The Best Devotional Books of All Time (Part 1 of 2)

Christian Reader contributors name their top ten

It was a daunting task that we put before 15 of Christian Reader’s contributing authors: to identify the best devotional books of all time. But the panel of judges made their selections, we compiled the votes, and we offer you a description of, and an excerpt from, the top ten. Consider this highly recommended reading. Proven nourishment for the soul.

#1 My Utmost for His Highest

by Oswald Chambers

The top devotional book selected by the CHRISTIAN READER panel was originally written as a series of talks to young adults. Oswald Chambers, who died in 1917 at the age of 43, delivered these as lectures at the Bible Training College in Clapham, England, from 1911 to 1915, and as devotional talks while serving in Egypt with Australian and New Zealander forces guarding the Suez Canal during World War I.

First published in book form in 1928, Chambers’s meditations became the best-selling devotional book of the twentieth century. Recently a new edition was released (Discovery House), which clarifies and updates the language of the original.

? my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed” (Phil. 1:20). We will all feel very much ashamed if we do not yield to Jesus the areas of our lives He has asked us to yield to Him. It’s as if Paul were saying, “My determined purpose is to be my utmost for His highest?my best for His glory.”

“Year after year My Utmost for His Highest

continues to feed my soul with fresh insight.”

?Patsy Clairmont

To reach that level of determination is a matter of the will, not of debate or of reasoning. It is absolute and irrevocable surrender of the will at that point.

“Oswald Chambers is one of the few who, in the words of Robert

McCheyne, has ‘mastered the spiritual secret and hung to the

nails of the cross.’ He looks at life from God’s stantpoint.”

?Sherwood E. Wirt

An undue amount of thought and consideration for ourselves is what keeps us from making that decision, although we cover it up with the pretense that it is others we are considering. When we think seriously about what it will cost others if we obey the call of Jesus, we tell God He doesn’t know what our obedience will mean. Keep to the point?He does know. Shut out every other thought and keep yourself before God in this one thing only?my utmost for His highest.

#2 Pilgrim’s Progress

by John Bunyan

Our judges offered personal testimony of the power this classic allegory of Christian’s journey to the Celestial City, written from prison by John Bunyan, a tinker (repairman) arrested for preaching without a license in seventeenth-century England.

“From childhood on, this book has given me mental pictures that have helped me apply the fundamentals of my faith,” wrote CHRISTIAN READER columnist Ruth Senter.

Church historian Bruce Shelley wrote, “Pilgrim’s Progress is the dramatic and thought-provoking story of the soul’s journey from life estranged from God to life tested at every turn but sustained by the grace of God. It so accurately describes the Christian experience, believers have read it and relived it for centuries.”

In the following excerpt, Christian confronts temptations as he nears the end of his journey.

Below the mountains they met a quick lad whose name was Ignorance. He had traveled along a crooked lane that came from the country of Conceit, and said he was going to the Celestial City.

“How do you expect to get in?” Christian asked.

“Just as other good people do,” replied Ignorance. “I live a good life, I pay whatever I owe, I pray, and I give money to the poor.”

“But you didn’t come in at the narrow gate,” said Christian, “so I’m afraid you won’t be admitted to the city.”

Ignorance replied, “You follow your religion, and I’ll follow mine.” So Ignorance stayed back as the pilgrims walked ahead . ?

The next man they met on the road was named Atheist. “Where are you going,” he asked them.

“To Mount Zion,” Christian answered.

Atheist let out a great laugh. “How stupid you are to take on such a tiresome journey, and get nothing for all your trouble.”

Christian replied, “Do you think we won’t be let in when we get there?”

“Let in! Why, there is no Mount Zion. I once believed there was. But I’ve seen no more of it than I did the day I set out. If there ever was a Celestial City, I would have found it. Now I know it doesn’t exist.”

“What!” Hopeful answered. “No City of Zion? Didn’t we see it from the Delectable Mountains? Besides, we walk by faith.”

Christian and Hopeful next entered a place where they became drowsy. They kept talking to keep one another awake. Hopeful looked back and saw Ignorance still following at a distance. So the pilgrims stopped to let him catch up.

Christian asked him, “How is it now between God and your soul?”

Ignorance answered that he felt good about himself, that he had good thoughts about God and heaven, and that he had a good heart. But Christian explained that the only good thoughts are those that agree with God’s Word, which says that our hearts are evil.

“Pilgrim’s Progress is a masterpiece, especially when one realizes

the limited education of the author. It is, outside of the Bible,

the best piece of work that ‘reads the reader.’ To see your

heart revealed in a book and to stand bowed before the Cross

is the most compelling experience one can accept from a book.”

?Ravi Zacharias

“I can never believe my heart is bad,” Ignorance declared.

“Then you can never have a good thought about yourself,” Christian answered. “Wake up, Ignorance, and see how sinful you are, then run to Jesus Christ to save you!”

“That’s your belief, not mine,” said Ignorance. Again he dropped back from the pilgrims and stayed behind.

Finally they entered the land of Beulah, where the air is sweet and pleasant, the birds never stop singing, and the sun always shines.

#3 The Screwtape Letters

by C.S. Lewis

A devotional book written from the perspective of a devil? Not standard fare, but in this case, the devil’s-eye-view of the war for the soul is by C.S. Lewis, the imaginative author of children’s classic The Chronicles of Narnia and several books defending Christian beliefs. In this collection of letters from a senior devil (Screwtape) to his apprentice (Wormwood), Lewis uses “reverse theology” to explore temptation, salvation, and the spiritual influences in each person’s life. As you read this excerpt, remember that “The Enemy” is God, and “Our Father” is Screwtape’s superior, Lucifer.

My dear Wormwood,

So you “have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away,” have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians?half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

This means that while their spirits can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation?the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

If you had watched your patient carefully, you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life?his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth, periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. ? in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.

The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense.

But the obedience the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing . ? He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself?creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.

We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. ? Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo . ?

“C.S. Lewis always writes well, knowing that truth speaks

for itself. In The Screwtape Letters, he transforms theology

from abstract to meaningful, practical, and concrete.”

?Sigmund Brouwer

He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. ? Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives.

He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs?to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.

? Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

#4 Confessions

by Augustine

Augustine was a great sinner who became a great saint. His autobiography, Confessions, written from A.D. 397 to 401, describes the sin and restlessness of his early years in Carthage (North Africa) and the amazing way God captured his attention and allegiance. Augustine became one of the most influential theologians of the early church, clarifying the concept of “original sin-that sin’s power cannot be overcome by human effort, but only by God’s work.

I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust. I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. I felt no need for the food that does not perish, not because I had had my fill of it, but because the more I was starved of it the less palatable it seemed. Because of this my soul fell sick. To love and to have my love returned was my heart’s desire, and it would be all the sweeter if I could also enjoy the body of the one who loved me.

“In Confessions, Augustine penned not only a milestone

and masterpiece of Western literature, he profoundly

chronicled his discovery of a God who had been seeking him all

along. I have long appreciated its depth of insight, and have

been moved often by Augustine’s passion for God.”

?Tim Jones

So I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell’s black river of lust. My God, my God of mercy, how good you were to me, for you mixed much bitterness in that cup of pleasure! In the midst of my joy I was caught up in the coils of trouble, for I was lashed with the cruel, fiery rods of jealousy and suspicion, fear, anger, and quarrels.

#5 The Pursuit of God

by A.W. Tozer

One unusual minister knew the secret of quietness in the soul. And yet he lived and taught this close walk with God amid the noise and busyness of a church in Chicago. For thirty-one years, A.W. Tozer pastored Southside Alliance Church and preached regularly on radio station WMBI. His most widely-read book, The Pursuit of God, was published in 1948.

If we truly want to follow God, we must seek to be other-worldly. This I say knowing well that word has been used with scorn by the sons of this world and applied to the Christian as a badge of reproach. So be it. Every man must choose his world. If we who follow Christ, with all the facts before us and knowing what we are about, deliberately choose the Kingdom of God as our sphere of interest, I see no reason why anyone should object. If we lose by it, the loss is our own; if we gain, we rob no one by so doing. The “other world,” which is the object of this world’s disdain, is our carefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing.

“Nowhere is Tozer more brilliant and powerful in laying bare

all pretense in the soul of the reader than in The Pursuit of God.”

?Robertson McQuilken

But we must avoid the common fault of pushing the “other world” into the future. It is not future, but present. It parallels our familiar physical world, and the doors between the two worlds are open.

Part one of two parts; click here to read part 2

The Best Devotional Books of All Time (Part 2 of 2)

Part two of two parts; click here to read part 1

#6 The Practice of the Presence of God

by Brother Lawrence

Nicholas Herman described himself as “a great awkward fellow who broke everything.” In the early 1600s, he served as a soldier and a domestic servant before, at over 50 years old, becoming a lay worker in a Paris monastery. He was assigned kitchen duty and given the name Brother Lawrence. Though he loathed the drudgery of scrubbing pots and plates, he developed the habit of doing all things, even menial work, to the glory of God.

“I am doing now what I will do for all eternity,” he wrote. “I am blessing God, praising him, adoring him, and loving him with all my heart.”

After his death in 1691, some of Brother Lawrence’s conversations and letters were compiled and published as The Practice of the Presence of God, which has become a timeless call for Christians to practice “the presence of God in one single act that does not end.”

Try to converse with God in little ways; not in memorized prayer, not trying to recite previously formed thoughts. Rather, we should purely and simply reveal our hearts as the words come to us. God wishes us to work gently, calmly, and lovingly with Him.

Whatever we do, even if we are reading the Word or praying, we should stop for a few minutes?as often as possible?to praise God from the depths of our hearts, to enjoy Him there in secret. Since you believe that God is always with you, no matter what you may be doing, why shouldn’t you stop for a while to adore Him, to praise Him, to petition Him, to offer Him your heart, and to thank Him?

What could please God more than for us to leave the cares of the world temporarily in order to worship Him in our spirits? These momentary retreats serve to free us from our selfishness, which can only exist in the world. In short, we cannot show God our loyalty to Him more than by renouncing our worldly selves as much as a thousand times a day to enjoy even a single moment with Him.

“No book other than The Practice of the Presence of

God more clearly illustrates this principal for me:

The test of true greatness lies not in what we accomplish

but in the kind of person we are in our daily work.”

?Ruth Senter

This doesn’t mean you must leave the duties of the world forever; that would be impossible. Let prudence be your guide.

Our adoration of God should be done in faith, believing that He really lives in our hearts, and that He must be loved and served in spirit and in truth. Believe that He is the One, upon Whom all of us depend, and that He is aware of everything that happens to us.

#7 The Imitation of Christ

by Thomas ? Kempis

Jesus has plenty of admirers, but few disciples. How do you become a disciple, conforming your life to Christ’s? For more than five centuries, Christians have found direction in The Imitation of Christ, written by Thomas Hammerken. In 1413 Thomas was ordained and served in a monastery in Holland as a copyist (before the invention of the printing press) and a spiritual adviser. He became known simply as Thomas of Kempen (the small town near Dusseldorf, Germany, where he was born).

In this excerpt, he compares our natural reflexes to Christ’s.

Christ was despised on earth by men, and in his greatest need, amid insults, was abandoned by those who knew him and by friends; and you dare to complain of anyone? Christ had his adversaries and slanderers; and you wish to have everyone as friends and benefactors? If you wish to suffer no opposition, how will you be Christ’s friend? ?

Do not weigh highly who may be for you or against you. But take thought and care that God be with you in everything you do. Have a good conscience, and God will defend you well . ?

“My first reading of Thomas ? Kempis powerfully affected

me. Practical, deeply spiritual, confrontive?it vastly deepened

my spiritual life. Since then I’ve gone through many editions

and continue to underline and prayerfully ponder.”

?Harold Myra

Sometimes we are moved by passion and think it zeal. We blame small things in others, and pass over greater things in ourselves. Quickly enough we feel and weigh up what we endure from others; but how much others bear from us we do not notice . ?

Nothing is more sweet than love, nothing stronger, nothing deeper, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better in heaven or on earth, because love is born of God and cannot find rest save in God above all created things. The one who loves runs and is glad; he is free and not bound. He gives all for all and has all in all because he rests in one who is supreme above all things, from whom every good thing flows. [Love] makes no plea about impossibility because it thinks all things are open and possible to it.

#8 The Book of Common Prayer

by Thomas Cranmer and others

Many Protestants assume that prayer is extemporary, that you tell God whatever happens to come to mind at the moment. They might be surprised to discover that almost all churches during the Reformation prayed according to a set form of words. The best-known collection of these “liturgical” prayers is The Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549 and revised several times since. Written and compiled by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, these “common” prayers allow Christians to worship God together, focusing on the essentials of faith.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name, Amen.

“Its prayers sum up the yearnings and joys of the

human heart toward God, succinctly and with beauty.”

?Mark Galli

Almighty God, Father of all mercies ? we bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake, Amen.

#9 The Cost of Discipleship

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Many saints have been prepared to die for their faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested for something even more difficult for a true saint?he was prepared to kill. As a pastor and trainer of pastors in Germany during World War II, he was linked to a group of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler failed. Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943 and hanged in 1945, at age 39, just days before the war would end.

He understood “the cost of discipleship.” While he could have lived safely in the United States, he chose to live in Germany and oppose Nazism. “I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war,” he wrote, “if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost!

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness that frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

“I remain haunted by Bonhoeffer’s distinction between cheap

grace and costly grace. A gift so costly surely demands our all.”

?Frederica Mathewes-Green

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

#10 Prayer

by Ole Hallesby

Ole Kristian Hallesby was more than a professor of systematic theology at the Free Faculty of Theology in his native Norway. He also studied and practiced the life of prayer. In 1930-31 he wrote his best-known books, Why I Am a Christian and Prayer. He became a spiritual leader to a generation of Norwegian pastors. During World War II, he helped lead the church’s resistance to the Nazi occupation of Norway, which led to his arrest and confinement for two years in a concentration camp.

The book Prayer itself “breathes the spirit of prayer,” writes Richard Foster. “It ‘smells Gospel’ ? full of grace and mercy, jubilee and challenge. ? Instinctively we sense that here is someone who understands prayer. He understands its complexity and he understands its simplicity.”

“Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

?Revelation 3:20

I doubt that I know of a passage in the whole Bible which throws greater light upon prayer than this one does. It is the key which opens the door into the holy and blessed realm of prayer.

To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts.

This teaches us that it is not our prayer which moves the Lord Jesus. It is Jesus who moves us to pray. He knocks, thereby He makes known His desire to come in to us. Our prayers are always a result of Jesus’ knocking at our hearts’ doors . ?

To pray is nothing more involved than to let Jesus into our needs. To pray is to give Jesus permission to employ His powers in the alleviation of our distress. To pray is to let Jesus glorify His name in the midst of our needs.

“I was converted in a hospital bed while a student at Cambridge,

and Prayer was the first book I was given to read. It gave me

the basis of my new relationship with Christ?opened up heaven,

the throne room, for a lifetime of power, peace, and presence.”

?Jill Briscoe

The results of prayer are, therefore, not dependent upon the powers of the one who prays. Our intense will, our fervent emotions, or our clear comprehension of what we are praying for are not the reasons why our prayers will be heard and answered. Nay, God be praised, the results of prayer are not dependent upon these things!

To pray is nothing more involved than to open the door, giving Jesus access to our needs and permitting Him to exercise His own power in dealing with them . ?

To pray is to open the door unto Jesus and admit Him into your distress. Your helplessness is the very thing which opens wide the door unto Him and gives Him access to all your needs.

On this day...

• Isaiah 7 - 2024
• Isaiah 6 - 2024
• the one whom the Lord commends - 2017
• the area of influence God assigned to us - 2017
• To Often Think Of Him - 2012
• Men's Ministry objectives - 2011
• A sermon to the people - 2011
• We Gather Together - 2011
• 2007 Resolutions - 2011
• WHERE TO FIND IT IN THE BIBLE - 2011