Devotions: How to Use a Devotional Book
A selection of popular devotional books
How do you use a devotional book in daily devotions?
(This is part four of a series of posts about Devotionals. Click on the numbers to read parts 1, 2 and 3.)
For the first 25 years of my walk with God, I didn’t read a devotional book.
I didn’t see a need to when I had the Bible and my own prayers.
But at the turn of the last century someone in my husband’s Sunday school class gave him a copy of a famous devotional I’d heard of many times but never looked at: My Utmost for His Highest.
We had reached an odd period of time in our lives when that little blue devotional book first arrived in our household.
My husband had been out of work for several months and wasn’t having much success as he sought new employment.
Our oldest son was leaving for college; our second son was beginning to focus on where he would go once he graduated from high school.
Things were changing, again, and we had other stressors in our “larger” family.
I’d been teaching Bible study for years but I needed something to “change up” my daily worship of God.
I needed a little more input into how to pray and how to look at God.
So, when this devotional book arrived in my life, I thought, “why not?”
My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers
The 1982 edition I’ve used for many years.
My Utmost for His Highest captured me on the first morning. A 350-word devotional, it prepared me and asked questions of me I wasn’t expecting.
I’ve read it every day since; 17 years, because I find so much in it that speaks to me where I am on any given day, and challenges me to think about God a little differently.
For many people, it’s advanced Christianity, not because it supposed a long walk with Christ, but because it demands a depth of commitment to God that many people haven’t considered before. It’s a different way of looking at your spiritual life.
OC asks us to be mature in our Christian life. He asks questions of me that I don’t always want to think about. Sometimes the readings make me uncomfortable where I am in my spiritual life on that very day.
Other times, the readings reassure me, point me in the right direction or simply confound me. They’re different 366 days of the year—just like I am.
The Power of a Praying Woman by Stormie Omartian
Like most women, I wanted to strengthen my marriage as well, so I picked up The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian, and used it in my devotions with God during the same time.
The Power of a Praying Woman is divided into 30 chapters; each one a specific way of praying for your husband.
At the end of each short chapter is a short prayer dealing with the issues in the chapter.
After the first couple times I read through the book and felt like I had a good handle on the how and why of each chapter’s prayer, I began to just pray the prayer at the end of the chapter. I’d open to that day’s date and pray that prayer.
I used The Power of a Praying Woman as a devotional book for 4 years.
Dog-earred for good reason!
An amazing thing happened during that time.
My husband changed.
And so did I
I feel ridiculous even writing that—what’s the good of praying for change in my husband if I’m surprised when it comes?
His spiritual walk deepened, I began to see him in a different way. God was at work and my prayers probably played a part.
You don’t have to use this book on just your husband. Lately, I’ve been thinking I should pray these same prayers for other men in my life . . .
I didn’t spend a lot of time on either books—though maybe a little longer on My Utmost for His Highest, if I was completely confounded or some concept caught my attention and needed me to pray about it.
A devotional book can augment a quiet time but should not replace the two main ingredients: Bible reading and prayer.
The three components, My Utmost for His Highest, my Bible and my personal prayers have served and abetted my understanding and relationship to God for a long time.
I’m so thankful the Creator of the Universe wants to communicate with me and reveal who He really is.
Thanks be to God.
Tweetables
How to use a devotional book. Click to Tweet
A devotional book in addition to the Bible and prayer? Click to Tweet
The role of a devotional book in a quiet time. Click to Tweet
The other posts in the series are:
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