by Richard Baxter
in ePub, .mobi & .pdf formats
In Counsel for Young Christians: Timeless Directions for Walking with God, the seasoned Puritan pastor Richard Baxter speaks as a spiritual father to the young believer, offering profound and compassionate guidance for the earliest steps of Christian discipleship. First penned as part of his monumental Christian Directory, these "directions" are drawn from a lifetime of ministry, pastoral care, and soul-wrestling. In these pages, Baxter addresses the vulnerable season of spiritual infancy with both tenderness and theological depth, warning of common dangers and offering careful prescriptions for spiritual health, stability, and growth.
Each chapter is a directive—firm and fatherly—yet always seasoned with the grace of the gospel. Baxter exposes the subtle temptations that threaten a young believer’s joy and perseverance: pride in early graces, a hunger for novelty, careless associations, misguided zeal, and the allure of empty religion. With surgical precision, he uncovers the roots of hypocrisy and self-deception, but he does so as a physician of souls, intent on healing, not wounding.
Baxter’s burden is to see young Christians not merely start well, but finish faithfully. His counsel directs the reader to walk with holy fear, watchfulness, and love for truth, while clinging to the sufficiency of Christ and the sure promises of the covenant of grace. He speaks to the conscience, but also to the affections—urging believers to embrace the sweetness of holiness, the comfort of Scripture, the necessity of godly companions, and the value of sound preaching.
This is no dry manual of moralism. It is vibrant, heart-searching, and richly devotional—at once doctrinally precise and pastorally warm. It is a summons to Christ-centered godliness in a world that presses hard against the soul.
For young believers seeking to walk in wisdom, or for mature saints desiring to disciple others, Counsel for Young Christians is a treasure chest of spiritual gold. Richard Baxter does not offer novelty or easy answers. He offers Christ, Scripture, and the hard but joyful road of obedience—paved with grace and ending in glory.
A faithful, light modernization of Richard Baxter’s original text—preserving his Puritan voice, structure, imagery, and rhetorical force, while gently updating archaic language and sentence construction for clarity and accessibility. The goal is to retain the spiritual depth and urgency of Baxter’s counsel, making it readable and resonant for contemporary audiences without diluting its theological richness.
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Table of Contents
Direction I: Against Receiving Religion Merely for Its Novelty or Reputation
Direction II: Let Judgment, Zeal, and Practice Go Together
Direction III: Keep a Simple Framework of Doctrine, or a Catechism, in Your Memory
Direction IV: Certain Cautions about Controversies in Religion (Hebrews 6:1 opened)
Direction V: Think Not Too Highly of Your First Degrees of Grace or Gifts
Direction VI: Let Neither Difficulties nor Opposition in the Beginning Discourage You
Direction VII: Value and Make Use of a Powerful and Faithful Ministry. Reasons and Objections Answered
Direction VIII: For Charity, Unity, and Catholicity—Against Schism. False Pretenses for Division Refuted
Direction IX: Let Not Suffering Lead You to Sin Through Passion or Disrespect for Authority
Direction X: Take Heed of Running from One Extreme into Another
Direct XI. Be not too confident in your first apprehensions or opinions, but modestly suspicious of them
Direction XII: What to Do When Controversies Divide the Church — On the Silencing of Truth
Direction XIII. What Godliness Is — The Best Life on Earth. How Satan Tries to Make It Seem Hard and Joyless.
Direction XIV: Mortify the Flesh, and Rule the Senses and Appetites
Direction XV: Be Wary in Choosing Both Your Teachers and Your Companions
Direct. XVI. What Books to Prefer and Read, and What to Reject
Direction XVII: Do Not Mistake Libertinism for Free Grace
Direction XVIII: Guard Against the Decline or Corruption of Grace
Direction XIX: Don't Count on Prosperity or a Long Life—Live as One Who Is Dying
Direction XX: Let Your Religion Be Purely Divine—God First, Last, and All; Man Nothing