How many books must I read before I put my faith into practice? I'm still looking for the verse where Jesus said, 'read as many books as possible so you can prepare yourself to do My will.'

Can't find it.

But I did run across a couple of obscure verses quoting Jesus as telling His followers what He wanted them to do:

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Mark 16:15

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

Somehow when at first we got blown away by a personal, overwhelming encounter with the Prince of Life, and simultaneously got born-again by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit, we knew just what to do. In fact no-one could stop us from telling friends and strangers the staggeringly good news of God's goodness. We passionately shared the revolutionary experience of our rescue from death and darkness and birth into the Light of Life. We weren't even embarrassed to announce, "I've been saved!" We loathed to imagine anyone missing out on the salvation we'd tasted first-hand.

So I thought of a possible solution. How 'bout we tell the Gospel to one soul for every book we read? It's not a full embrace of our assignment, but it's a start.

OK, right, if we've gotta now actually reach out to tell people the way to life, some may be tempted to wiggle out, and just stop reading.

So, here's an incentive. We could do a retroactive kind of thing. We look at our libraries, count the number of books we've read in, say, the last ten years. Maybe it's 100. We have some catching up to do. So here's our deal, once we explain the Gospel to 100 people, then we can read our next book. How's that?

Anybody have an idea? Suggestions are welcome.