slave


During this year's Shepherds' Conference, my discipler/mentor, Peter Martin gave me a hardbound copy of Slave by Pastor John Macarthur. He gave this gift to me since it was some time then that I first preached in our youth service. I was thrilled to have the latest book of John Macarthur (during that time, March 2011) and cant wait to start reading it. I have pending books to read but this immediately jumped in the top 1 book to finish.


A little background of me, I am not somebody who loves to read or find pleasure in reading. I grew up during the time where computer games and gaming consoles make kids crazy. And I was one of them. I also love playing basketball. The only books I open when I was a kid is my Bible (being forced to read by my mom), and textbooks (only when needed). So this made me growing up a bit allergic reading books.


I think it was 2006 when BJ Manalo, another mentor of mine, started sharing books to me. He has tons of books that can really widen your perspective. As the books one-by-one came, they were just left on my shelf collecting dust until around 2008 when I started to suddenly had an urge, a God-given urge, to read good books. 


I say good books cause there are few good christian authors who really gives/shares biblical content in their works. I avoid the "How to..." books since even how brilliant the author can be all the How to's in life must be found in the Bible. That is the only manual that we need to live. And sometimes avoid daily devotionals talking more about their lives than the Scripture.


Okay, this was supposed to be a book review of SLAVE but became a background story on how I found interest in reading books. Well I developed the love in reading when I passionately dove in the Scripture. I loved digging out what God really meant in the verses and started reading commentaries, then started looking for autobiographies of christian heroes like the martyr. My mentors helped me a lot in filtering the books that can really help. They and I now recommend books by: John Macathur, John Piper, AW Tozer, RC Sproul, CH Spurgeon, Charles Edwards.


But most of all we must saturate our minds and hearts in the Bible. The only book that God Himself wrote. We must be like babies longing for this 'milk'. 


"Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good." 1 Peter 2:1-3 

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