Read to Obey (if not, don't read)

Today's reading touched on the topic of reading. Oh, this is from the book "Spiritual Leadership" by J. Oswald Sanders.
It was about reading.

Not entirely unprecedented for me because I had the inkling that reading up was important for a leader.
But this part was what really cut to the heart...

Why does today's Christian find the reading of great books always beyond him? Certainly intellectual powers do not wane from one generation to another. We are as smart as our father, and any thought they could entertain we can entertain if we are sufficiently interested to make the effort. The major cause of the decline in the quality of current Christian literature is not intellectual but spiritual. To enjoy a great religious book requires a degree of consecration to God and detachment from the world that few modern Christians have. The early Christian Fathers, the Mystics, The Puritans, are not hard to understand, but they inhabit the highlands where the air is crisp and rarefied, and none but the God-enamored can come... One reason why people are unable to understand great Christian classics is that they are trying to understand without any intention of obeying them.

Upon reflection I realised that there is much truth in this.
It's not even about the willingness to obey what we have read, it is about picking up the book to read so that we may obey it. That'd be real "reading with the intention of obeying".

Why, it reminds me of a verse I shared with dom7th the other day, taken from 1 Chronicles 28
Now therefore in the sight of all Israel, the assembly of the Lord, and in the hearing of our God, observe and seek out all the commandments of the Lord your God, that you may possess this good land and leave it for an inheritance to your children after you forever. (ESV)

Notice the call to observe the commandments and also the call to seek them out. A person who seeks out commandments in order to obey them is one who reads with the intention of obeying.

So it begins not with a desire to read, but with a desire to obey. A desire to want more inspired instructions to walk in should drive the leader to seek out and pick up books with advice written by those who have gone before them.

For today I shall meditate on the verse of Romans 12:8
the one who leads, in zeal (ESV)

Have I led in zeal?
What is zealous leadership?