Many people cautioned me about the teenage years. Many people warned that the joys of parenting little ones would eventually give way to the grind of parenting bigger ones. They told me horror stories based on their own experiences, then assured me that I should prepare myself for all kinds of difficulties and all kinds of sorrows.
They were wrong. At least in our case, they were wrong. Parenting teens has not been without its challenges, of course, for there is nothing in this life that comes without challenges. Nothing worthwhile, at least. But it has been my experience that the teenage years have come with joys far beyond the joys of the little years. Parenting teens has been a pleasure and a privilege. It has been an honor and blessing. So for those who have been warned only of the trials to come, let me recount some of the joys.
Parenting teens has given me the joy of seeing my children become Christians. I know that many people can and do make legitimate professions of faith when they are tiny, but I also know that the teenage years are crucial, that a profession is proven when the child has been challenged by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and is capable of rebellion, of turning away. It was in the teenage years that I had the privilege of seeing all three of my children profess faith, get baptized, and be received as members of the church.
Parenting teens has given me the joy of seeing my children begin to make their own decisions—to make decisions that are significant and life-shaping, yet decisions that are wise and honoring to God. It is good to have children who are obedient and who will do the bidding of mom and dad, but it is better by far to have children who are wise and who do the bidding of God.
Parenting teens has given me the joy of seeing my children honor their parents. I expected young children to obey and we trained them to do so all the way, right away, and with a proper attitude. But I expected that as our children got older, obedience would give way to honor, that the compulsion to obey would give way to the desire to respect. And it has been a blessing to see that happen, to see our relationships change in just the ways God expects them to.
Parenting teens has given me the joy of seeing my children take church seriously. All of my children left home at 17 or 18 to attend college hundreds of miles away. This meant that each of them had to find a new church community. And each of them did. They all chose a different church, but they all chose a good church where the gospel is proclaimed and where they could deploy their gifts in service to others.
Parenting teens has given me the joy of becoming friends with my children. Over time I found common ground with each of them—similar interests, shared gifts, complementary passions. As the children grew into adults and started to become peers, friendship sprang up where there had been only the relationship between child and parent. Having raised these children, it is now a blessing to count them as friends.
Parenting teens has given me the joy of seeing children fall in love and get engaged and even get married. What a blessing it has been to see them begin to leave and to cleave. This has, of course, also given me the joy of adding new people to our family—new people to get to know and new people to come to love. As the family has grown, love has grown all the more.
Parenting teens has given me each of these joys and so many more besides.
I was often warned of the struggles of parenting teens but rarely told of the blessings. I was often assured that it would be a time of difficulty but rarely encouraged that it would be a time of pleasure. Yet the years have proven that the joys of parenting teens have far exceeded the sorrows and the blessings have far exceeded the troubles. In fact, it hasn’t even been close. And as these years draw to their close not too long from now, I know I will remember them with fondness. I will remember them as the best years yet, even while expecting even better years ahead.

Many years ago a great sailing ship was crossing the Atlantic when it came to the treacherous Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Though this is one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, it can all also be one of the most treacherous. Its waters are shallow and often blanketed by dense fog. Icebergs lurk in the darkness. And sure enough, that ship blundered into a great bank of fog and struck a massive iceberg.

Within moments the vessel began to settle heavily at the bow and the call went out to abandon ship. One of the terrified passengers cried out, “What must I do to be saved?” at which the captain replied, “Jump into the lifeboat!” The passenger saw that the lifeboat was a little way beyond the deck of the ship and a good bit lower down. Afraid and uncertain, he hesitated for a moment as he counted the cost. Should he leap or should he wait? Was it possible there might be another way to be rescued?
But the moment of hesitation passed and he chose to take the captain at his word. He chose to trust that the boat would be able to save him. He made the leap. His faith was rewarded when he landed within the craft and took his place beside some of the other passengers and crew. Together they watched with horror as first the deck and then the masts slipped beneath the waves. Soon there was nothing around them but a few stray pieces of wreckage and a haunting silence.
But the peril was not yet over. Though the people who had survived the sinking of the ship had been saved from death, they were still far out in a dangerous ocean. They could not just sit still and hope for rescue. There was something more they must do if they wished to make it to land. The captain, having taken his place in the front of the lifeboat, told each of the passengers to take up an oar, to slip it into an oarlock, and to row with all their strength. Having been saved from death on the ship, they now needed to work out that salvation through hard rowing.
And so, hour after hour and day and day after day, they put their strength into the work. Though they were safe within the lifeboat and fully dependent upon it to keep them from being lost in the depths of the ocean, they still needed to expend a great deal of effort. With blistered hands and aching backs, they pressed on through dark nights and dangerous seas.
And then the moment came when the cry went out: “Land ahead! Land!” Straining their eyes they saw the unmistakable rise of a hill in the distance. With fresh vigor they pressed on. As the waters grew shallower and the air grew warmer, they began to hear the sound of waves breaking against the beach. And as the bow finally scraped against ground, they leapt onto the shore knowing their salvation was now complete.
They knew their salvation was complete because here, in this new land, the waves could not reach them and the storm could not threaten them. They had reached a haven. They were safe. They were saved.
(Romans 8:29:30)

Inspired by the writings of F.B. Meyer

A reader of this site recently got in touch to ask me for some book suggestions. She has been a believer for quite a long time and along the way has heard of the value of reading “Christian classics.” Yet she hasn’t been sure where to begin and asked for some guidance. I was glad to take on that challenge!

In this article I will offer some suggestions that cover various eras from the early church until the late twentieth century. I should note that these recommendations will tend more toward literature that is devotional than scholarly or purely theological. And I should note as well that there is not a person in the world who will agree with every book I’ve included and every book I’ve excluded—and that is just fine because there is always a degree of subjectivity to these things. And now, without further ado, here are some Christian classics to consider reading.
John Bunyan allegorical The Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the bestselling books in all of history and a great place to begin. It has never gone out of print and in one way or another has influenced every generation of Christians since it was first published in the late 1600s. For those reasons alone it is well worth a read. Though you can find modernizations that adapt the language either lightly or significantly, the original is still surprisingly accessible. There are also some lovely audio versions available. If you’d like to listen to it, I recommend the Nadia May recording. If you’d like to read a slight modernization, this one by Crossway is well done. Otherwise, perhaps try this edition. (Most editions contain part 1 and part 2—the journeys of Christian and Christiana. You can consider yourself to have read The Pilgrim’s Progress once you complete part 1 since that is the original work.)
Note: When it comes to books that are out of copyright, you’ll often find many different editions at Amazon, eBay, and other sites that will sell pretty much anything. It’s worth being careful because a lot of them are very poorly printed or bound—often little more than photocopies of old editions that are then cheaply slapped together. Get used to clicking the “See all formats and editions” link on a book’s page and then looking for an edition by a reputable publisher. If you shop at Westminster Books or a similar bookseller, you shouldn’t run into this issue as they will already have curated the books they sell.
We should go back in time a little to make sure we don’t neglect the earliest Christian classics, which include the most noteworthy work of Augustine: Confessions. It is available in a multitude of editions and translations.
I know little about the 1,000 years between Augustine and the Puritans so don’t have a lot to offer here beyond names like Dante and Thomas Aquinas. But as far as I can tell, this was not an era in which there were a lot of devotional works that have since been affirmed by Protestants. (Authors like Thomas à Kempis and Brother Lawrence are still read and treasured today, but typically not by Reformed Protestants.) Calvin’s A Little Book on the Christian Life gets us into the Reformation era and is an excerpt of the most practical section of his Institutes.
You may have heard of the Puritans and been told you should try reading their books. When we talk about “Puritan books,” we are talking about thousands of titles written over more than a century, many of them incredibly voluminous, so there are more options than any one person could read in a lifetime (except maybe Joel Beeke). Thankfully time has served as a filter and brought many of the best works to the surface. Among them is Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices in which Thomas Brooks instructs us in how to resist Satan’s temptations. The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs tells why contentment is so fleeting and how Christian can achieve it, The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes offers hope for those who are suffering, while Thomas Watson’s The Godly Man’s Picture presents a “picture” of mature Christian character. Those are great options to begin with. For something slightly more advanced, try Sin and Temptation by John Owen—still the definitive work on the subject. You also can’t go wrong with Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Anne Bradstreet’s works of poetry, or Samuel Rutherford’s wee little The Loveliness of Christ. The Puritan Paperback series by Banner of Truth and the Puritan Treasures for Today by Reformation Heritage Books can guide you into many more options.
Let me interject with a note about Puritan works. Many Puritan classics are actually excerpts from longer works, so you may find the same content in a number of different places. Also, a few of them now have modernized editions in which either the text has been rewritten in modern English or has simply been annotated to assist in understanding. With some authors this really isn’t all that necessary, but with others it can be very helpful. The best in this category are the John Owen books edited by Justin Taylor and Kelly Kapic.
When it comes to post-Puritan classics from the 1700s and early 1800s, I confess that my knowledge is a bit lacking. You might consider Real Christianity by William Wilberforce or The Religious Affections and The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd by Jonathan Edwards. Memoir & Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne by Andrew Bonar was published in the mid-1800s. The sermons of George Whitefield and the hymns of Charles Wesley are rewarding, though these last two probably don’t quite count as classic books. The same would be true of the letters of John Newton. Lemuel Haynes wrote in this era and, while I don’t think any of his books are considered classics, his sermons are enjoyable—perhaps especially “Universal Salvation.”
As we get deeper into the 1800s and come to the early 1900s, I have read much more so can offer more confident suggestions. J.C. Ryle’s Holiness and Thoughts for Young Men are rewarding reads. Theodore Cuyler’s God’s Light on Dark Clouds is a beautiful work on suffering while P.B. Power’s A Book of Comfort for Those in Sickness is exactly what it sounds like. This was an era in which sermons were often transcribed and printed in periodicals, so you can find entire volumes of sermons from men like Charles Spurgeon, D.L. Moody, or De Witt Talmage that are a joy to read. You will actually find that a good number of the books in their names are really just adapted sermons. Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is more theological than devotional, but crucial to understanding liberalism. John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied is brilliant.
For more contemporary classics (by which I mean works from the late 1900s that seem destined to survive the ages) I suggest The Attributes of God by A.W. Pink (which is self-explanatory), Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (which is Lewis’s best known apologetic work), Knowing God by J.I. Packer (which is a kind of introduction to the Christian faith), The Cross of Christ by John Stott (which is a description of what God accomplished through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ) and The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul (which calls us to know and love God as holy, holy, holy). Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot is a biography that had a massive impact on world missions.
If I had to plot out a short reading list with one book from each era, I might go in this order: The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, A Little Book on the Christian Life, Holiness, Knowing God, Confessions, the Religious Affections. Either way, I hope this article brings some clarity and motivates you to explore some of the true classics of the Christian faith.