1.  Confessions by Saint Augustine,
(Translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press, 1991, 311 pages)        

Augustine lived in the 4th century AD. He was a spiritual giant in his day with a great body of written works of which Confessions is best known. It was his confession of his love for God and about his life before and after his conversion. Augustine is both analytical and passionate. This combination makes his writing deep and personal. It reveals the workings of the heart, the struggle of the soul, and the striving of the soul after God through the experience of one man.

2.  Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
(HarperCollins, 1988, Hodder and Stoughton, Revised edition 1989,)

This is a devotional classic. Richard Foster wrote it in 1978. Since then, it has gone through many different editions and publishers.  It is a book that explains the various spiritual disciplines (or habits) that Christians can cultivate. He introduced twelve spiritual disciplines under three main sections of Inward Disciplines, Outward Disciplines and Corporate Disciplines. These are the classical spiritual disciplines. Foster also draws much from the various Christian spiritual tradition and is at pains to mention that these are not laws, or skills that can be mastered, but habits and dispositions to be formed. For those who seek a closer walk with God and who wants to live a simple and authentic Christian life, this is a good book to get started.

3.  Keeping the Sabbath Wholly ~Ceasing, resting, Embracing, Feasting by Marva Dawn  (Eerdmans, 1989, 217 pages)

We must return to the question of how we in our busy lives can afford to spend a whole day in Sabbath ceasing, resting, embracing, and feasting when it seems we don’t have enough time to do what has to be done. Surrounded as we are by the rapid pace of too much change, we think we cannot set aside such time. However, when we take the day to assess our use of time, we learn what is important in all those changes and how to prioritize our tasks and desires so that we aren’t overcome by the tyranny of the urgent. We must develop an objective perspective (rather than thinking we are “out of time”) to assess the quality of our days….one of the foremost (perspective) is the deliberate decision to focus on events in time with persons rather than using time to acquire or accomplish things. (Marva Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly,  p.119)

4.  The Transforming Friendship – A Guide To Prayer by James M Houston,
(Lions Publishing, 1989 / Re-titled “The Transforming Power of Prayer, NavPress, 1998)

The central idea is exploring the perspective of prayer as a relationship, a friendship with God. Houston writes from a Trinitarian framework. He draws upon the rich spiritual traditions and writings of the Church on this subject. The book challenges our self-centred, limiting conceptions of prayer, examines our human motives for prayer and points constantly to the liberty of understanding prayer as friendship with God, a friendship where we walk with God, unknowingly become transformed by it. This excellent book on prayer has unfortunately been re-titled as The Transforming Power of Prayer. (The subtle shift of emphasis to the power aspect of prayer, when it is the friendship and relational aspect that is at the heart of the book.)    

5.  The Wisdom of Each Other ~ A Conversation Between Spiritual Friends by Eugene Peterson  (Zondervan, 1998, 110 pages)

This book is a series of letters between two friends, Peterson and his friend Guna. However, we get to read only Peterson’s replies. This may make the reading a little difficult, because the reader has to think about what is Peterson saying, what issues are raised by Guna that he is replying.  Eugene Peterson ’s writing is intentionally simple, touching everyday topics. The point is that it is in the everyday living that our Christian faith is lived out. And it is as we talked about it that we discover the wisdom of each other. This is a book to be read slowly, even as it seems simple and short. Like the book of Proverbs in the Bible, it seems simple, but it is profound, and yet practical.