This is an edited version of Spurgeon’s devotions from the 1800’s. A classic loved by scholars and laymen, it’s one of those devotions that can be used over and over again. And how you use it depends on how much personal devotion time you have carved out of the day for yourself.
To get the full Spurgeon effect, your dose for the day would be reading a page-long devotion in the morning, another one in the evening, memorizing one Bible text, and reading a significant portion of the Bible (towards the goal of reading the entire Bible in a year). All this is clearly laid out on two facing pages and makes it easy to navigate and pace yourself from January 1 to December 31. That’s a lot of reading and devotion time for the average person.
If you are already in the habit of spending half hour alone with God at the beginning and end of each day, this is just the book for you. but if you just want a quick pick-me-up with your morning cup of coffee or a pinch of devotion at the long traffic light on your way to work, this is not for you. By that I mean, it’s not for you to use every morning and evening with regularity; but you can always use a reading whenever you want to be recharged with God’s Word. Just because these devotions are long and heavy is no reason to disregard them altogether.
If you’re the kind that writes notes during your personal devotion, there’s ample white space around every reading. But, the pages are so Bible-thin that you can only use a pencil or one of those special pens that don’t bleed through. My first reaction to the paper was that the booked screamed “cheap,” but then I realized that two full-page devotions for a full year equals 730 pages which would result in a thick, hard-covered book that’s not very portable. So I can see why New Leaf went with thin pages and a paperback cover. It’s a practical choice.
All in all, a great devotional. But I won’t be starting it until next year–I got it well into the new year and I’m not about to try to catch up a with 12 days of Spurgeon!
(I received this book free from New Leaf Publishing Group. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.)
Says Fyl 