mastery. There is only humility and hope.”4
The book is full of encouraging stories of prayer breakthroughs. He tells the story of a praying nurse who stood in the gap as his brother-in-law was dying. The family had gathered at the hospital. The doctor said he wasn’t going to survive, as blood gushed out of his heart. Later, “[The Doctor] wept as he recounted the moment in the operating room when the surgical team gave up and informally declared Van deceased. Then a nursing student, whose only role was to hand the surgeon the scissors, began praying for him in the operating room. Immediately, the surgeon located the bleeding tear he had been unsuccessfully searching for over the last five hours, and Van survived.”5
Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.
This was the first book that was recommended to me when I crashed. In fact, it has probably been recommended more than any other book whenever I talk about what I went through. The first reason, as we shared in a previous blog, is that Pete Scazzero went through a similar crash, what he calls hitting the wall.6 This book is not merely a testimony but also a handbook to rebuild your life. “To feel is to be human,” Pete writes. “To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of God. To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others, and ourselves well.”7 Scazzero permits you to be honest with your feelings—feelings can be symptoms, just like pain in your chest. Too many believers ignore the turmoil inside and think they need to pray harder or memorize more verses. Sometimes you need a radical life change.
His teaching on the daily office and his time with the Trappist monks, which we spoke about in an earlier blog, were deeply impacting. Over the past ten years, he has become one of the most sought-after authorities on spiritual formation and ordering our lives.
Chryssavgis, John. In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Bloomington, ID: World Wisdom, 2008.
During a tour of biblical Turkey and Greece, I met a professor of spiritual formation from a US-based university. I asked her what her favorite book on the topic was, assuming it would be like many of the ones above—modern and rooted in a crisis of faith. She surprised me with a book of sayings from the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Chryssavgis takes us back to a time without iPhones or personal computers. He paints a beautiful picture of desert disciples who encountered Satan and overcame to find the glory of God. This book has hundreds of sayings that focus on humility, self-denial, spiritual warfare, and so much more. Professor Robert Fastiggi wrote, “If I were to recommend a single book to introduce the spiritual riches of the desert—solitude, silence, humility, detachment, tears, and the encounter with the living God—this would be the book.” Living in Southern Israel, I can drive through the very deserts where some of these men and women lived.
Conclusion
I want to end by encouraging you on your journey. As a leader, it is even more crucial that your devotional life takes center stage. The goal is not merely to become more like him but to become more like him by spending time with him, by gazing at his beauty, and by allowing the Holy Spirit to change your heart. I pray you have the courage to make hard choices rooted in self-denial, humility, and spiritual hunger. It has been my experience that whenever I have set aside time to seek God, he has met with me. It is rarely immediate. Climbing mountains takes time, but getting to the summit makes it all worth it.
Recently, I went on what’s called a Via Ferrata. I was at a men’s retreat in France with 20 European leaders. We went to this massive rock that extended more than 1,000 feet upward. You could see Mont Blanc in the distance. Ladder rungs came out of the rock, and we had to climb up. To be clear, we were always clipped in for safety. However, I didn’t feel safe. In fact, as I scaled the mountain, there were a few times I thought I might have a panic attack. At times, you're climbing, and the rock is pushing outward, so your head is further away than your feet from the mountain. It was terrifying. When the young man I was attached to said to me, “I can see the top … about five more meters,” an unexpected rush of joy and adrenaline came over me. I was suddenly incredibly happy, knowing I had climbed the mountain (and didn’t die!).
In many ways, that is a picture of our pursuit of God. It’s not always easy, and denying your appetites or fasting from social media can be terrifying. But when God meets you—like he met me in Scotland for 36 hours—it’s all worth it. Happy climbing!
1.Comer, Hurry, 19.
2.Comer, Practicing the Way, 37.
3.Staton, Praying Like Fools, 12.
4.Ibid., 14.
5.Ibid., 53.
6. Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, 97.
7. Ibid., 24.
Ron , I love your heart and your enthusiasm for climbing
It ( the climbing) is terrifying for me too and I can't see the top yet. I will buy some of the books you recomended for my birthday. Thank you