What is your favorite book on the spiritual transformation process? Sorry, you can’t say the Bible. That’s a given. (Written by God with the help of a few mere mortals.) The very best book I’ve read that has had the greatest impact on my spiritual life, without a doubt, is Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice by Dallas Willard & Jan Johnson. This companion workbook accompanies Dallas Willard’s bestselling Renovation of the Heart, but what makes this workbook so wonderful…
is that it distills the very best of Renovation of the Heart and offers daily, practical ideas for living a life completely surrendered to God. Like many of you, I’ve read a ton of books on the spiritual life. But, never before have I read a book that has help me better understand how the whole ME works. How the whole me is designed to walk in cooperation with the Holy Spirit as I follow Christ. Let me explain…
Willard brillantly focuses on how we can all become apprentices (learners) of Christ by considering how God leads us…
1. To focus our minds on the things of Christ.
2. To understand where we allow our feelings to dwell.
3. To honestly examine our character and our will.
4. To examine what our body is poised to with our words and actions.
5. To look closely at how we treat and love others (Willard defines love as ‘the will to good’)
6. To ask what we continually say to God and to our soul (the words of scripture and prayer).
I simply can’t say enough good things about this book. I come back to all my red underlined pages again and again. I found it much more helpful than the Willard’s Renovation of the Heart, mainly because the content is so distilled and it makes for a quicker read. That said, both books combined together are excellent companions. There is also an audio addition read by Willard as well as a Kindle edition.
What spiritual transformation books and/or books in the Bible have you found most helpful? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
