Top Six: What (or who) has shaped your thinking, your view of God and the world?

The following was originally posted in 2016.  I have since edited and updated it.  The picture is of Dr. Lionel Gurney founder of the RSMT now call Reach Across.

In 2016 I received the following in a mass email sent to the local ministerial: "Because I am up thinking about this, I thought I would bring it to everyone as well. I am always fascinated by what shapes people's thinking, choices, life, be it family, culture, books, dogs, amoebas, etc. So I was just wondering if as an exercise you would like to answer the top ten (at the moment) people, books, movements that have shaped your thinking in your ministry and view of God and the world. Obviously outside the Bible, and it does not have to be solely "Christian"."

Its an intriguing invitation and one that got me to thinking... who/what has most influenced me?  The author of the email assumes - as he should! - that the Lord Jesus will be first on everyone's list.  He assumes, too, that the Bible will be included as well; so he asks, instead, for 10 other names, books or movements.   In keeping with my lists of 6 I have chosen instead six names/books/movements.  

I would love to hear yours.  Here's my list of six:

1. My father.  I will be forever thankful to my father for - among other things - instilling in me a love for the least (Matthew 25), reverence for God, a high view of Scripture, an appetite for critical thinking and most important, a God-centered view of Christianity and the world.  I will always remember him telling me that we do not make God relevant to us.  Rather it is we who must make ourselves relevant to Him.

With every passing year I realize how much I am a product of my upbringing - how much, indeed, is owed to both my parents - and how much (in particular) of my thinking and perspective has been shaped by my father.  In a world where so many Christians hurl insults at "a God like that," lambasting as they do "a God who would do this" or do the other, I am thankful that in our home such language was unthinkable.   Indeed, in a generation that feels free to quibble with Scripture and contend with God I am forever grateful for a father who taught me by word and example godly fear and reverence.      


2. Leonard Ravenhill.  Why Revival Tarries is probably the single book apart from the Bible that most dramatically impacted my life at a time when I was preparing to go to seminary (or what he loved to call "cemetery").  After the first page I was on my knees.  Ravenhill had that effect on people.  He either got them to praying or he got their backs up.  Many who heard him never wanted to hear him again.  

I remember early into my time at seminary listening one evening to one of his sermon's.  That night I didn't sleep.  I went on to listen to a sermon by Paris Reidhead and continued on through the night in prayer responding to things God was speaking to my conscience.

I have come to reject this man's (Wesley-like) Arminianism as well as his ecclesiology, but his call to prayer has had a life long effect.  I still go back to that one book every year even as I go back again and again to hear his sermons.  I can only pray that God in His mercy would grant me something of the passion this man had; and his hunger in particular for more of God.  Ravenhill's was a prophetic voice that is worth heeding still today.  If you have never heard of this man please consider reading his biography!   

3. The Puritans.  Isaac Ambrose (Looking Unto Jesus is glorious!), John Flavel (vol. 1 of his works is, in my opinion, one of the very best of all the Puritan writings), Richard Sibbes, John Owen, William Bates, James Durham (see his exposition of the Song of Solomon), Samuel Rutherford (after his letters consider also Communion Sermons and Quaint Sermons), George Swinnock (The Christian Man's Calling is wonderful), Thomas Watson, Thomas Manton, Anthony Burgess, William Gurnall, Thomas Brooks, Ralph Erskine and Stephen Charnock (see The Attributes of God) are among that breed of 'spiritual giants' who have had a profound and lasting impact on my life.  

It was in 2006 that I first introduced to John Owen.  I had read Packer's A Quest for Godliness, and I was curious about these men I knew nothing about.  I had a book allowance and had no idea where to begin.  When I learned that the cost of Owen's works amounted to the whole of my allowance I decided to start with him.  Of course, I had no idea what I was getting into!  

I can say that John Owen theologically changed everything for me.  Reading him I discovered a 

depth that I had never encountered before, which instilled a yearning for more.  I learned from Owen about the unity of the covenant of grace, I learned what justification is, I began - for the first time - to rejoice in the righteousness of Jesus, I became convinced of the truth of particular/definite atonement [reading the Death of Death], I learned the necessity of the cross... indeed, the list could go on.  In God's wonderful grace Owen's works were a kind second seminary.  Of course reading Owen made me curious about the other puritans and so I began to read Flavel and then Sibbes and Edwards... 

It is still my habit to read at least 10 pages of puritan work every day and it is a practice that remains a blessing.  Much is said for and against the puritans.  My debt is very personal.  I look forward to meeting these men to whom I owe so much.  

What made their writings so great?  First, they were saturated in the Word of God.  Second, they were men of prayer.  Third, they were holy men, and the holiest men are always the best teachers!  Fourth, there is a resulting depth to what they wrote that is unparalleled.  

If you would like to begin reading the Puritans consider starting here:
     * The Glory of Christ by John Owen
     * The Letters of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Bonar
     * Heaven on Earth by Thomas Brooks
     * Communion with God by John Owen
     * The Works of John Flavel, vol. 1
     * The Christian in Complete Armour by William Gurnall
     * The Love of Christ by Richard Sibbes


4. Southern Presbyterians of the 19th century.  It may seem odd that I include these men in my list.  I am neither southern nor are my roots southern.  Nonetheless, God in His providence brought the writings of these godly men into my life and they have had a profound effect on my thinking.  None of them, however, have been such a blessing as R.L. Dabney and William Plumer.  

Dabney's biography in particular came at a time when I desperately needed it and showed me what it is to be a man of God in the midst of trial and opposition and loneliness.  His writings made me rethink worship, education, government and even slavery.  Though abhorring its abuses so common in the 19th century, I see that he was absolutely correct when he said the institution itself is not sinful... and he predicted the shift that has come in the Church.  He knew that once humanistic ideology was allowed to inform our reading of the Bible it would continue to do.  If we could be wrong about slavery what else might we be wrong about?  And this, of course, is precisely how the progressives reason.  Dabney rightly took the Scriptures as authoritative and sufficient; and cared nothing for the sentimentality of man-centered ideology.  What I appreciate about him is how God-centered his writings are.  They are saturated with devotion, with love and with awe for God himself.  We speak of men who refuse to compromise; Dabney was such a man.  He didn't care what men thought of him.  He cared only what God thought.  His writings are challenging, insightful, and - above all - passionate in defense of the truth and the glory of the King whom Dabney so loved to serve.  

William Plumer's books on piety, Christ and providence are some of the richest works I have read on those subjects.  In recent months I have spent less time with Dabney and much more with Plumer.  My respect for him continues to grow.   His books are listed among my other top 6 lists.   James H. Thornwell, Girardeau, and Benjamin Morgan Palmer have also been a blessing.  


5. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  In 2006 a kind pastor offered me some of his books.  Among them were a number of books by a man I'd only barely heard of.  When I began reading Sermon on the Mount and then Revival I was blown away.  It was Lloyd-Jones who first helped me to begin to understand the doctrines of grace (or Calvinism).  It was also Lloyd-Jones along with John Owen who helped me to see the unity of the covenant of grace and the relationship between the law and the gospel.  In one sense I can say that no man (beside John Owen) has more significantly shaped my theology and ministry than he has.  I not only owe him for being a key figure in my journey from Arminianism to Calvinism, but I owe him also for helping me (along with R.L. Dabney) to begin to rethink the Sabbath, to rethink my hermeneutic and my preaching.  When critical scholarship had undermined my confidence in the Bible Lloyd-Jones renewed it; and when my preaching was in danger of becoming man-centered and seeker oriented Lloyd-Jones taught me to speak instead for God.  I will always owe this man a debt larger than I can calculate.

Revival may be one of the best works ever written on the subject of revival.  It was originally preached as a series of sermons on the 100th anniversary of the 1859 revival.  See also Lectures on Revivals by W.B. Sprague.

6. Dr. Lionel Gurney.  I find it difficult in choosing just 6 movements/people/books to narrow it
down.  I want to include people whom I dearly love, but I have chosen very carefully those, rather, who have shaped me as a person.  I owe much to my wife and best friend Erin; and I am also very thankful for the many lessons I have learned from the quiet humility of my father-in-law; but Dr. Gurney makes the list because he was one of those people who changed everything for me in terms of my relationship with God.  

I was a teenager when I met him, and he didn't spend very many days in our home.  Still, those few days were significant.  Dr. Gurney (founder of the Red Sea Mission Team, now Reach Across) was different.  He was a man absolutely fixed upon the Lord Jesus.  He had no time for anything else.  As a teenager I was flabbergasted by what I saw and heard in this man, but I was also irresistibly drawn to him.  I wanted to sit at his feet and learn.  Dr. Gurney was a disciplined man who each night and early each morning was in the Word and at prayer; but it is was his disinterest in everything but God that struck a cord with me.  There was no denying that this man knew God, and I soon found myself deeply aware of the fact that he had something I didn't have... and I wanted it.  

Everywhere he went Dr. Gurney was handing out tracts and sharing the gospel with whomever he met.  On the way from Toronto to our home in Cobourg he couldn't think of a better way to spend the time than to sing hymns - and so we did.  "Wow," I thought, "how this man loves God... how wonderful, then, must God be!"

Dr. Gurney was an old man (and seemed even older to me at the time than he was).  The truth is, he had nothing in common with me.  He was uninterested in the things that fascinated me.  And yet, strangely, I was gripped by his example and the savour of godliness that permeated his life.  He had something I didn't, and I was never the same as a result.  [Perhaps, after all, that is how to reach our young people for Christ]  It was Dr. Gurney who inadvertently put in me a restlessness to learn about the men who had more of God.  It was because of this thirst that I began to read the biographies of men like Keith Green, George Muller, David Wilkerson, Rees Howells and then later the writings of A.W. Tozer, Leonard Ravenhill, Oswald J. Smith, Charles Spurgeon, Robert Murray M'Cheyne, John Elias and then the Puritans.  I look forward to seeing him in heaven where I can properly thank him.