In addition to their daily Bible reading and prayer, I generally encourage Christians to make a practice of reading through various kinds of Christian writing. It is good to read through categories like: Theology, Church History, Christian Biography, Discipleship, and Culture (issues like Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, etc.). I try to practice something similar when I’m not reading for school or issues the elders are in the process of discussing. Though I generally counsel this, sometimes I’d encourage you to break that habit/routine. Sometimes you just need to give yourself to the kind of genre that makes your soul sing. For me that’s doing some reading on Biblical Theology.

I love that particular genre, and it can be anything from a more academic work like Stephen Dempster’s Dominion and Dynasty to a more popular work (though academic enough) like Don Carson’s The God Who is There. I just finished Carson’s book, and now I have moved on to a book related to one of my categories, Ecclesiology (the study of the doctrine of the church). Entering into the second chapter of that book (Michael Horton’s The Gospel Commission), I ran into a Biblical Theology of the background of the Great Commission. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the material, given the author, but I was. Anyway, as I began to read that chapter, I found myself amazed and reminded of God’s great work of redemption foreshadowed in the Old Testament and fully revealed in Christ. Just consider these brief reflections from that chapter,

“An Old Testament ‘type’ is like a trailer for a movie. While the Red Sea was a preview, Christ’s cross was the ultimate judgment itself. And unlike Moses and the Israelites, Jesus passed through the sea only by first being drowned in it. Paul even identifies the cross as his Read Sea crossing (1 Cor. 10:1-6). But also unlike Moses, Jesus was not barred from entering the Promised Land, but opened the gates of Paradise for his people and entered as their conquering pioneer” [Michael Horton, The Gospel Commission, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), p.38-39].

These I found to be heartwarming words, as they are a reminder of the work of my Savior. For, “when I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scare can take it in; that on the cross my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul…”

So, brothers and sisters, read widely and through different genres and various kinds of Christian writing so that your soul might profit, but also read so that your soul might sing “How Great Thou Art!”