I have always loved reading. I belong to our neighborhood ladies’ book club and truly enjoy spending time with my neighbor-friends. We read a variety of books (fiction and non-fiction), and I love discovering how they think and feel. I must admit, I’m more of a listener in these settings. I’m kind of a slow processor, and while I have lots of opinions about the questions that are discussed I often hesitate to share them, choosing instead to listen to what others have to say. It’s just my personality, I suppose, and speaking up is something I want to work on in the coming year.

While I’m looking forward to what we’ll be reading in our neighborhood club this year, I also want to challenge myself to intentionally read more books that help me to grow in my faith and spiritual maturity. I just ran across a great way to do this.

Shout out to Leigh Ann Dutton, who blogs over at Intentional By Grace for this idea. I learn a lot from other bloggers and want to give credit where credit is due. You can check out her original post here.

Leigh Ann has a great list of categories to challenge our reading in 2019. I’m posting them here and committing to reading one book a month from each category so that by the end of the year I’ve covered them all.

Here they are:

A biography
A book about prayer
A book about worship
A book about Christian living
A book about the Holy Spirit
A book about the Cross
A Christian classic
A book about discipleship
A book about Church history
A book about holiness
A book about evangelism
A book about relationships
A book of your choice

Would you like to join in? My goal is to do a review of each book I read. If you’ve read a great book in any of these categories, would you post a comment below, so we can all share ideas? And if you’re interested in doing this challenge with me, let me know that in the comments too, or email me and let me know you’re in!

By the way; it can be a book you’d like to re-read also! Sometimes it’s good to revisit the old friends on our bookshelves.

I can’t wait to hear your recommendations! Here’s to watching less TV, playing fewer games on our phone, and getting back to reading more actual books in 2019!