A Top-Ten List: Books That Have Been Required Reading

For some reason I was tagged by someone on Facebook in a post about 10 books that you've really connected with over the years. (Thanks Sean Buckout!) You know how it works. Someone tags you and you're supposed to then do essentially the same post but with your own touch, flair, explanation, words, or ice, water and bucket. I guess there's been some sort of "challenge" making the rounds of the Internet and Facebook this summer involving ice, water and a bucket? Did I get that right? Anyone know anything about that?

Anyway, here's my list of 10 books. Don't everyone get on Amazon at the same time after reading this to order off my list of books. You might crash the website.

Bible. Quite simply, required reading. Every day. I prefer the New King James Version, but there's some other solid versions out there. It has everything you'd want in a book: Divine inspiration, God's plan explained, a guide to daily living, great literature, drama, agony, love (Song of Solomon baby!), flawed characters, heroes, stories of the miraculous, prophecy, history, amazing genealogies, in-depth character development of Jesus Christ as the Messiah and our savior, the words of Jesus, including some of his prayers ... I'm thankful I can freely read it every day.

Goodnight Moon. Pritnear book perfection. Oodles of Sabo children have sat on my lap and read this story with me. We're on our fourth copy of the book, I believe. I like it so much sometimes I read it to myself at night.

Go Dog Go. I absolutely love this book. Have for decades. And I don't even like dogs! I'm allergic to them! We were at a stoplight a while back and it was a a red light. The light turned green. Judah called out: "Go Dad go! The light is green now!"

Radical. David Platt nails it in this book. An instrumental book in my Christian walk and one that helped me inspect how we spend our money. Ultimately we were led by the Lord to significantly downsize our home and cut our monthly costs by hundreds of dollars, freeing up more capital to use for the Kingdom of God.

Not A Fan. I've read this book by Kyle Idleman a couple or three times. Are you a completely committed follower of Christ? Or just a fan? Idleman breaks it down for you. I hope you'll walk away a follower of Jesus and not just a fan. We have way too many fans in America, especially in the South.

Revolution In World Missions. Warning: If you read this book your life may be radically altered. And that's a good thing.

Stories Jesus Told: Favorite Stories from the Bible. There's just something about this children's book for me ... it's simplicity, it conveys Biblical parables taught by Jesus and I love the illustrations. We've worn out two copies already.

Love: The More Excellent Way. Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Chapel movement, defines love and details its elusiveness. The book had a profound effect on my life and a prayer of mine over the years is for God to give me a love for people. I'm a work in progress brother.

The Tower Treasure. Every good book list must have a Hardy Boys story on it, right? I believe this is the first Hardy Boys book I read as a young lad around the second or third grade -- I taught myself to read at the age of 4 -- and I became addicted. The books fed my love of reading, an excellent passion to have.

Crazy Love: Overwhelmed By A Relentless God.  "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter," Francis Chan writes. Boom!