Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - 13 Life-Changing Books Every Christian Should Read with Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

What books have truly shaped your faith and transformed your life? In this episode, I share the 13 books that have profoundly impacted my walk with God - from classics on knowing God's character to practical guides on fighting sin and living with eternal perspective.As Charles Spurgeon said, "Visit many good books, but live in the Bible." These books have deepened my understanding of God's character, helped me fight sin, and equipped me to live with eternal perspective - but they should never replace your commitment to God's Word.Whether you're looking to grow in holiness, understand God's sovereignty, or learn how to trust Him in difficult times, these books offer biblical wisdom that can transform your life.What books have shaped your faith? Drop your recommendations in the comments below!

Hey folks, my name is Johnny Ardovanis. Welcome to Dial in Ministries. I wanna answer a question in this brief episode that I get asked quite frequently, and that is what are the books that have shaped and changed my life? With that being said, I wanna start with the words of Charles Spurgeon who said,

visit many good books, but live in the Bible. I hope that these books in no way, shape or form replace your commitment to God's word. Now with that said, I have 13 books here. I tried to condense it. I started with five, then it was seven. Now it's 13 books. 13 books that have really shaped and changed my life

in no particular order necessarily. But the first book is Knowing God. If you know me, you know this book has really shaped my life. Knowing God by J.I. Packer. I remember reading this initially, I think when I was 19 years old. He says, what makes life worthwhile is having something big enough that catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance. And he says, and what higher, more compelling goal can

there be in this life than knowing the God we call Father? And so this book is on the different attributes of God. It's on the thrill and privilege of knowing God. It says in Jeremiah, let him who boast, boast in this that he understands and knows me. You were made to boast and you are to boast in the fact that you understand and know God. And J.I. Packer's book, Knowing God, is huge and helpful in that regard. The second book is a book called

Trusting God by Jerry Bridges. If you've read my book, Consider the Lilies, Finding Perfect Peace in the Character of God, this is one of the books that I would say was a huge influence on me in regards to trusting God in difficult times. Jerry Bridges particularly focuses on God's sovereignty, his wisdom, and his love in a difficult world.

And so if you're walking through a trial, this is a book that has shaped and changed my life and it focuses our attention on God's character. Third book is a book called The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin D. Young. This is a book really about our union with Christ, which is our understanding that we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness.

And so when we battle sin, and we now can look at it in a way and say, I'm dead to this. Sin no longer has any dominion over me. He talks about our purity in there. He talks about faith fueled effort. Like what does it look like for us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but do it in a way that's motivated by God's love and faith. And so that's the whole in our holiness. Fourth book is The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul.

This book is fantastic. It's kind of the primer on God's character. That is that God's holiness, theologians would say, is the hub of the wheel in regards to God's character. If you think of a hub and there's spokes going out from that hub, God's holiness is the hub of the wheel in regards to God's character. If you think of a hub and there's spokes going out from that hub, God's holiness is the hub of the wheel. And so what that means is God's love is a holy love, God's wisdom is a holy wisdom, which just means it's unlike your love and my love. This is an amazing book, and if you haven't read it, it's a must. This fifth book is the autobiography of George Mueller.

George Mueller ran an orphanage and a ministry in Bristol, England. He has in this book, his autobiography, thousands of recorded answers to prayer. And so George Mueller would often wake up and say, I have so much to accomplish today, I feel so busy. And he says, I must pray extra. But this shows you the power of prayer

and what God does in one man's life who lives dependently on the wisdom and provision that comes from God. I read this book almost once a year. The sixth book would be Pilgrim's Progress. This is Bunyan's Allegory of the Christian Life. And Bunyan masterfully articulates the different difficulties and trials of living the Christian life. The main character is appropriately named Christian and he's going from the city of destruction, which is this world, to the celestial city. And on the way he encounters giants and dragons and castles and all of those different giants, dragons, castles, vanity, fair, articulate what the Christian walks through in this life

and it's littered and drenched in scripture and this is a must. My dad read me the Abridged version when I was a kid. I read the Abridged version to my kids, the picture book. It's called The Most Dangerous Journey, but this is a book you have to read. Number seven, The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer. This book starts with the well-known line,

what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. This is another book on God's character. And you're gonna notice a lot of these books that I'm mentioning have to do with God's character because every time we're going into God's word, we're on a treasure hunt for who our God really is. And so Tozer walks through different elements

of God's attributes. And what is an attribute? An attribute is anything we would attribute to God, who he is. If you wanna know God more, if you wanna trust God more, if you wanna love God more, our love for God is a derivative of understanding his love for us, which is a derivative of understanding his character.

So the knowledge of the Holy, you may have heard different quotes by Tozer, but you need to read this whole book. That's number seven. Number eight is a book called The Enemy Within by Chris Lungard. This is a book on fighting sin. One of the things that stood out to me

the first time I read this book was, he used the analogy of a lion hiding in the thicket. We don't think he's there anymore. He's lurking, and that's what sin and Satan is like in our life. He says sometimes when the waves are steady, we think the battle with sin is over, but that's actually the moment where Satan is planning his attack. And so he walks through,

I think it's an abridged, really a modernized version of the mortification of sin by John Owen, but he talks about fighting sin. That's one of the believer's duties. And we do that with the renewing of our mind, but in regards to fighting sin and temptation, why do I keep on sinning? This is a book that you need to read. Next book is Found God's Will by John MacArthur. It's a little book. Everyone wants to know God's will for your life, and John MacArthur makes the argument God's will for your life doesn't need to be found.

It needs to be obeyed because it's plainly revealed on the pages of scripture. The next book is another book by Jerry Bridges, which is The Pursuit of Holiness. Ephesians 5.1 says, we're to be an imitator of Jesus Christ. Philippians 2 says, we're to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The Christian life is a lifelong pursuit of becoming continually conformed

into the image of our holy God. And Jerry Bridges talks about this. We went through this as a community group. This is one of the most widely selling books on the topic of personal holiness there's ever been. The next book is Taking God at His Word by Kevin D. Young. This is just a fantastic book on the scripture itself. Kevin D. Young talks about how God's word is sufficient,

how it's clear, how it's authoritative and necessary. What that means is even as we're talking about different books on the Christian life, on God's character, this book talks about the sufficiency of Scripture, meaning we have everything Peter says pertaining to life and godliness within God's Word. And sometimes when we're wanting to know more about a subject, our first instinct is to go to other books. And I know that's the irony of even this video, but Kevin DeAaron talks about the sufficiency of scripture. Make sure you're living in the Bible. The next book is called Living Life Backwards by David Gibson.

This is a book about the book of Ecclesiastes, and he just talks about living with the end in mind, knowing that we're going to die, knowing that death is our destiny. He's drawing from the reflections of Solomon and prompting us to consider how we are going to wish we lived when we come to die knowing that death is our teacher. It's an evangelist. It tells us and reminds us of our own mortality. And so we want to live in a way that reflects that. And this is part of the wisdom literature in the scripture, the book of Ecclesiastes,

that is. And David Gibson does a wonderful job for young adults or for senior saints telling them how they can live in light of the end. This last book is called, this is a bigger book, it's called Total Truth by Nancy Piercy. This is a book that has significantly shaped my life in regards to the objective truth of God in the scripture,

you and I are growing up in an environment, or we're living in an environment that I would say has done away with the very notion of truth. Oprah is known for saying, speak your truth. It's an act of covert racism. In the Toronto Sun, they reported for a teacher to say, two plus two equals four, because that's

objectifying truth. And so Nancy Pearce lays, I would say, almost an apologetical understanding of the idea of truth as it relates to God and why even understanding who God is as creator, as designer is so important in our evangelism. She's a student of Francis Schaeffer. And just, I think, even beginning to understand how we evangelize people is so different now than maybe it would have been 200 years ago, because we have to do a little bit of pre-evangelism explaining to them that there is a creator of the universe, that there's a God, there

is a moral law. Instead of just saying, hey, Jesus died for your sins, some people would say, what's sin? Or if we say Jesus is the truth, they would say, what's truth? And so this book helps us understand all of those realities. Nancy Pearcy, I've read everything she's ever written, I think. I love her material. If there's any books, obviously, that I've missed out on, I haven't said Mere Christianity, which also has really affected an impact in my life by C.S. Lewis, but if there's any

other books that you would recommend, drop them in the comments. Let other people know the books that have impacted your life. And thanks for watching.