I love reading, so this list was hard to come up with. So let me qualify it by saying that these are the books that had the widest, and most fruitful impact on my life last year. Starting with…

• Cross-Centered Life, by C.J. Mahaney.

Few books have convicted me enough to put me on my knees in repentant prayer. This is one of them. Mahaney redirects the Christian back to the power and beauty of the Gospel with a clarity and brevity many authors are want to have. Having grown up in a Christian home, I developed the assumption that the Gospel was only for unbelievers. Mahaney lays out practically how the Gospel is powerful to continue transforming Christians on a daily basis. This understanding has not only changed my life, but changed my entire outlook on the Bible as well.

• God is the Gospel, by John Piper

If the above book enlightened me to the need to keep drawing from the Gospel, this book by the beloved John Piper reveals God to be the very prize to what you are drawing near. I fell more in love with Jesus, having realized that all else in Christianity (even good things) is subservient to the ultimate source of our joy, which is in the presence of God Himself.

• Cross-Cultural Servanthood, by Duane Elmer

This book has impacted me through a number of different facets which struck me since it’s technically a “missions” book. Yet the principles of servanthood that Elmer unpacks are broad enough to cover everything from marriage to neighborhood interactions, and because the book is both Christ-exalting and Biblically-drenched, it packs a punch that left me quiet and convicted more than once. In my own life, it took the transformative power of the Gospel and showed me how to apply it to community, not simply my own individual life.
And yes, it has definitely changed the way I look at missions.

Bonus:

Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography, By Ian Murray

Jonathan Edwards is probably the single author outside of the Bible that has most transformed my way of thinking. Much of the language of joy and “treasuring Christ” has come from reading Edwards. But this heavy biography didn’t feed my geek-fest of Edwards. From his awful marriage, to the church that kicked him out of the pastorate, I saw a different side of Edwards than was portrayed in his own writings. It showed me the brokenness of a real man who is himself in need of the Gospel. And after reading his story, I stopped idolizing the Puritan, and began to fall back on the same Gospel of grace that even he required.