Great books about deeper life

I read Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds last week (great book) and am reading The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee at this time. I plan on reading Tozer's The Pursuit of God sometime in the near future.

My question is, what are some great books (beside the Bible of course) that have influenced your walk with Christ?

You must also read Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer :-)

I would add:

Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray
The Revival We Need by Oswald Smith
Biography of George Muller
Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand
My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers

the list goes on...

I've read My Utmost For His Highest. Very good. I was trying to find Why Revival Tarries on the web earlier. Can anyone tell me a good place to buy it online?

Hi Joe,

I recommend "The Christian in Complete Armour," by William Gurnall. I don't think you'll find a more superb treatise on the topic of spiritual warfare.

Bro. Paul

I was trying to find Why Revival Tarries on the web earlier. Can anyone tell me a good place to buy it online?

If you are shopping for books online, Amazon is usually linked to a large selection of used or discount sellers that carry their titles well under retail. Here is [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871236079/qid=1153088558/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-1179971-3725766?s=books&v=glance&n=283155]Why Revival Tarries[/url] starting at $2.71.

MC

Presently I am reading - for the second time in a week - the book "I Dared to Call Him Father" by Bilquis Sheikh. It is a testimony of a high born Muslim woman who reads the Bible and what happened to her as a result. The lessons she learned are those that teach us as well.

ginnyrose

Presently I am reading - for the second time in a week - the book "I Dared to Call Him Father" by Bilquis Sheikh.

Interesting, I have this book. It is very good testemony to share with muslims.

QUOTE:
Interesting, I have this book. It is very good testemony to share with muslims

Have you done it? And how do the Muslims respond?

In the current issue of "World" magazine there are two articles "Brothers to the End" and "Quiet Currents" that deal with Muslims converting to Christianity. The concepts discussed are right in line with Bilquis Sheikh experience.

IN "Quiet Currents" the writer quotes Mofid Wasef "After interviewing 72 MBBs from the middle east, Europe, and the United States, he narrowed their experiences of conversion into three primary and typically overlapping catefgories: visions, media outreach, and the Bible."

Fascinating read. It is an encourager to us who many times dispair with the apostasy we see in the western world.

Kind of got off track from the original question, didn't we?

ginnyrose

Have you done it? And how do the Muslims respond?

This book was published and shared for free in Bulgaria where I studied, there were some regions with muslims. I haven't share it personaly with muslim. But I have other one that is also very good testemony even more powerful, about muslim paralised girl who converted to Jesus. My pastor took it from me and share it with muslim woman, all I know that she cried while reading the book, I don't know further details what has happened.
The book is called [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310256887/103-4639771-2350227?v=glance&n=283155]The Torn Veil by Gulshan Esther [/url]

[b]From the Back Cover[/b]
A true story of freedom and miraculous healing as a Muslim girl finds faith in Christ

When Gulshan Esther, a devout Muslim girl, was six months old, typhoid left her a cripple. Her loving father took her from Pakistan to England to find a cure, but the only hope the British specialist could offer was prayer. Gulshan and her father made pilgrimage to Mecca and begged Allah for healing, but it was not until her father’s untimely death that Gulshan began to receive an answer. In her grief she wanted to die, but as she called out to God, for the first time in her life she sensed she was being heard. She heard a low, gentle voice say, "I won’t let you die. I will keep you aliveÖI am Jesus, son of Mary."

As Gulshan began reading the Quran, her interest in Jesus grew, until one amazing night he appeared to her in her bedroom in a blaze of light. He restored her crippled arm and leg and taught her The Lord’s Prayer. He told her to go to his people—now her people—and tell them what he had done. Since that time, and to this day, she has been a joyous, obedient disciple of Christ. The Torn Veil is an amazing story of faith and determination.

This moving autobiography was first published in 1984 and has sold over 200,000 copies worldwide.

Kire

"Rees Howells Intercessor"

This is a biography of Rees Howells written by Norman Grubb.

Personally, if you intend to really die in the flesh & live in the Spirit, have a copy of this book. This will give you a glimpse of what is to die in the flesh & to live in the Spirit.

Kire,

Interesting you mentioned this book "The Torn Veil". Only recently have I become aware of its existance and have since been looking for a hardcover and have not found any, so I may just have to go get a SC. There is a sequel "Beyond the Veil"....it sounds interesting as well so I may get both of them.

Bilquis' testimony meshes with my own conviction: Obedience to the Holy Spirit in everything is the key to living a Spirit-filled life! I am convinced we would be radically changed, be partakers and witnesses of His glory just like she was if we would be sensitive to his glory. I pray regularly the LORD would teach me to recognize his voice when he speaks to me. And He has! It starts with the little things...like right now I am looking for a serger and cannot afford to pay for a new one - the kind that will cost over a thousand dollars. But in my spirit I sense the LORD is telling me I will find one privately somewhere. Earlier he revealed to me I will be looking for one soon...and the circumstance then where that it did not seem likely at the moment (I am returning the one I am using to my granddaughter)! Little things? Yes, but God is very interested in them! Too many times we want to go our own way thinking God loves to deprive us of anything pleasant, or fun or enjoyable. Having said that, we are going to have to discover where the Lord will have us go on vacation this summer!

Amazing how a good book can have such a profound influence on a person! :-)

ginnyrose

You should also read:

[i]Desiring God[/i] and [i]The Pleasures of God[/i] by John Piper
[i]The Pursuit of God[/i] by A W Tozer
[i]Imitation of Christ[/i] by Thomas A' Kempis
[i]A Deeper Life[/i] by Andrew Murray
[i]David Brainerd-Life and Times[/i] by Jonathan Edwards
[i]God Within You[/i] by David Jeremiah

Thanks for all the suggetions.

I'm now in the fourth chapter of The Normal Christian Life. I must say, this really brings alot of things into focus. If you've never read this book, do so.

I'm now in the fourth chapter of The Normal Christian Life. I must say, this really brings alot of things into focus.

I love the title of this book because it treats what others call "the deeper Christian Life" as "the normal Christian life.

I think a false concept many of us have is that the "deeper christian life" is unusaul and special and for those few who go on to be missionaries, or great preachers or such.

But in "the Normal Christian Life" Nee brings us to the reality that "the overcomming life" is the normal Christian life.

The New Testament does not give place to nominal vs, vital, shallow vs. deep, but rather gives us Christ as everything to us and gives us the growth in Life that should be the normal development of every child of God with the Life of God.

It is abnormal for this Life not to to grow in us, for us to mature in this Life and for us to become full grown sons of God living in Him, walknig in Him, enjoying Him as everything to us. A defeated Christain is an abnormal Christian. An overcomming Chrstian is a normal Christian.

It is abnormal for a Christain to remain a baby, to remain in shallows, and not to to press on into the deep things of God.

I like Paul's prayer in Ephesians: "That you might be strengthened with power by His Spirit into the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may with all the Saints, apprehend the length, the breadth, the hight and the depth, and to know the knowlege surpassing love of Christ, that you might be filled up unto all the fullness of God"

Paul prays for a normal experience that is shared "with all the saints" not just the "few super spiritual ones". This deeper life is normal and the will of God for each one of us and available to each one of us.

We need a spirit of wisdom and revelation that, "the eyes of our hearts being enlightened, we may know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe...

These things I find encouraging daily. It is God's delight to grant us these things, to open our eyes, to lead us into these things. It is what Christ died and rose again for. IT is God's eternal Purpose. He who did not spare His only Son but deliviered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Graftedbranch

I love the title of this book because it treats what others call "the deeper Christian Life" as "the normal Christian life. I think a false concept many of us have is that the "deeper christian life" is unusaul and special and for those few who go on to be missionaries, or great preachers or such.

Amen. I think it was R. A. Torrey who said something like that.

A good question though, if the "deeper life" really is the normal Christian life, then how many "Normal" Christians are there? How many of us really do live up to true Christianity?

A good question though, if the "deeper life" really is the normal Christian life, then how many "Normal" Christians are there? How many of us really do live up to true Christianity?

The problem is that first, few in concept hold the overcomming life to be normal but rather believe the experience of most Christians which is one of defeat and trying, and resigniation.

Without a vision of the overcomming Life, we cannot enter into the reality of it and this is primarily because of faulty teaching in the mainstream.

Sad to say there are few normal Christians. Why? Well one thing that is needed for normal growth is to be fed and to eat. But most Christain ministers do not feed the flock. Rather they either instruct them or teach them some knowlege, or preach to them some precepts or morality. But few actually feed them Christ which is the only food which causes growth.

They are not normal and so cannot feed and produce normal Christians.

What is unique about Watchman Nee's ministry is that He fed the saints, he built up the body of Christ not with knowlege but with Christ. HE gave them Christ and Christ alone. Not this or that teaching or method, not some psycological self help, not even strong preaching on morality. HE gave them Christ as their rightousness, their wisdom, their food, their drink, their holiness, their everything. And He taught every believer how to contact God, to know Him, to appropriate Him, and to live by HIm experiencing Him everyday as their indwelling Life.

Nee has a clear view of God's New Testament economy which is to dispense Himself as Life into man, to make them sons of God, and to sanctify them, renew them, transform them, conform them to His image, and ultimately to transigure them.

Nee saw a clear view of the Body of Christ, the House of God, the building of God, the Bride of Christ and God's Eternal Purpose which is in bringning many sons to glory, to perfect His Bride, and to build up the household of God with many sons..

The encouragement is not that most Christians represent normality, they don't. But normality is defined by the scriptures and God's purpose, not by the status quo.

we need to see these things as normal. The Overcomming LIfe is normal and God's intent. What stands in the way is not God's desire or ability but mainly our false concepts which keep us from enjoying the riches of Christ which is in His Spirit which is in our regeenrated spirit. Most Christians don't even know they have a human spirit. Most don't know God dwells in them in their spirit. They look for him outwardly in miricles, in signs, in manifestations. But they fail to touch him in their inner man and to enjoy HIm as the Life Giving Spirit. They fail because they don't even know that they can know HIm and experience Him and if they do, they don't have a clue how.

Graftedbranch

May suggest [url=http://www.benisrael.org/OnlineBooks/apostolic_foundations/af_contents.htm]Apostolic Foundations[/url] by Art Katz as an excellent treatise on consecration and service to God.