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Devotional Reviews

Jesus, Keep me near the cross: experiencing the power and passion of easter

By Suzanne Tietjen
March 13, 2019

It’s easy for me to look forward to Easter so much that I feel impatient with Lent. Nancy Guthrie, author, grief counselor, and Bible teacher, understands. She was concerned that many of us miss out on the full significance of Easter when we fail to contemplate the cross. Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter (Crossway), which she edited, is the result. It is a fine compilation of the work of twenty-five Christian thinkers, classic and contemporary, that can help us slow down and prepare our hearts by considering...

Devotional Thoughts, Vols. 1&2

By Pastor David Johnson
January 23, 2019

When you hear the name of Carl Olof Rosenius, you may think of his classic titles, The Believer Free from the Law, A Faithful Guide to Peace with God, or his devotional resource, Day by Day with God. But few are aware of his two-volume resource, Devotional Thoughts, which provides six months of devotional readings in each volume.

Counting to Christmas: Family advent devotions & calendar

By Cynthia Lohse
December 12, 2018

Advent is a wonderful time of the year filled with joy, wonder, and anticipation. It is a time we prepare our hearts and focus on our need of a Savior and God filling that need by sending His one and only perfect Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Counting to Christmas is a daily devotion that parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles can read to children so that they may turn their hearts and minds to focus on the true reason for the season.

Come, Lord Jesus! An Advent Devotional for all God's children

By Maren Sletten
November 14, 2018

Advent season is a time when many families change from their regular devotional material to Scripture readings that emphasize the beautiful prophecies of our Savior and the Gospel accounts of His birth. This season is also the busiest time of year for many families, and an Advent devotional guide can help us slow down and take comfort in God’s Word and His promises. In Come, Lord Jesus! An Advent Devotional for All God’s Children, author Amy Cahill presents twenty-five Advent readings for December 1 through December 25.

Amazing grace for a woman's heart & loved beyond measure

By Diane Brubakken
October 10, 2018

Life is busy. In between all the tasks we try to accomplish each day and all the roles we are trying to fill, it can be hard to spend the amount of time we’d like to in devotions each week. Regardless of how much we know we need that time each day with God, it’s amazing how quickly everything else can come between us and Him. This is why small devotional booklets like Amazing Grace for a Woman’s Heartand Loved Beyond Measure can serve such a great purpose, giving us a few brief moments to stop and turn our focus back to God.

Rest a While

By Linda Mohagen
September 12, 2018

“Come and rest a while.” Mark 6:31 is the first verse you read in this book, and how appealing it is. First, come . . . set yourself apart in a quiet place and come to the Word. Secondly, rest a little while . . . this isn’t always easy in this fast-paced life we live. But when I take a few minutes in the early morning and pick up this little devotional book, I find myself digging into that verse in my Bible and don’t realize that I just spent an hour or more reading and studying!

Starck's prayer book

By Pastor Eugene W. Enderlein
August 8, 2018

Earnest, seeking believers can find devotions in Starck’s Prayer Book that apply to their deepest concerns: There are five Books within this grand volume summarized below. Each section is filled with specific areas and Scriptures: BOOK I is for Use in Health, and contains Daily Prayers, Festival Season Prayers, such as the Suffering of Jesus Christ, the Day of Jesus’ Death, the Resurrection of Christ, Meditations on the Ascension of Christ, and Meditations on the Guardian of the Holy Angels. Book I concludes with Prayers for Spiritual and Bodily Blessings such as Sanctification, Loving My Neighbor, Trusting That God Alone Is the Highest Good, Humility, Meekness, and Praying for Family.

Threads of Grace

By AFLC Parish Education
July 11, 2018

The daily fabric of our lives is woven with threads of expectations and commitments, laughter and tears, joy and discouragement, mundane routine and unpredictable events. In the midst of all this, the unbroken thread entwined throughout the life of the believer is the thread of God’s grace given to us in Christ. The Threads of Grace devotional book is designed to help you turn your eyes upon Jesus each day and to remind you of God’s faithfulness as you spend time in His Word.

To Live with christ

By Dr. James Molstre
June 13, 2018

Bo Giertz is best known for his classic novel, The Hammer of God, which has been translated into eleven languages. Dr. Robert Kolb calls it “The best treatment of Law and Gospel in the history of Lutheran theology.” Incredibly, Giertz wrote his classic in six weeks, but it is considered one of the most influential and important theological books in Swedish history. It was with this backdrop that I began reading To Live with Christ, a daily devotional translated by Bror Erickson. The devotional is fairly long (more than 800 pages) and is organized by the Church Year, starting with the season of Advent. Each devotional begins with a verse from the pericope text, a devotional, and a short prayer.

Little visits with God

By Andrea Christenson
May 10, 2018

Wiggling, talking, whining, disobeying, the struggle is real. What struggle? The difficult task of sitting everyone down for family devotions. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes the effort doesn’t seem worth the payoff. My husband and I are always on a quest to find engaging ways to interact with our daughters about spiritual things. Usually we can incorporate these conversations into everyday life, but we also like to strive for some semblance of a family devotional time. Enter Little Visits with God. No devotional is perfect, but this one comes close.

Bible discovery devotions

By Solveig Hjermstad
April 11, 2018

Teaching children God’s Word is one of the most rewarding yet challenging privileges God has entrusted to us. The home is the primary place where this teaching should occur. The Lord doesn’t require us to be a seminary-trained theologian to teach our children. Thankfully when God gives us children, He also gives us what we need to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Helpful resources abound and make wonderful gifts. One of those helps is bound up in a devotional book called Bible Discovery Devotions by Martha Larchar.

UP to jerusalem: devotions for Lent and Easter

By Pastor Dennis Norby
March 14, 2018

John A. Braun has provided to us a devotional book entitled Up to Jerusalem: Devotions for Lent and Easter. This book includes 55 devotional readings with each one being made up of a short passage of Scripture, lasting about three pages, and ending with a short prayer. The back cover of the book suggests that it will take around ten minutes to go through each reading. In these pages, the author takes us through the last days of Jesus’ life beginning with the raising of Lazarus from the dead and ending with the Resurrection and Christ’s appearances after Easter.

A Faithful guide to peace with God

By Pastor Les Johnson
February 14, 2018

A Faithful Guide to Peace with God is identified on the title page as, “Being the excerpts of the writings of C. O. Rosenius arranged as daily meditations to cover a period of two months with the assistance of N. J. Laache reproduced by George Taylor Rygh.” Rosenius was one among several leaders of the spiritual awakenings in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century. His excerpted writings in this book present a powerful focus on the central, double theme of Scripture—sin and grace. The reader will experience afresh the depths of sin as well as the new sense of freedom that comes from a full understanding of justification by pure grace alone.

What Jesus Means to Me

By Dr. Timothy Skramstad
January 10, 2018

Pastor Herman Gockel addresses the issue of the meaning of Jesus Christ in the life of a Christian in his devotional style work, "What Jesus Means to Me.” In this rather short book, the subjects of life, pardon, peace, power, provision, companionship, hope, truth, assurance, joy, and heaven are viewed in light of the promises of Jesus and the Bible.