Reading different theological perspectives. Historical readings express their authors' perspectives, including Arminian and Reformed or Calvinist traditions. Inclusion does not make an author's position settled CTS doctrine. Read with Scripture and the assigned material. A supported answer from another evangelical perspective should be assessed on its reasoning, not penalized simply for differing from the author. If an automated score rejects such an answer, ask CTS for review.

Master’s Assigned Readings (all five)

M.Div. and Th.M. students read all five assigned selections and take their separate exam after activation. The test page states the current rule; valid earlier completions remain valid.

Optional Honors (choose three)

Honors is optional on every track. Certificate and Associate students may read three honors selections without a required-reading exam. Honors does not replace either master’s exam.

The Master's textbook test: read Holiness Through the Ages (assigned excerpts), then take its test: twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once. Correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. It is separate from the reading test on the five digests below: passing one does not pass the other. On the M.Div. and Th.M. tracks both tests are being introduced; each test's page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take them, and a pass is kept in your record.

The Master's reading test: separate from the honors invitation below. Honors asks you to read any three of these digests; the Master's test covers all five. It has twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, four from each reading, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once; correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. You may try again after a short wait. The test is being introduced: its page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take it, and a pass is kept in your record.

Honors option: Complete any three of the five readings below. These readings supplement the course and do not replace its units or examinations.

On this site: Each of the five readings is a Chapala Theological Seminary digest, written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French here on the site — every one opens directly from this page, with nothing to download. The digests are CTS-authored teaching that rests on the great public-domain classics of discipleship (Thomas à Kempis, William Law, John Bunyan, Charles M. Sheldon, Andrew Murray, E. M. Bounds, A. B. Bruce, Henry Drummond, George Müller, and others); those classic works are freely available online for any who wish to read them in full.

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Reading 1 · The Cost of Following

The Cost of Following Christ

A CTS digest

“Radical” as rooted, not extreme: wholehearted versus nominal faith; the searching call “Follow Me” and the imitation of Christ; self-denial as dethroning self (not self-hatred); taking up the cross with the joy set before us; counting the cost yet giving all gladly because He is worth it; losing life to find it; “in His steps” reshaping all of ordinary life; and above all, grace to follow — the whole thing grounded in grace, not our own strength.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Cost of Following Christ

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the call to wholehearted discipleship, and the grace that makes it possible

A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works on discipleship (Thomas à Kempis, Charles M. Sheldon, and others), and in Scripture.

Radical Christianity
Discipleship
The Cost of Following
Anchored in classics

A word before you read. To be a Christian is to follow Christ — not at a distance, but with the whole heart. This reading considers the cost of that following: to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and count all things loss for Christ. But it begins and ends where the gospel begins and ends: in grace. We do not follow to earn His love, but because we are already loved; and the strength to follow is His gift, not our achievement.

1.Rooted, Not Nominal

The word "radical" can be misleading, so let us begin by understanding it rightly. It comes from a Latin word meaning "root," and radical Christianity is not a matter of being extreme or strange; it is a matter of being rooted — of a faith that goes down to the root of the heart and takes hold of the whole life, rather than remaining on the surface. And this is set in contrast to a danger that has always threatened the church: the danger of a merely nominal Christianity, a faith that is Christian in name but not in reality, that has the form of godliness but not its power. It is possible to bear the name of Christ, to attend His church, and to hold correct opinions about Him, while the heart remains untouched and the life unchanged. Against all such half-heartedness, the New Testament calls us to a whole-hearted following of Christ. But before we say a word about the cost of that following, we must be clear about its foundation. The wholehearted discipleship to which we are called is never the way we earn God's favor or purchase our salvation. It is, from first to last, the grateful response of those who have already been saved by grace, through faith, as a free gift. We do not follow Christ in order to be loved by Him; we follow because we are loved, and cannot help but follow the One who first loved us and gave Himself for us.

2.Follow Me

At the heart of the Christian life stands the simplest and most searching of all Christ's commands: "Follow Me." To be a disciple, in the plain meaning of the word, is to be a follower and a learner — one who walks behind the Master, learns His ways, and is gradually made like Him. And this is far more than believing certain things about Jesus in our heads; it is the giving of ourselves to walk after Him with our whole lives. The old devotional writers understood this well. Thomas à Kempis opened his beloved book, The Imitation of Christ, by urging that our chief study and endeavor should be to meditate upon the life of Jesus Christ, and to conform our own lives to His. For it profits us little, he said, to speak learnedly about lofty matters if we lack the humility and love that please God; better to feel true sorrow for sin than to be able to define it. In other words, the goal of the Christian life is not merely to know about Christ, but to know Him, to love Him, and to become like Him by following where He leads. This is what it means to be His disciple: to hear His "Follow Me," and to rise and go after Him, day by day.

3.Deny Yourself

When the Lord Jesus spoke plainly of what following Him would involve, His first word was startling: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself." Self-denial stands at the very door of discipleship. But we must understand rightly what this means, for it is often misunderstood. To deny oneself does not mean to hate oneself, or to despise the person God has made, or to sink into a joyless, crushed misery. That is not the gospel, and it is not what Christ asks. To deny oneself means, rather, to dethrone self — to take our own will, our own comfort, our own pride and self-centeredness down from the throne of our lives, and to put Christ there instead. The great struggle of the Christian life is the struggle over who shall reign: our own self, or the Lord. And to deny ourselves is simply to say, in ten thousand daily decisions, "Not my will, but Yours." This is not a grim or gloomy thing. For when self comes down and Christ goes up, we do not lose our true selves; we find them. The tyranny of self-will is a hard and unhappy bondage; and to be set free from it, to live for Christ and others rather than for ourselves, is the beginning of real joy and real freedom.

4.Take Up Your Cross

The Lord's next words were these: "and take up his cross daily, and follow Me." To take up the cross is to accept, for Christ's sake, the cost that following Him may bring — the reproach, the misunderstanding, the hardship, and sometimes the suffering that come to those who belong to Him in a world that does not know Him. It is to be willing to bear whatever our discipleship may cost us, and to bear it gladly, out of love for the One we follow. But here again we must hold fast to the spirit of the gospel. The cross we take up is not a means of punishing ourselves, nor a burden we carry in gloom. We take it up looking to Jesus, who Himself, "for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross." There was a joy beyond the suffering, and it upheld Him; and so it is for us. We bear the cost of following not with clenched teeth and heavy hearts, but with hope, because we know the One we follow, we know the love that bought us, and we know the glory that lies ahead. And we never bear it alone. The Christ who calls us to take up the cross carried His own cross first, all the way to Calvary for us; and He walks beside us in every burden we carry for His sake.

5.Count the Cost

Jesus never hid the cost of following Him, nor lured people with false promises of an easy road. On the contrary, He urged those who would follow Him to stop and count the cost first. He told two little parables to make the point. A man who wants to build a tower, He said, first sits down and calculates whether he has enough to finish it, lest he lay the foundation and be unable to complete it and become a laughingstock. And a king going to war first considers whether he can meet his enemy. So, said Jesus, "whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple." These are sobering words, and they are meant to be. Following Christ is not a casual thing to be drifted into thoughtlessly; it is a deliberate, wholehearted commitment of the entire life, and it may cost us dearly. Yet we must read these words in the light of everything else the Lord teaches. He asks us to forsake all — but only because He offers us Himself, who is worth infinitely more than all we could ever give up. To count the cost is not to be frightened away, but to face honestly what discipleship involves, and then to give ourselves to it gladly, with open eyes, knowing that whatever it costs, He is worth it.

6.Losing to Find

And this brings us to the great paradox at the center of the Christian life, one of the deepest things the Lord ever said. "Whoever desires to save his life," He taught, "will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?" Here is the secret that turns the whole matter of cost on its head. The one who clutches at his own life, who lives for himself and refuses to give anything up for Christ, will in the end lose the very thing he is trying to keep. But the one who gives up his life for Christ's sake — who lets go of his own way and hands himself over to the Lord — discovers that he has not lost his life at all, but truly found it. The cost of discipleship, rightly seen, is not really loss; it is the greatest of all gains. For in giving up ourselves we receive Christ, and in Him we receive life itself, life that is real and full and everlasting. What could it profit us to keep everything else and lose our own souls? And what have we truly given up, if in losing our lives we gain Christ, and gain everything in Him?

7.In His Steps

What does this wholehearted following look like in the ordinary rounds of daily life? A famous story once pressed this question upon a whole generation of readers. In Charles Sheldon's In His Steps, a congregation covenants together to ask, before every decision, a single question: what would Jesus do? And as they honestly try to follow the answer, their lives, their work, and their choices are transformed. However we frame the question, the point is a true one, and the apostle Peter had made it long before: Christ suffered for us, "leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps." Discipleship is not a matter for the church building alone; it reaches into every corner of life — our work and our homes, our business and our friendships, how we treat the poor and how we spend our money and how we speak of others. To follow Christ is to let His example and His Spirit reshape all of it, so that in each place and each choice we seek to walk as He walked. And yet even here we must guard the spirit of grace. We do not follow His steps to earn His approval, as though ticking off a list of duties. We follow because we love Him, and because His own Spirit is at work within us, gently making us more like Him.

8.Grace to Follow

We have spoken much of cost and of self-denial, and rightly so, for the Lord Himself spoke much of them. But we must end where the whole matter must be grounded, or it will crush us: we must end in grace. If the call to wholehearted discipleship left us to follow in our own strength, it would be a hopeless burden, for we are weak, and we fail, and none of us could bear such a cost by our own power. But we are not left to ourselves. The same grace that saved us also carries us; the Christ who calls us to follow also gives us His own Spirit to enable us, for it is God who works in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. Our discipleship, then, is not the striving of the flesh, but the fruit of grace — His power at work in our weakness. And when we stumble and fail, as we surely will, the answer is not to despair or to punish ourselves, but simply to turn again to Christ, to receive His forgiveness afresh, and to rise and follow once more. He is patient with us; our growth is often slow; and He does not cast off those who fall, but lifts them up again. So let us follow Him wholeheartedly, counting the cost and giving Him all — not in the strength of grim resolve, but in the freedom and joy of those who are loved, and forgiven, and carried every step by grace.

9.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Is your faith rooted and wholehearted, or has it grown merely nominal — and does it comfort you that the call to follow rests entirely on grace, not on your own strength? Where is self still on the throne of your life, and what would it mean to say, "Not my will, but Yours"? And when you stumble in following Christ, do you turn again to Him in hope, rather than to despair?

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Reading 2 · Holiness

A Devout and Holy Life

A CTS digest

“Be holy, for I am holy” grounded first in grace (holiness as God’s gift and work, not a way to earn favor); the beauty of holiness dispelling the sour caricature; William Law’s challenge to the false wall between a “religious” corner and ordinary life; “God in everything”; the living sacrifice pleaded “by the mercies of God”; holiness in the details as the overflow of love; the fight against sin waged hopefully in the Spirit’s strength; and Christ our holiness, whom we grow like by beholding.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

A Devout and Holy Life

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — holiness that fills the whole of ordinary life, by the power of grace

A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works on the devout life (William Law, Thomas à Kempis, and others), and in Scripture.

Radical Christianity
Holiness
The Devout Life
Anchored in classics

A word before you read. God calls His people to holiness — but holiness is not a grim burden of rules. It is belonging wholly to God, and being made like Him in love and goodness; and it is meant to fill not just our prayers but the whole of ordinary life. This reading considers that call, and roots it, as we must, in grace: holiness is not how we earn God's favor, but the fruit of His Spirit at work in those He has already saved.

1.Called to Holiness

Running all through the Bible is a call that we cannot escape and dare not soften: "Be holy, for I am holy." God's people are called to be a holy people — set apart for Him, and made like Him in character. And the New Testament is just as plain: we are to pursue "holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." What, then, is this holiness? At its root, it means two things. It means to be set apart, to belong wholly to God, to be consecrated to Him as something reserved for His use and no other. And it means to be conformed to His character — to become, by His grace, pure and loving and good, as He is. But before we go a step further, we must lay a foundation, or everything that follows will be twisted into a burden too heavy to bear. This holiness is not the way we earn our salvation, nor the price we pay for God's love. It is, from beginning to end, the fruit of grace. We pursue holiness not as slaves trying to win a master's favor, but as children who are already loved and already accepted in Christ, and who long, out of gratitude, to be like the Father who saved us. Holiness is God's gift and God's work in us, before it is ever our task. Hold that fast, and the call to be holy becomes not a crushing weight, but a glorious invitation.

2.The Beauty of Holiness

We must also clear away a false picture of holiness that has done great harm. Many people, when they hear the word, imagine something sour and joyless — a life of grim rule-keeping, of long faces and endless prohibitions, of a cramped and narrow existence with all the color drained out of it. But this is a slander upon holiness, and utterly unlike the thing itself. True holiness is not ugly; it is beautiful. The Scriptures speak of "the beauty of holiness," and rightly, for holiness is nothing other than likeness to God, who is the source of all beauty, all goodness, and all joy. A truly holy life is a life full of love, of kindness, of purity, of peace, of gladness — a life like the life of Christ, who was the holiest man who ever lived and also the most winsome and the most full of joy. Holiness is not the shrinking of life, but its flowering; not the loss of happiness, but the finding of it. For sin, which holiness opposes, is the real thief of joy; and to be made holy is to be set free from the things that spoil and enslave us, and restored to what we were made to be. Let no one imagine, then, that in calling us to holiness God is calling us to misery. He is calling us to the truest beauty and the deepest happiness the soul can know.

3.No Wall Between

Here we may take up the great question pressed by William Law in his famous book, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Law observed a strange inconsistency among Christians. Many who would never dream of neglecting their prayers, and who were careful and reverent in church, nevertheless lived the whole rest of their lives — their business, their spending, their leisure, their conversation — with hardly a thought of pleasing God at all. It was as though they had divided life into two compartments: a small "religious" corner, where God was considered, and the great remaining bulk of ordinary life, where He was not. And Law's searching argument was that this division is false and cannot stand. If God is God at all, He is God of the whole of our lives, not merely of our prayers. Devotion, Law insisted, does not mean saying prayers; it means a life given wholly to God, an intention to please Him in everything we do. The person who is fervent in worship on one day but careless of God in his work and his dealings the rest of the week has not understood what it means to be a Christian. Holiness is not one activity among many; it is the spirit that is to fill and govern all our activities. There can be no wall between the sacred and the ordinary in a life truly given to God.

4.God in Everything

Law did not leave this as a mere rebuke; he painted a positive and beautiful picture of what a devout life truly is. The devout person, he wrote, is the one who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, and who makes all the common parts of his life into parts of holiness by doing them all in the name of God and according to His will. This is the heart of a holy life: not to add a great many religious exercises onto an otherwise worldly existence, but to take up the whole of our ordinary existence — our work, our rest, our meals, our relationships, our tasks and duties — and to do all of it for God and unto His glory. The apostle Paul said the same thing in a single sweeping sentence: "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus"; and again, "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Here is holiness made practical and possible for every believer, however humble their station. The poorest laborer and the busiest mother can live a holy life just where they are, not by escaping their ordinary duties, but by doing those very duties as unto the Lord, offering the whole of an ordinary day to God. That is the devout and holy life — God in everything.

5.A Living Sacrifice

At the root of such a life lies an act of consecration — the giving over of the whole self to God. The apostle Paul urges it in memorable words: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." Notice how Paul begins: "by the mercies of God." He does not command this consecration as a way of earning God's mercy; he pleads for it as the only fitting response to mercy already received. Because God has been so merciful to us in Christ, the reasonable and loving response is to give ourselves wholly back to Him — not a part of ourselves, not our religious moments only, but our whole selves, our bodies and minds and time and strength, laid on the altar as a living offering. This is the meaning of devotion: to be devoted, given over, belonging entirely to God. And it is a once-for-all surrender that must also be renewed each morning, as we rise and place the coming day, with all its ordinary tasks, into His hands. A holy life begins here, in this glad and grateful giving of ourselves to the God who first gave Himself for us.

6.Holiness in the Details

When the whole self is thus given to God, holiness begins to work its way out into all the small details of daily living, for these are the very stuff of which our lives are made. It shapes how we use our time, teaching us not to waste in idleness or trifles the hours God has given us. It shapes how we handle our money, so that we hold it as stewards for God, spend it wisely, and share it generously with those in need. It shapes our words, so that our speech is truthful, kind, and pure, rather than false or cruel or coarse. It shapes our work, so that we labor honestly and diligently as unto the Lord. And it shapes even our leisure and our pleasures, so that they are clean and wholesome and do not draw us from God. In all these ordinary things, the devout heart asks quietly: how may I do this in a way that pleases God and reflects His character? Yet we must guard the spirit in which this is done. It is not a matter of anxious rule-keeping, forever fearful of some misstep. It is the natural overflow of a heart in love with God, which delights to please Him in the small things as in the great, and does so freely, out of love, and not out of fear.

7.The Fight Against Sin

The pursuit of holiness does involve a real struggle against sin, and we must not pretend otherwise. To grow in holiness is, in part, to turn away from what is evil and to put to death the sinful desires that still cling to us. There is a genuine fight here, and it lasts our whole lives long. But it is of the greatest importance that we wage this fight in the right spirit, for many have been driven to despair by fighting it wrongly. We do not battle sin in our own strength, gritting our teeth and trusting our own willpower; we battle it in the strength of the Spirit of God, who dwells in every believer, and in the confidence of Christ's victory already won at the cross. And when we fail — as, being still weak and imperfect, we all sometimes will — the right response is not to sink into self-hatred, or to lash ourselves with guilt, or to give up in discouragement. The right response is simply to turn again to Christ, to confess our sin, to receive afresh His full and free forgiveness, and to rise and go on. Our growth in holiness is usually slow, with many stumbles along the way, and God knows this and is patient with us. He does not despise a bruised and struggling child, and He never casts off those who fall and come back to Him. The fight against sin is real, but it is a fight of hope, waged under a Savior who has already won.

8.Christ Our Holiness

And so we come back, at the end, to where we began: to grace, and to Christ. For if holiness were finally our own achievement, our own project to be completed by our own effort, it would be a hopeless labor and a heavy chain. But the gospel tells us something far better. Christ Himself has been made unto us our sanctification — our holiness. He is both the pattern of the holy life, whom we are being conformed to, and the power of the holy life, working that likeness in us by His indwelling Spirit. It is God's own declared will to make us holy, and He who began that good work in us will surely complete it. Our part, then, is not to manufacture holiness by straining, but to keep looking to Christ, to yield ourselves daily to Him, and to let His Spirit do His transforming work within us. We grow holy not by staring anxiously at ourselves, but by beholding Him; for as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are changed into His likeness, from one degree of glory to another. This is the devout and holy life to which we are called: not a grim self-improvement, but a glad surrender to the God who loves us, a whole life offered back to Him, and a steady looking to Christ, who is our holiness, and who is faithfully making us like Himself.

9.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Have you divided your life into a "religious" corner and an "ordinary" remainder — or is the whole of it, your work and money and words, being offered to God? Does it free you to know that holiness is the fruit of grace and the Spirit's work, not a burden you must carry alone? And when you fail in the fight against sin, do you turn again to Christ in hope, rather than to despair?

Select

Reading 3 · Humility

The Grace of Humility

A CTS digest

Humility as the root and mother of every grace; the crucial correction — humility is not self-hatred (which is only pride turned inward), but glad self-forgetfulness, “not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less”; the empty hand of dependence that alone receives grace; the mind of Christ who humbled Himself; pride’s subtlety exposed hopefully; “God gives grace to the humble”; how humility grows by beholding Christ; and the beauty and rest of humility, the burden of self lifted.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Grace of Humility

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the root of every grace, and the beauty of a life given to God

A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works on humility (Andrew Murray, Thomas à Kempis, and others), and in Scripture.

Radical Christianity
Humility
The Beauty of Holiness
Anchored in classics

A word before you read. Humility is the least noticed and most beautiful of the Christian graces. But it is easily misunderstood. It is not thinking badly of ourselves, still less hating ourselves; that is only pride turned inward. True humility is a glad self-forgetfulness — the restful place of a creature who depends wholly on God and gives Him all the glory. This reading considers that grace, and finds it, in the end, in Christ.

1.The Root of Every Grace

Among all the Christian virtues, humility holds a peculiar place, for it is the root from which the others grow. Andrew Murray, in his beautiful little book on the subject, called humility the mother of all the graces, the first and chief of the virtues of the Christian life. And there is deep truth in this. Humility is simply the creature taking its true place before God — recognizing that we are nothing in ourselves, that all we are and have and can do comes from Him, and that to Him alone belongs the glory. It is the opposite of pride; and if pride is the root of all sin — the desire to exalt ourselves, to be as God, to take the credit and the glory that are His — then humility is the root of all holiness. For every other grace grows out of this lowly soil. Love, faith, patience, obedience, and all the rest can only flourish in a heart that has first been made humble, that has ceased to trust and exalt itself and has learned to depend wholly upon God. This is why humility matters so much, and why we must give it careful thought. It is not one virtue among many; it is the ground in which all the virtues are rooted, and without it none of them can truly grow.

2.Not Thinking Less of Yourself

But we must be very careful here, for humility is one of the most misunderstood of all graces, and false notions of it have done real harm to tender souls. Many imagine that to be humble means to think badly of oneself — to despise oneself, to dwell on one's faults and worthlessness, to sink into a grovelling, joyless self-contempt. This is not humility at all; and, strange as it sounds, it is often a subtle form of pride. For the person consumed with how bad and unworthy he is, is still consumed with himself; his gaze is fixed inward, upon self, only now in a negative way. And that is not what God asks of us. True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is, as it has been well said, thinking of yourself less. It is a glad forgetfulness of self altogether — being set free from the endless, exhausting preoccupation with ourselves, our reputation, our standing, our feelings, whether to praise or to despise them — so that we are free to be occupied instead with God and with the good of others. The truly humble person is not the one who is always running himself down; he is the one who has stopped thinking about himself so much at all, because his heart is full of God. This is a liberating truth, and it delivers us from the false and miserable "humility" of self-hatred, which God never desires for any of His children.

3.The Empty Hand

At its heart, then, humility is a matter of dependence. The humble person is one who has learned that he has nothing of his own to boast in, and who therefore leans wholly upon God for everything. This is the very opposite of a spirit that trusts in its own goodness, its own wisdom, or its own religious attainments. Herein lies a great danger, especially for earnest and devoted Christians. It is dreadfully easy for our very zeal for God to become a source of secret pride — to begin, without quite noticing, to trust in our own prayers, our own holiness, our own service, and to look down upon others who seem less devoted than ourselves. This is the pride that Jesus exposed in the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men. True humility trusts in none of these things. It comes to God with an empty hand, claiming no merit of its own, receiving everything — forgiveness, strength, growth, every good thing — as a free gift of His grace. And this is exactly why humility and grace belong together. Grace can only be received by the empty hand of the humble; the proud, whose hands are full of their own supposed goodness, have no room to receive it. The humble know that they live entirely by what God gives, and so they are the ones whose hands are open to be filled.

4.The Mind of Christ

If we would see humility itself, in its purest and most glorious form, we must look to the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the great pattern of it. The apostle Paul sets Him before us in words of surpassing beauty: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God… made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant… He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross." Consider the depth of that humbling. The eternal Son of God, to whom all glory belongs, laid aside His glory, took upon Himself our lowly human nature, lived as a servant among us, and stooped at last to the shameful death of the cross — all for our sake. And in His earthly life He showed the same lowliness at every turn. "Learn from Me," He said, "for I am gentle and lowly in heart." He took a towel and washed His disciples' feet. He said, "I am among you as the One who serves." Here is humility that is not weakness but strength, not misery but love pouring itself out. This is the mind we are called to have; and, wonderfully, it is a mind that Christ Himself, by His Spirit, forms within those who belong to Him.

5.The Subtlety of Pride

To value humility rightly, we must reckon with the enemy it opposes, for pride is a deep and subtle foe. Pride was the first of all sins — the reaching up to be as God — and it lies at the root of the whole ruin of our race. And it is remarkably persistent, clinging even to the hearts of the godly, and disguising itself in a thousand forms. There is pride in our possessions and our appearance, pride in our knowledge and our abilities; but there is also a more dangerous pride still, a spiritual pride that takes satisfaction in our own religious achievements, our gifts, our service, and even, if we are not watchful, in our own humility. So subtle is it that we may be proud of having overcome our pride. We should not, however, let this drive us to anxious and morbid self-scrutiny, forever digging within to root out every trace of pride by our own effort, for that way lies only despair, and a new preoccupation with self. Rather, the exposing of our pride is meant to drive us to Christ — to make us cast ourselves upon His grace, and ask Him to work in us the humility we cannot produce in ourselves. We are not called to defeat pride by staring at it, but to be delivered from it by looking away from self to the humble and gracious Savior.

6.Grace to the Humble

The Scriptures attach a wonderful promise to humility, one that appears more than once: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Here is a truth of the greatest practical importance. The proud, who exalt themselves and trust in themselves, God sets Himself against; but to the humble, who bow low and depend on Him, He delights to give grace upon grace. Humility, then, is not only beautiful in itself; it is the very channel through which all God's blessings flow to us. It is the open, empty hand into which He pours His gifts. This is why Peter urges, "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time." The way up, in God's kingdom, is down. Those who grasp at exaltation for themselves are brought low; but those who willingly take the lowly place, content to be small and unnoticed, trusting God to lift them when and how He sees fit, are the ones God Himself raises up in His own good time. We need not, then, push and strive for recognition, nor be cast down when we are overlooked. We may humble ourselves and leave our exaltation entirely in the hands of God, who gives grace to the humble and lifts them up at last.

7.How Humility Grows

How, then, does this precious grace grow in us? Not, certainly, by simply resolving to be humble and trying hard at it, for the effort to be humble in our own strength very easily becomes a new form of pride, as we congratulate ourselves on our progress. Humility grows, rather, in two ways, both of which lead us away from ourselves. It grows as we draw near to God and dwell in His presence. For in the light of His greatness, His holiness, and His glory, we see ourselves as we truly are, and are made lowly without effort; those who have caught even a glimpse of God have never come away proud. And it grows, above all, as we behold and receive Christ, and abide in Him. Humility is not so much something we achieve as something He imparts; it is the fruit of His humble Spirit dwelling in us, and it deepens as we keep close to Him and let His lowly, loving mind become ours. Our part is not to strain and struggle to produce humility, but to stay near to Christ, to yield ourselves to Him, and to let His Spirit quietly do His work. As we look less at ourselves and more at Him, the grace of humility grows of itself, like fruit on a branch that abides in the vine.

8.The Beauty and Rest of Humility

Andrew Murray called humility "the beauty of holiness," and the phrase is well chosen, for a humble spirit is one of the loveliest things in all the world, and one of the most restful. Consider what a burden pride lays upon us: the constant labor of defending our reputation, of comparing ourselves with others, of craving to be noticed and admired, of being wounded by every slight. It is an exhausting and joyless bondage. And humility sets us free from all of it. The humble soul is at rest, for it has nothing to prove and nothing to protect; it has laid down the heavy load of self-importance and taken up the light and easy yoke of Christ, who is gentle and lowly, and who promised that in Him we would find rest for our souls. This is why humility is not only the root of holiness but a great source of peace and joy. And it is, in the end, simply Christlikeness. The Lord who humbled Himself to the cross was afterward exalted by God to the highest place; and He is both the pattern of our humility and the power of it. Let us, then, seek this grace above all others — not by anxious striving, but by keeping close to the humble Savior, receiving His grace with empty hands, and losing ourselves, gladly, in love for God and for one another.

9.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Have you mistaken humility for self-hatred — and does it free you to know that true humility is a glad forgetting of self, not a despising of it? Where has your zeal for God quietly become a source of pride, and what would it mean to come to Him with an empty hand? And are you seeking humility by straining after it, or by keeping close to the gentle and lowly Christ?

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Reading 4 · Prayer

Power Through Prayer

A CTS digest

Bounds’s “men are God’s method” — spiritual power flows from the person, not the machinery, and the person is fed by prayer; prayer as the secret source of lasting power; prayer as a whole life of communion; the praying Christ; George Müller’s life of trust; the careful correction — prayer is not a formula to bend God, but trusting dependence and “not my will, but Yours”; the Spirit who helps our weakness; and the gracious invitation to come boldly to a loving Father.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Power Through Prayer

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — how spiritual power flows from a prayer-shaped life, and a God who answers

A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works on prayer (E. M. Bounds, George Müller, and others), and in Scripture.

Radical Christianity
Prayer
The Life of Trust
Anchored in classics

A word before you read. The great secret of a fruitful Christian life is not cleverness or method, but prayer. This reading considers the place of prayer in the life of a disciple — not as a technique for getting our own way, but as the humble, trusting dependence of a child upon a loving Father. And it comes, like all the rest, wrapped in grace: even our praying is helped by God's own Spirit.

1.Men, Not Methods

In his searching little book Power Through Prayer, E. M. Bounds pressed home a truth that the church perpetually forgets. The great need of the church, he insisted, is not for better methods, better organization, or more impressive machinery, but for better people — men and women whom the Holy Spirit can use. "Men are God's method," he wrote. God's work in the world is done not chiefly through programs and plans, but through people; and the power of any ministry lies not in its techniques but in the spiritual life of the one who carries it out. A sermon is only as powerful as the soul behind it; a work for God draws its life from the walk with God of those who do it. And that spiritual life, Bounds argued, is fed and sustained above all by prayer. This is a message our busy and organized age badly needs to hear. We are endlessly tempted to think that if we could only find the right program, the right strategy, the right method, our work would prosper. But the deepest lesson is that God looks first not at our methods but at ourselves, and that what He can do through us depends less on our cleverness than on our closeness to Him in prayer.

2.The Secret Source of Power

Following from this is the central conviction of the whole matter: that prayer is the secret source of all spiritual power. Work done without prayer, however busy, energetic, and skillful it may be, is in the deepest sense powerless; it may produce much activity, but little that lasts for eternity. But work that flows out of a hidden life of prayer carries a spiritual power that no amount of natural ability can supply. The real force behind any preaching, teaching, or service that truly touches hearts and changes lives is not the talent of the speaker but the prayer that has gone up before and behind it. This is a hidden thing, unseen by the world, which sees only the public work and admires the visible gifts. But those who know the deep things of God know that the true power is generated in secret, on the knees, long before it is displayed in public. As Bounds and many others have observed, the measure of our spiritual power tends to follow the measure of our prayer: little praying, little power; much praying, much power. The fruitfulness of our lives is bound up, more than with anything else, with the reality of our prayer.

3.Prayer as a Life

We must be careful, however, not to reduce prayer to a mere activity, one item on a list of religious duties to be performed and ticked off. The prayer that brings power is not so much an occasional act as a whole way of life. It is a continual leaning upon God, a spirit of dependence and communion that runs through the whole of our days, so that we live in an atmosphere of prayer even amid our work. Certainly this includes set times of deliberate prayer, when we withdraw to be alone with God; and these are of great importance, and worth guarding jealously. But it also includes a constant turning of the heart Godward in the midst of everything — a quick lifting of the soul to Him in every need, every decision, every joy and sorrow, all through the day. This is what the apostle meant by his command to "pray without ceasing." He did not mean that we should do nothing but say prayers, which would be impossible, but that we should live in unbroken communion with God, always in touch with Him, always ready to turn to Him. Prayer, in this deepest sense, is not something we do; it is the very breath of the spiritual life.

4.The Praying Christ

If we would be convinced of the necessity of prayer, we need only look at our Lord Himself. Here is the most striking of all considerations: that Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, who had unbroken fellowship with His Father and needed nothing that we need, nevertheless lived a life saturated with prayer. The Gospels show Him again and again withdrawing from the crowds to be alone with God. He rose a great while before day to pray; He spent whole nights in prayer to God; He prayed before every great step and decision of His ministry; and He prayed in His deepest agony in the garden. If the Lord Jesus, who was Himself divine, felt so constant a need to pray, how much more must we, who are weak and sinful and utterly dependent, feel that need. His example silences forever the idea that prayer is an optional extra for those with time to spare. It is, rather, the very lifeblood of communion with God, so essential that even the incarnate Son would not do without it. And His praying is not only our example but our encouragement; for the same Lord who prayed on earth now lives forever to intercede for us in heaven.

5.The Life of Trust

The power of a praying life has rarely been shown more plainly than in the story of George Müller, whose long life was one sustained testimony to prayer and dependence upon God. Müller undertook to care for many hundreds, and in time thousands, of orphan children; and he resolved, as a demonstration of the reality of God and the trustworthiness of His promises, never to ask any human being for money, but to make his needs known to God alone in prayer, and to trust Him to provide. And provide God did, over the course of many decades, again and again, often at the very last moment, in ways that could not be explained away as mere chance. Müller's published journals record countless such answers to prayer, times when there was no food for the next meal and no money to buy it, and he simply prayed — and the need was met, sometimes within the hour. His whole life stands as a living witness that God hears and answers the prayers of those who trust Him, and that a person may lean upon God for the supply of real and pressing needs, and not be put to shame. It is a testimony that has strengthened the faith of countless believers ever since.

6.Not a Formula but a Trust

Yet we must understand rightly what Müller's life teaches, and what it does not, for this is a point on which many have gone badly astray. Müller's confidence was not a formula for getting whatever he wanted, and prayer is never a technique by which we bend God to our will or command Him to give us our desires. That is a grave misunderstanding, and a dangerous one. True prayer is the very opposite of such presumption: it is the casting of ourselves upon God in humble dependence, and the entrusting of our needs to His wisdom and love. Müller prayed for the needs of God's work, in submission to God's will, and God was pleased to answer; but Müller himself would have been the first to say that we do not dictate to God. When we pray, we ask boldly, for we are invited to; but we always ask as those who trust that our Father knows best, and who are ready to say, with our Lord in the garden, "not my will, but Yours be done." And this means that when God answers our prayers differently from what we asked, or bids us wait, or gives us something better than we knew to ask for, this is not the failure of prayer but its truest fruit. God always hears, and always answers, in the way that perfect wisdom and perfect love see to be best.

7.The Spirit Helps Us Pray

There is a further comfort here for all who feel themselves weak and poor in prayer, as most of us do. We are not left to pray in our own strength, or out of our own wisdom. The Scripture tells us plainly that "we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us." Even our praying is a work of grace. When we come to God feeling that we hardly know what to say, or how to say it, or whether our poor, stumbling prayers can possibly reach Him, we may take heart: the very Spirit of God dwells within us to help our weakness, to teach us to pray, and to carry our halting words to the Father. Prayer, then, is not a lofty achievement reserved for spiritual experts, nor a work by which we earn God's favor or twist His arm. It is the natural cry of a dependent child to a loving Father, made possible and made effective by God's own Spirit within us. This should free us from all anxiety about praying well. We do not need eloquence or great faith of our own; we need only come, in our weakness, and the Spirit will help us.

8.Come Boldly to a Loving Father

Let us not, then, hear all of this as a heavy new burden, or a rebuke that leaves us feeling condemned for how little we pray. That is not the spirit of the gospel. The call to prayer is not a demand laid upon slaves, but a gracious invitation held out to beloved children. The God who bids us pray is not a reluctant and distant power who must be worn down, but a loving Father who delights to hear His children and to give good gifts to those who ask Him. And the way to Him stands wide open, for through Christ we may "come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." What a privilege this is — that the God of all the universe invites us, at any moment, in any need, to come and pour out our hearts to Him, and promises to hear. Prayer, seen rightly, is not a chore but a refuge, not a performance but a resting place, where the weary and burdened may come and find help and peace. So let us learn to pray, and to make prayer the atmosphere of our lives — not in the strength of grim resolve, but in the freedom and gladness of children who are loved, drawn by the Spirit, and welcomed always by a Father who is glad to hear us. For it is here, in humble and trusting prayer, that the real power of the Christian life is found.

9.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Do you look for the power of your life and service in methods and effort, or in prayer — and does the praying of Christ Himself convince you of its necessity? Have you mistaken prayer for a way of getting your own will done, rather than a trusting of your needs to a wise and loving Father? And do you come to prayer as to a heavy duty, or as to a gracious invitation from a Father who delights to hear you?

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Reading 5 · The Greatest Thing

The Greatest of These: Love

A CTS digest

The capstone: Drummond on 1 Corinthians 13 — love as the supreme measure of a disciple, above knowledge, gifts, and zeal; “though I have all… but have not love, I am nothing”; the spectrum of love woven from small ordinary graces; love that never fails; the liberating source, “we love because He first loved us”; love overflowing into mission; and the synthesis of the whole course — discipleship, holiness, humility, prayer, and love, all grace-received and Christ-centered, with love the crown.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Greatest of These: Love

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the supreme mark of the disciple, and the crown of the whole Christian life

A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works on Christian love (Henry Drummond, Thomas à Kempis, and others), and in Scripture, especially 1 Corinthians 13.

Radical Christianity
Love
The Greatest Thing
Capstone

A word before you read. We come now to the greatest thing of all, and the crown of everything we have considered. Paul, in his great hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13, shows that without love the most impressive faith is nothing. This closing reading follows that chapter, and roots love where it belongs: in the God who first loved us. For we do not manufacture such love by effort; we receive it from Him, and pass it on.

1.The Greatest Thing

Henry Drummond once gave a famous address on the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and he called it "the greatest thing in the world." The title was well chosen, for that is exactly what Paul is claiming for love. We are accustomed to admire many things in the Christian life — strong faith, deep knowledge, powerful gifts, great zeal, heroic sacrifice. But Paul, in this chapter, takes all of these, sets love beside them, and declares that love is greater than every one of them. At the end he names the three abiding graces — faith, hope, and love — and then adds, "but the greatest of these is love." This is a truth that should search all of us, and especially those who are earnest and zealous in their religion. For it means that the true measure of a Christian is not how much we know, nor how gifted we are, nor even how much we do or sacrifice, but how much we love. Christian maturity is measured by Christlike love, and by nothing else. All the rest of the Christian life, everything we have considered in these readings, finds here its crown and its goal; for the end of it all is that we should become people who love.

2.Nothing Without Love

Paul makes his point with a series of startling statements that no one who takes them seriously can ever forget. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." Consider what he is saying. The most dazzling gifts of speech, the deepest knowledge, a faith that could move mountains, the giving away of all one's possessions, even the sacrifice of one's own life — all of these, without love, amount to nothing at all. Here is the great check upon all our discipleship and zeal. It is possible to be busy, gifted, knowledgeable, even sacrificial, and yet, if love be absent, to be in God's sight nothing. This is a humbling word, and it is meant to be. It tells us that no achievement, however impressive, can take the place of love; that love is not one virtue among many, but the one indispensable thing, without which everything else is empty.

3.The Spectrum of Love

Having shown love to be supreme, Paul goes on to tell us what this love actually is; and here Drummond offered a memorable picture. Just as a beam of light, passed through a prism, is broken into the colors of the spectrum, so Paul passes love through a prism and breaks it into its many ingredients. Love, he says, "suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth." Notice what these ingredients are. They are not grand or heroic; they are the plain, ordinary graces of daily life — patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, sincerity. This tells us something very important about love. It is not chiefly a matter of great and dramatic deeds, but of the way we treat the people around us, day in and day out, in a thousand small things. Love is woven out of countless little acts of patience and kindness, done quietly and without display. And such love, Paul adds, "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." It is not a fleeting feeling, but a strong and steady goodwill that holds firm and keeps loving through everything.

4.The Fulfilling of the Law

When we set love in its place like this, we begin to see that it is the summary and crown of the whole Christian life. The apostle says elsewhere that "love is the fulfillment of the law," for all the commandments are gathered up and completed in it. When the Lord Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, He answered with two that are really one: to love God with all our heart, and to love our neighbor as ourselves; and He said that on these two hang all the Law and the Prophets. Everything God asks of us, in the end, is love — love to Him and love to one another. This is why love stands as the crown of all the other graces we have considered. Wholehearted discipleship, holiness, humility, prayer — all of these are meant to serve love and to flower into love; they are the branches, and love is the fruit. A holiness without love would be cold; a zeal without love would be harsh; even great faith and much prayer, if they did not make us more loving, would have missed their purpose. Love is the thread that binds all the virtues together into one; it is, as Paul says, "the bond of perfection."

5.Love Never Fails

Paul gives one more reason why love is the greatest: it is the one thing that lasts forever. "Love never fails," he writes; "but whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away." The gifts that seem so important now belong only to this present, incomplete age; when the perfect comes, and we see God face to face, they will have served their purpose and will pass away. But love will not pass away. Love belongs to the eternal world; it is the very life of heaven, and the one part of our present life that we shall carry with us into the life to come. This is why, of the three great abiding things, love is the greatest. Faith will one day be swallowed up in sight, when we see the One in whom we have believed; hope will be lost in glad possession, when all we hoped for is ours; but love will simply go on, deeper and fuller forever. "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." Of all that we are and do, love alone is imperishable; it is the treasure that we lay up in heaven, and the one thing that death cannot touch.

6.We Love Because He First Loved Us

But now we must ask the most important question of all: where does such love come from? For if this high and holy love were something we had to produce out of ourselves, by our own effort and willpower, we should despair at once, knowing how cold and selfish our hearts really are. Here, however, the gospel speaks its most liberating word. This love is not something we generate; it is something we receive. Its source is God Himself, for "God is love"; and the reason we are able to love at all is given in a single golden sentence: "We love Him because He first loved us." We do not begin the transaction; He does. He loved us first, freely, while we were yet sinners, and gave His own Son for us; and as we come to know and believe that love, and to rest in it, it begins to warm and change our cold hearts, and love is kindled in us in return. The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us. So we do not learn to love by gritting our teeth and trying harder; we learn to love by drawing near to Christ and abiding in His love, until His love, reflected in us, flows out again to others. As iron held near a magnet becomes magnetic itself, so a heart held near to Christ is made loving by His love.

7.Love That Overflows

And this love, once received, cannot be kept to ourselves; by its very nature it overflows. The love of God that fills the heart does not stay within, a private warmth; it presses outward, into service, into kindness, into witness, into mission. "The love of Christ compels us," Paul says; it was love that sent the Son into the world to seek and save the lost, and it is love, His love working in us, that sends His people out to bring the good news of that love to others. This is the deep spring of all true Christian mission and service: not duty alone, nor guilt, but love — love for Christ, who first loved us, and love for the people around us, for whom He also died. When we love as He loved, we cannot be content to keep the treasure to ourselves while others perish for want of it. We long to share it; we are moved to care for the poor, to comfort the sorrowing, to carry the gospel to those who have never heard. The wholehearted following of Christ, then, does not end in a private holiness, but overflows in love that reaches out to a needy world. Love received from God becomes love given to others, in His name.

8.The Crown of the Whole

And so we come to the end of these readings on the radical, wholehearted Christian life, and it is fitting that we end here, with love, for love is the crown and summary of the whole. We began with the call to follow Christ and count the cost; we spoke of a devout and holy life, of the grace of humility, and of the power of prayer. But all of these, we now see, are gathered up into love, and find in love their meaning and their goal. The whole of the Christian life, in the end, is simply this: to be loved by God, and to love Him and others in return. And every part of it is the same in its root. Our discipleship, our holiness, our humility, our prayer, and our love are all alike the grateful response of hearts that God has first touched with His grace; all alike are worked in us not by our own strength but by His indwelling Spirit; and all alike are centered upon Christ, who is our pattern and our life. The radical Christianity to which we are called, then, is not a grim and heroic self-effort, but a life of love — love received freely from God, and poured out gladly to Him and to a world He loves. This is the greatest thing in the world, and the one thing that will remain when all else has passed away. May God grant that we, being rooted and grounded in His love, may grow up into it more and more; for the greatest of these is love.

9.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. If love is the true measure of a disciple, how does your own life appear in its light — and does it comfort you that this love is received from God, not manufactured by your effort? Where might the love of Christ be calling you to overflow in patience, kindness, and service toward those around you? And can you rest in the truth that we love only because He first loved us?

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Further Study: Ten Public-Domain Works

These ten works are for further study, for the student who wants to go on reading. They are not part of the honors reading above: that stays as it is — the five CTS digests, any three read in full and recorded on your honor. All ten are in the public domain; each link opens the work online, and most can also be found in the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. Most are in English: the Chrome browser can translate a page (right-click, “Translate to…”; on a phone, the browser menu).

Following Christ · The Imitation of Christ

1. The Imitation of Christ

Thomas à Kempis · c. 1420

For six centuries this little book has called Christians to the one thing that matters: to follow Christ closely, to deny self, and to prize a humble walk with God above all learning and all comfort. It is the heart of radical discipleship, and it speaks to unit after unit of this course — loving God, being holy, being humble — teaching that the truest greatness is to be least, and the fullest life is to lose it for Christ.

Open reading ↗

A Serious Call · Wholehearted Devotion

2. A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

William Law · 1729

Law's searching classic asks a single, radical question: if we really believe the gospel, why is so much of our life no different from the world's? It calls the reader to give the whole of life — time, money, work, and prayer — wholly to God, and few books have so stirred people to a serious, thoroughgoing Christianity. It goes straight to the course's call to costly discipleship and to be holy.

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The Disciple's Journey · Counting the Cost

3. The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan · 1678

Bunyan's immortal allegory follows Christian as he flees the City of Destruction and presses on, through every danger and temptation, to the Celestial City. It is the great picture of discipleship as a costly journey — the narrow way, the burden rolled away at the cross, the battles and the perseverance — and it speaks to the course's opening call to count the cost and follow all the way home.

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In His Steps · What Would Jesus Do?

4. In His Steps

Charles M. Sheldon · 1896

Sheldon's famous story tells of a town whose people pledged to do nothing for a year without first asking, “What would Jesus do?” — and of how that one question turned their ordinary lives upside down. It brings the whole course to earth, showing radical discipleship not as a feeling but as a daily choice, worked out in how we treat our neighbor, spend our money, and follow Jesus in every decision.

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Be Humble · The Beauty of Lowliness

5. Humility

Andrew Murray · 1895

Murray's short, piercing classic holds up the humility of Jesus — who emptied Himself and took the form of a servant — as the very heart of holiness and the mark of every true disciple. It is the ideal companion to the course's call to be humble, teaching that pride is the last enemy to fall, and that the lowly place at the feet of Christ is the only safe and the only truly great one.

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Be Prayerful · Power Through Prayer

6. Power Through Prayer

E. M. Bounds · 1907

Bounds writes on prayer with a holy fire, insisting that God works through praying people, and that no gift or effort can take the place of time spent on the knees. It is the perfect companion to the course's call to be prayerful, pressing on every disciple — and every would-be servant of God — that the secret power of a life for Christ is found in secret prayer, and nowhere else.

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Be a Disciplemaker · How Jesus Trained the Twelve

7. The Training of the Twelve

A. B. Bruce · 1871

Bruce studies how Jesus took twelve ordinary men and, over three years, made them into the disciples who would carry the gospel to the world. It is the ideal companion to the course's call to be a disciplemaker, showing the Lord's own patient method — teaching, correcting, and shaping character — and teaching every disciple that we are made not only to follow but to bring others along the way.

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Love God, Love Neighbor · The Greatest Thing

8. The Greatest Thing in the World

Henry Drummond · 1887

Drummond's beloved address on First Corinthians thirteen shows that love is the greatest thing of all — the sum of the whole law, the fulfilling of every command to love God and neighbor. It speaks to the very center of the course, where the commands of Jesus are gathered into love, and it teaches that a kind, patient, unselfish love is the surest proof that a life has truly been given to Christ.

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Radical Trust · A Life of Faith

9. The Life of Trust

George Müller · 1837 onward

Müller's narrative tells how he cared for thousands of orphans for decades, asking no one but God for a penny, and seeing every need supplied in answer to prayer. It is radical trust made visible — the course's call to trust God turned into a life — and it rebukes our small faith and lifts our eyes to a Father who can be relied upon utterly, by anyone bold enough to take Him at His word.

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Turning the World Upside Down · A Consumed Life

10. The Life of David Brainerd

ed. Jonathan Edwards · 1749

Edwards edited the diary of David Brainerd, a young missionary who poured out his short life for the gospel among the native peoples of the American frontier, and died at twenty-nine, consumed with love for Christ and for souls. It has stirred more Christians to radical, sacrificial service than almost any book, and it is a fitting capstone — the picture of a single surrendered life that, in God's hands, helped turn a world upside down.

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Honor attestation: By selecting three readings above, you affirm that you have read those three digests in full. The digests are CTS-authored summaries that may include brief excerpts or adaptations of public-domain works.