Why I Quit Devotionals

Good News Magazine ^ | November 12, 2014 | Jessica LaGrone

[xzins]

I have a confession to make. I’m done doing devotionals.

It started a few years ago. I showed up for an appointment and learned I would have to wait for about 45 minutes. I headed to my car to find something to do during the wait (this must have been before smart phones, because now none of us ever wonder what to do with 45 minutes). I found a Bible in my car, so I brought it inside. I thought: “Great, I’ll take this time to do my devotional for the day.” Then I realized I couldn’t.

First of all, I didn’t have my devotional book with me – the one with two sentences of Scripture printed at the top of the page, and then a full two pages of someone else’s thoughts and stories to give me something inspirational to meditate on.

I didn’t have my special colored pencils and Bible highlighters. How could I do my devotionals without those? To make matters worse, the Bible I had stashed in my car wasn’t the one I was used to using – my devotional Bible – the one where a third of every page was Scripture, while the rest was the devotional writing of the celebrity Christian author and editor whose name was on the cover.

Think about that. That’s how you know you’ve arrived: Your name on the cover of a Bible. God’s not your co-pilot, he’s your co-author.

Somehow in that moment of waiting, sitting there bored with my Bible closed on my lap, I realized how ridiculous the whole thing was. I had gotten so dependent on these resources that would help me study God’s Word, that I had forgotten how to directly engage with The Source itself.

So I stopped doing devotionals.

I don’t want you to think I stopped reading the Bible. This absurd moment actually made me realize how much I longed to reconnect directly with God’s Word. I cut out the middleman in my spiritual life and began reading the Bible for myself.

I love great writing about God’s Word. I’ve been called to give my utmost, heard Jesus calling and discovered a life driven by purpose. All of these have made me a better Christian. But none of them contains all things necessary for salvation. None of them is the Word I long to hear spoken from the heart of my Creator and my God.

There’s a kind of devotional reading that satisfies a need to feel we’ve checked off a box somewhere in heaven. And then there’s reading that truly brings us greater devotion to the God who longs more than we can imagine to connect with us. While I return from time to time to devotional reading of other books for inspiration to love God more, I find I am no longer satisfied just with someone else’s words about the Word. Give me a spoon and let me dig in myself.

I’m a little wary when I become too attached to one author or another for spiritual sustenance. A person’s teaching on Scripture should make you hungry to hear more of God’s Word, not more of that person.

It just makes sense to me that the resources, the cups of water bearing life into a thirsty world, would point us back to the well of living water. I’m done being satisfied with anything less.

[xzins]

She has a point.

[madison10]

Agree with the author.

Don’t care for devotionals either. Have a real problem with the Life Application Bibles/Devotional...any of them. They sort of lay on guilt trips.

I just don’t want a person, book, or organization telling me what to think or feel about God. I’ll go directly to Him and His Word.

[what's up]

I stopped reading devotionals many years ago.

I just read the Bible. I love it.

[Psalm 73]

Cute essay. Everything in moderation, though.
I read "Our Daily Bread" in the morning before I head to work. And that's about it for "devotionals".

Bible time in the evening (with my "Bible, Bible", a large old tome with margins covered in sermon notes and so battered I never take it our of the house anymore).

I keep it simple, and don't let them suck all of the joy out of the Word. It's my time, with the Word of God - once I fell in love with the Bible, I never looked back.

[rjsimmon]

I read "Our Daily Bread" in the morning before I head to work.

I do the same. I truly enjoy the scripture that they outline for the day and sometimes the stories provide excellent inspiration and often times education. I learned about a former Kamikaze pilot that went on to become a Christian missionary.

Devotionals get my day started with the right person in mind and provide a different perspective on things that I often take for granted. This mornings sunrise, for example, was simply stunning. When I thank the Lord for such a moment of beauty, I include that as a devotional.

[huldah1776]

I’ve been doing my own studies since ‘76. Word or subject. The first was because a friend of mine at college was a post-tribulationist and I thought for sure he was going to hell (I was such a good independent Schofield Baptist). After crying my heart out to God and simply asking for the truth, I read the New Testament through and found he was right.

For daily I just read cover to cover while taking notes. The one study I did that changed my life was in answer to the question “What does God say about abortion?”

I used phrases like “shedding of innocent blood” and “passing through the fire.” The change came with finally getting the history of Israel in the Bible straight in my mind. I thought Israel kept forsaking their faith over and over again until I realized the overlap in the prophet’s timeline and the parallel of the books of Samuel, the Kings, and the Chronicles. Lamentations has come to have very deep meaning. I think we are going to experience much worse. I’ve been putting off my vengeance study.

[huldah1776]

I do occasionally read devotionals. Usually when lead to them and consider it dessert to my daily meals. When I do it is always applicable to the situation I find myself. Case in point...at my brother’s wedding picked up the current daily bread and the page I opened to had an essay on being a prisoner. I’ve been trapped for about 5 months now. Waiting on the LORD! [july 16 devotion]

[Carpe Cerevisi]

Try Lectio Divina.

[Tennessean4Bush]

It’s not either/or, it’s both-and. You need to read for yourself and think for yourself, and also compare that to what other people who have studied it have written. JMHO.

[SoFloFreeper]

I understand what she is saying, but I think the purpose of "devotions", or whatever term one uses, is to have a fellow Christian share something, usually via a book or magazine, about the Word of God and give you something to think about.

I have tried numerous ones over the years, Daily Bread, Moody, etc.

But I think the best one over all, one I use now and intend to use permanently, is "Tabletalk". Someone once called it the "Rolls Royce" of daily devotions.

You can get a three month subscription free:

http://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/

And it isn't laden with guilt trips or silliness. Good, strong theology.

[tenger]

Well, having WRITTEN a daily devotional every day for the past six years, I need to chime in a bit. Most of those who read what I write only read it when they can, I'd say, frequently. A few regulars perhaps. I write them mainly for my own interaction with the text. It allows me to think a bit deeper about some of the text I write about.

I used to post them here but it only took one snarky comment (something to the effect of "it's with posts and thinking like this that gives Christianity a horrible name") to withdraw. Now people just find them by searching around.

[Iscool]

There is indeed something peculiar about THAT book...There is power there...

[zeugma]

I like reading a section over time. Doing Psalms right now. Unfortunately, I don’t remember to do it every day. Don’t much care for reading what someone else thinks the Word should be telling me, because the exact same verse can have different meaning to me from one day to the next.

[zeugma]

Here’s an interesting one... How many times are “widows and orphans” (or the many variations that essentially mean the same thing) mentioned in the Old and New Testaments? When you’re reading through from end to end, with that question in the corner of your mind, you’ll be astounded at how many times it comes up. I’ve come to the conclusion that how we treat widows and orphans is pretty important to God.

[metmom]

She has a GREAT point.

Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

That’s reading SCRIPTURE, not about Scripture.

[Mr Rogers]

I may not use devotionals, but I really like using commentaries as a sounding board. I find I can read the same passage I’ve read many times before and think nothing new. I’m too lazy to engage what I’ve engaged before.

But a commentary can make me take a new or closer look at what the Bible says. It is not a substitute, and I often disagree with some aspects of a commentary, but hearing what someone else thinks makes me wonder why they think it and ask if I should think it too - or not, and why.

[GeronL]

bump

[Gamecock]

At the risk of getting lambasted, which has never stopped me before, I think MOST devotionals are insipid and a waste of time.

There are some, that focus on a passage and exegete it, that are wonderful. RC Sproul’s “Tabletalk” comes to mind.

But so many are filled with lukewarm humanistic blather they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

[Elsie]

First of all, I didn’t have my devotional book with me – the one with two sentences of Scripture printed at the top of the page, and then a full two pages of someone else’s thoughts and stories to give me something inspirational to meditate on.