Devotional Reading Resources
Psalm 1:2, 119:97
(Blessed is the one)...whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.
1 Chronicles 22:19 (authored by Ezra) Devote your heart and soul to seeking the LORD your God.
Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching...
2 Peter 1:5 Make every effort (giving all diligence) to add to your faith...knowledge...
1 Timothy 4:13 Devote yourself to the reading of Scripture...
(NKJV) Give attention to reading...
THEN
2 Timothy 2:7 (NLT) Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.
Preface to The Glorious Feast of the Gospel, Richard Sibbes, sermons from Isaiah 25:6-9, 1650
So much of late hath been written about the times, that spiritual discourses are now almost out of season. Men’s minds are so hurried up and down, that it is to be feared they are much discomposed to think seriously as they ought, of their
eternal concernments. Alas! Christians have lost much of their communion with Christ and his saints – the heaven upon earth – whilst they have woefully disputed away and dispirited the life of religion and the power of godliness, into dry and sapless controversies about government of church and state.
“The Life of Martin Luther” by Rev. Erasmus Middleton in Luther’s A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, 1807 Edition
Three things make a divine; meditation, prayer, and temptation (trials). And three things are to be remembered by a minister; turn over and over the Bible; pray devoutly; and be never above learning.
John Knox “A Letter of Wholesome Counsel”
… dear Brethren, if that ye look for a life to come, of necessity it is that ye exercise yourselves in the book of the Lord your God. Let no day slip or want some comfort received from the mouth of God. Open your ears, and he will speak even pleasant things to your heart. Close not your eyes, but diligently let them behold what portion of substance is left to you within your Father’s testament. Let your tongues learn to praise the gracious goodness of him, whose mere mercy hath called you from darkness to light, and from death to life.
John Owen
Triumph Over Temptation "The Dangers of Temptation"
When someone acts weak, negligent, or casual in a duty - performing it carelessly or lifelessly, without any genuine satisfaction, joy, or interest - he has already entered into the spirit that will lead him into trouble. How many we see today who have departed from warmhearted service and have become negligent, careless, and indifferent in their prayer life or in the reading of the Scriptures. For each one who escapes this peril, a hundred others will be ensnared. Then it may be too late to acknowledge, "I neglected private prayer," or "I did not meditate on God's Word," or "I did not hear what I should have listened to."
Preface to the Reader, Works, Vol. XII "The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated"
I know not a more deplorable mistake in the studies of divines, both preachers and others, than their diversion from an immediate, direct study of the Scriptures themselves unto the studying of commentators, critics, scholastics, annotators, and the like helps…to inquire after the sense of other men on the Scriptures than to search studiously into them themselves.
(On the other hand) Philip Melanchthon
Those who read the prophetic and apostolic writings and the Creeds with godly devotion, and who seek the opinion of the pure Church, will easily conclude afterwards that they are aided by these human interpretations, and they will know what usefulness is afforded by correct and skillful expositions of Scripture written by godly believers and by sermons drawn from the fountains of Scripture.
Samuel Ward The Life of Faith
Resolve in your heart not to omit one day, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to redeem at the least a quarter of an hour once or twice a day. Withdraw yourself apart from all company to seek the Lord and the strengthening of your faith. That is, by prayer, reading, and meditation you might put strength and life into your faith. This will cheer, revive, and warm your soul.
Just as often as you refresh your body with rest and recreation, so cheer up your soul. Let your soul have two or three walks each day up Mount Tabor (the Mount of Transfiguration), that is, in some retired place of meditation and prayer.
Thomas Brooks Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices
Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan's devices, are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched.
It is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths that make them sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian. It is not the knowing, talking, and reading man, but the doing man that will at last be found the happiest man.
Thomas Watson
"How To Read Scripture With Most Spiritual Profit”
https://www.gracegems.org/Watson/Scripture.htm
Do not be content with simply reading the Scriptures, but labor to find some spiritual benefit and profit. Get the Word inscribed upon your heart.
If you do profit from your reading, be sure to adore the grace of God. Bless God that He has not only given you His Word, but some ability to understand it.
The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm
Reading begets knowledge—but meditation begets devotion. The reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.
Richard Baxter The Saints' Everlasting Rest
Conscientiously practice meditation as well as prayer. Do it daily. Retire into some private place at the most convenient time, and lay aside all worldly thoughts. With all possible seriousness and reverence look up towards heaven. Remember there is your everlasting rest. Study its excellency and reality. Rise from sense to faith by comparing heavenly with earthly joys. Then having pleaded the case reverently with God and seriously with your own heart, you have ignited yourself from dust to flame. It will change you from a forgetful sinner and lover of the world, to an ardent lover of God; from a fearful coward to a persistent Christian; from an unfruitful sadness to a joyful life. In other words, this activity will wean your heart from earth to heaven; from crawling in earth's dust to walking with God.
Thomas Case A Treatise on Afflictions
Meditate much upon the sinfulness of sin and the emptiness of man; the fullness of Christ and the (intensity) of His sufferings; the severity of the last judgment, the torments of hell, and the horror of eternity; the joys of heaven and the infinite perfections of the divine nature. Rich in meditation (is to be) rich in grace.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
He is the best student in divinity that studies most upon his knees.
Could God find heart and time to pen and send this love letter to thee, and thou find none to read it?
Richard Sibbes The Soul's Conflict With Itself
It is wisdom to take the benefit of a well chosen friend, books I mean, which will speak truly, without flattery, of our estates. 'A friend is made for the time of adversity,' Prov. 17:17. The very presence of a true-hearted friend yields often ease to our grief.
William Bridge “The Sweetness and Profitableness of Divine Meditation”
https://books.google.com/books?id=hgxKAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA124&lpg
Meditation is a help to knowledge; thereby your knowledge is raised. Thereby your memory is strengthened. Thereby your hearts are warmed. Thereby you will be freed from sinful thoughts. Thereby your hearts will be tuned to every duty. Thereby you will grow in grace. Thereby you will fill up all the chinks and crevices of your lives, and know how to spend your spare time, and improve that for God. Thereby you will draw good out of evil. And thereby you will converse with God, have communion with God, and enjoy God. And I pray, is not here profit enough to sweeten the voyage of your thoughts in meditation?
Archibald Alexander “The Importance of Catechetical Instruction” in Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1830
If we do not entirely misinterpret the temper and taste of the times in which we live, doctrinal catechisms (oral instructions by question and answer), and lectures explanatory of such catechisms, are not the books which will be sought after and read with avidity. The religious taste of most readers is, we fear, greatly vitiated by works of fiction and other kinds of light reading. Nothing will now please, unless it be characterized by novelty and variety. We cannot but fear that didactic and practical works of sound theology have been excluded by the religious novel and newspaper.
What upon earth is so worthy of times and pains as the knowledge of God's Word and the doctrines of His wonderful love and grace?
John Angell James How to Read a Soul-Improving Book from Pastoral Addresses, Series I (1840)
Salvation depends on knowledge, and knowledge on meditation. At almost every step of our progress through a book which is intended to guide us to salvation, we should pause and ask, ‘Do I understand this?’ Our profiting depends not on the quantity we read, but the quantity we understand. One verse in Scripture, if understood and meditated upon, will do us more good than a chapter, or even a book, read through in haste, and without reflection.
Read this book with the Bible at your elbow, and do not think much of the trouble of turning to the passages quoted. If, unhappily, you should consider me, or my little volume, as a substitute for the Bible, instead of a guide to it, I shall have done you an injury, or rather you will have done yourself an injury by thus employing it.
Horatius Bonar On Reading
Avoid works that jest with what is right or wrong, lest you unconsciously adopt a false test of truth and duty... and so become afraid to do right for right's sake alone, dreading the world's sneer and undervaluing a good conscience and the approving smile of God. Let your reading be always select, and whatever you read, begin with seeking God's blessing on it. But see that your relish for the Bible be above every other enjoyment, and the moment you begin to feel greater relish for any other book, lay it down until you have sought deliverance from such a snare and obtained from the Holy Spirit an intenser relish, a keener appetite for the Word of God.
A.W. Tozer
The Size of the Soul, "The Use and Abuse of Good Books"
I recommend reading, not for diversion, nor for information alone, but for communion with great minds. The book that leads the soul out into the sunlight (and) points upward is always the best book.
On Psalm 119:11 "I have hidden your word in my heart..."
My own method is to confine my memorization to the Scriptures and the great hymns. I memorize passages of Scripture so I can use them in my sermons and meditate on them as I travel. And I like to store the great hymns in my mind to sing under my breath anywhere under any circumstances at any time.
The Next Chapter After the Last
(The man of God) is grateful for "holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21); for translators, expositors, teachers, intercessors, hymnists, and he thankfully acknowledges the part they all had in ministering to his own life the liberating things of the free Spirit.
The Set of the Sail
To establish our hearts in the devotional (frame of mind) we must abide in Christ, walk in the Spirit, pray without ceasing and continually meditate in the Word of God. Of course this implies separation from the world and obedience to the will of God, as we are able to understand it. Every advance in the spiritual life must be made against the determined resistance of the world, the flesh and the devil!
Read the Puritans
John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1159
We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.
George Swinnock The Christian Man’s Calling
Men print, in a sense, for eternity. Sermons preached, or men’s words, pass away like wind…but sermons printed are men’s works (that) live when they are dead, and become an image of eternity: “This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord.” (Psalm 102:18)
George Whitefield Preface to the Works of John Bunyan, 1767
Ministers never write or preach so well as when under the cross; the Spirit of Christ and of glory then rests upon them. It was this that made the Puritans such burning and shining lights. Though dead, by their wrtings they yet speak; a peculiar unction attends them to this very hour. The more true and vital religion has revived, the more the good old Puritanical writings have been called for.
C.H. Spurgeon Commenting and Commentaries: Two Lectures together with A Catalogue of Biblical Commentaries and Expositions
Our Puritan forefathers were strong men, because they lived on the Scriptures. They fed on good meat, whereas their degenerate children are far too fond of unwholesome food. The chaff of fiction, and the bran of the Quarterlies, are poor substitutes for the old corn of Scripture.
J.I. Packer in the forward to Day By Day With The English Puritans, Selected Readings For Daily Reflection
Clearheaded about biblical authority, justification by faith, and the covenantal framework of God's grace, the Puritans were equally clear on the realities of the Christian life - communion with the triune God, biblical morality, and the pilgrim perspective. In spiritually decadent days like ours, they can help us to recover the wisdom and power of this ideal...
Dr. Wilbur Smith, former Professor of Biblical Studies for Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and with Charles Fuller and Harold Ockenga founder of Fuller Theological Seminary; regarding the works of William Gurnall.
Do not say one does not have time to read this. What does one use his time for? What better use of time could one possibly make than in reading some of the most spiritual, devotional literature that has ever proceeded from the pen of an uninspired man?
Lewis Allen in the introduction to All Things Made New, John Flavel for the Christian Life
We need (the Puritans) to instruct us in how to know God and walk confidently with Jesus Christ. (They) were godly, Bible-believing church pastors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They longed to see godliness flourish in heart, home, church, and nation, and they believed that the gospel was the power of God to transform both individuals and the nations.
"Why Read The Puritans?"
http://www.gracegems.org/17/puritans.htm
Puritan Library
http://www.puritanlibrary.com/
Online Resources
http://articles.ochristian.com/
Jonathan Edwards
http://articles.ochristian.com/preacher102-1.shtml
Works
Volume 1
https://ccel.org/ccel/e/edwards/works1/cache/works1.pdf
Volume 2
A.W. Tozer
http://articles.ochristian.com/preacher2-1.shtml
Robert Murray McCheyne
http://articles.ochristian.com/preacher101-1.shtml
Horatius Bonar
http://articles.ochristian.com/preacher18-1.shtml
A.W. Pink
http://articles.ochristian.com/preacher76-1.shtml
C.H. Spurgeon
Complete Works including Lectures To My Students and The Sword and the Trowel
http://www.godrules.net/library/spurgeon/spurgeon.htm
The Treasury of David
http://www.studylight.org/com/tod/
In these busy days, it would be greatly to the spiritual profit of Christian men if they were more familiar with the Book of Psalms, in which they would find a complete armoury for life’s battles, and a perfect supply for life’s needs. Here we have both delight and usefulness, consolation and instruction. For every condition there is a Psalm, suitable and and elevating.
Spurgeon Gems from Chapel Library including Pictures From Pilgrim's Progress
Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings
Five Solas Readings
Grace Gems
http://www.gracegems.org/Devotionals.htm
John Angell James - "Plain truths, in plain language, for plain people."
Devotions - http://gracegems.org/23/jewels_from_james1.htm
Sermons and articles - http://gracegems.org/22/James_sermons.htm
Thomas Brooks
http://gracegems.org/Brooks/Thomas_Brooks.htm
Octavius Winslow
http://gracegems.org/BOOKS/Octavius%20Winslow%20books.htm
John Bunyan Works
http://www.bunyanministries.org/?page_id=37
Monergism
John Flavel, Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter and many others
http://www.monergism.com/authors
The Highway "Notable Sermons"
Daily Devotional Readings
C.H. Spurgeon
Faith's Checkbook Daily Devotional (Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith - Being Precious Promises Arranged For Daily Use)
https://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals/faithcheckbook/
Morning & Evening Devotions
http://www.reformedreader.org/atrr.iframes/devotionals/spurgeon.morning.fixed.htm
http://www.reformedreader.org/atrr.iframes/devotionals/spurgeon.evening.fixed.htm
"Self Low, But Christ High", A Sermon Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, August 31, 1890
https://www.spurgeongems.org/vols34-36/chs2161.pdf
"That You should die for me remains the greatest of all miracles in my esteem. That You should choose me and call me and pardon me and save me, is a world of wonders at which my soul stands gratefully amazed!"
"Spurgeon's Prayers"
https://www.spurgeongems.org/spurgeon-prayers/
Octavius Winslow
(The author)...trusts that his little volume, with the Holy Spirit's blessing, drop occasionally a Christ-endearing, heart-soothing, soul-guiding word...
"Morning Thoughts, or Daily Walking With God"
https://www.gracegems.org/WINSLOW/MORNING%20THOUGHTS.htm
"Evening Thoughts"
Robert Macdonald, From Day to Day; or Helpful Words for Christian Life, Daily Readings For A Year, 1879
https://books.google.com.na/books?id=eloXAAAAYAAJ
A.W. Tozer
Christian & Missionary Alliance Daily Devotion
https://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer
Sermons and Devotions
http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=category&cid=2
The Best of A.W. Tozer
https://thekingdomage.com/library/the-best-of-a-w-tozer/
"What I believe about God is the most important thing about me."
F.B. Meyer Our Daily Walk. Daily Meditations and a Prayer for Each Day
http://www.preceptaustin.org/our_daily_walk_by_f_b_meyer_-_jan
"Do not see the face of man until you have seen the face of God. Before you enter on the day with its temptations, look up into His face and hide His Word in your heart."
Our Daily Walk was released in 1951, 22 years after Meyer's death at age 82. Many of the devotions originally appeared in Our Daily Homily, first published in 1894 in 5 volumes.
God’s Minute, A Book of 365 Daily Prayers Sixty Seconds Long for Home Worship
https://books.google.com/books?id=3iAwAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&dq
Christian History Institute Daily Devotional Classic
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/devotional
Voices From The Past - Puritan Devotional Readings edited by Richard Rushing
Vol. 1 https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/devotionalsdaily-readings/voices-from-the-past/
Vol. 2 https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/devotionalsdaily-readings/voices-past-volume-2/
The Valley of Vision (Isaiah 22) Devotionals
http://banneroftruth.org/us/devotional-series/the-valley-of-vision-devotional/
“...drawn from the largely forgotten deposit of Puritan spiritual exercises, meditations and aspirations.”
http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/07/11/valley-of-vision/
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley.
Family worship. A series of prayers with doctrinal and practical remarks on passages of Sacred Scripture for every morning and evening throughout the year; adapted to the services of domestic worship, by one hundred and eighty clergymen of the Church of Scotland, Compiled by James Gibson, 1854
CAUTION
St. Augustine On Christian Teaching
The wisdom of what a person says is in direct proportion to his progress in learning the Holy Scriptures—and I am not speaking of intensive reading or memorization, but real understanding and careful investigation of their meaning. Some people read them but neglect them; by their reading they profit in knowledge, by their neglect they forfeit understanding.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.
Francis Bacon “Of Studies”
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Frederick William Robertson (Robertson of Brighton)
It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth.
William Graham to Archibald Alexander, upon Alexander’s beginning his ministerial training, in Journal of Presbyterian History, Fall 1976, “Archibald Alexander and the Doctrine of Scripture” by Donald K. McKim
If you mean ever to be a theologian, you must come at it not by reading but by thinking.
Archibald Alexander “The Use and Abuse of Books”, Princeton Seminary Introductory Lectures, 1826
Reading must not be substituted for thinking.