Ps Luke's Welcome Note

I am very encouraged by the passion shown by Raymond and Anna (and family) and the initiative they took to foster the reading habit in our church. With quiet service and perseverance, they managed to get a large amount of books classified and indexed them according to topic and set up a library on our church’s 3rd level. The topical index makes it easy to browse according to the topics that are close to your heart. Raymond then roped in Eddie to set up and maintain this website, detailing the topics and books available. There is a wide range of topics available and you can find them in the catalog. In the catalog, you will also find the books sorted according to book title and author. In the wide range of books, I was pleasantly surprised to see Doug Sherman’s ‘Keeping Your Ethical Edge Sharp’, one of the first books I read as a Christian. Browsing through it again made me realise how timeless it was but then many of the Christian books you will see are actually timeless and worth reading years after their publication date.

Being Christians, reading should come naturally to us.
Being Christians, reading should come naturally to us. After all, our lives are grounded in, and we grow as we read God’s written word in the Bible. Further, God’s word exhorts us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Rom 12:2). While God’s word remains the primary vehicle for this transformation, it is to our advantage to read other Christian books as they also help renew our minds.

I began reading Christian books about two years after my conversion and the earliest Christian books I read included the aforementioned Sherman’s ‘Keeping Your Ethical Edge Sharp’ and ‘The Power of Commitment’ by Jerry White. I then moved on to the Warren Wiersbe commentary series on the various books of the Bible. These books really helped me to understand and apply the Bible better. Perhaps you may have experienced this as well when I say that there were times, in my early years as a Christian, when I felt I was floundering in trying to understand what each book of the Bible was saying. Understanding verses and short passages was not difficult, but understanding the book in its entirety was another thing. When I heard preachers expounding on the themes of a book, I often wondered how they arrived at their conclusions, because discerning a book’s themes, key passages and pivotal points were just beyond me. Reading other Christian books helped me to grapple with unfamiliar sections and relate them to other passages in the Bible. It increased my joy to realise that the Bible does make sense and that God remained the same throughout the ages.

We have often heard it said that it is better to learn from the mistakes of others than our own mistakes. In the same way, it is better to mine the riches of other scholars and mature Christians who have years of ministry experience and thoughtful reflection on biblical issues behind them. Their scholarship will help us to understand God and his mission and purpose for the world much better. This is especially so today when we are faced with a whole plethora of modern issues like homosexuality, euthanasia, workplace ethics, etc. It helps us to look at the experts' views and then to form our own opinion as we look back to the Bible as the final authority to confirm our stand. This is one way God reveals his truth to us. From experience, I have found that God’s truth, when gleaned this way, becomes, in a certain sense, his personal revelation to me.

My encouragement is for you to stop by this book hub and pick out something on a topic you like. Index 248 (Christian Living) is one topic that resonates with all of us. That was how I picked up my love for reading Christian books. I sincerely hope that will be your experience too. There are also youth-oriented and children’s books that you might want to pick out for your children. If you have been blessed by a particular book, we hope you will share your blessing and submit a short review of the book to the website. That way, others too can be blessed by your experience.

Ps Luke Thurai (27 Mar 08)