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Thoughts on Devotionals

leaves scattered on wooden picnic table with Bible open to the Psalms

Leading into the Christmas season, I start thinking about devotional books that I might be interested in reading. I've realized in recent years how much more difficult it's becoming. If you think about it, devotionals are books that you generally commit to reading daily, and unless you go for some that are shorter than 365 days, like the monthly ones, you're pretty much using the same book all year.

It's interesting that devotional books are something that my husband and I both grew up with separately, but which we enjoy as part of our Bible reading and quiet time routine. It has actually been a fun gift to get him in past years, although I find that I'm getting more stumped as the years go by. There have been years where we've reread past devotional books or traded them with each other, so we do try to make the most use of what we have.

I wonder what types of criteria people use as they determine what devotional book to go through. For myself, I know of a few things I would prefer not to have, which isn't always the best criteria to narrow down ideas! Some of these include:

  • Devotional books that use the day of the year as opposed to the calendar date. For maybe three quarters of the year, I'm looking out what numerical day it is so that I'm not falling too far behind.
  • Overly themed devotional books, such as ones for women, men, graduates, etc. These make great gifts, but I don't tend to gravitate toward them as it can be too niche a subject (and variety is nice!).
  • Not including the Bible passage. Some include a reference but it's quite nice to see at a glance what the message is expounding on by being able to view the Scripture verses at the same time. As long as the translation is included, I'm all good.
  • Books that are more feelings-based than Scriptural-based. Yes, life is tough, but reading 365 messages on how we're feeling overwhelmed doesn't seem to help the matter 😄
  • Celebrity-endorsed or persona-based devotionals. I'm not saying that a devotional book can't be written by one person (there are classics like Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest, which we've read multiple times), but then there are the ones that seem to be more about the author than about God.
  • Devotionals that convey a very specific interpretation of Scripture that can overshadow the rest of the volume. Unfortunately, I found this with Morning and Evening: The Classic Daily Devotional by Charles Spurgeon where he repeatedly talked about the spiritual allegories of the Song of Songs, which seemed a little out of proportion compared to how many other books were referenced. We ended up giving this one away.

With those things in mind, I have gravitated toward more of the classic devotionals. This year, I decided to read God with Us: 365 Devotions on the Person and Work of Christ. While a lot of it has been deep and rich, it can become a little bit repetitive, which is not what I want to feel when reading through so many excerpts from church fathers! If there's a devotional that might be interesting for me to check out next year, I'd love to hear about it.

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