How helpful/practical do you think daily devotionals are....?

[martincisneros]

How helpful/practical do you think daily devotionals are towards consistent spiritual growth? A lot of people seem to get something out of reading each and every single year, daily, from Oswald Chamber's book "My Utmost For His Highest" and there's perhaps 10 billion others, and a few dozen of those that someone somewhere honestly reads each and every single year for decades with those daily readings.  Most of the devotionals are about a page in length or less. The one that Abraham Lincoln supposedly used for years has a single paragraph for each day. 

To be perfectly honest, if I were ever going to mess with writing one, I like the idea of one really pregnant paragraph without much explanation and then maybe a recommendation of a passage of Scripture for that day, sometimes several around the Bible on the common theme of what was that day's devotional. 

Sometimes less is more and if someone sufficiently advanced spiritually were to toss at you 366 paragraphs, they could theoretically give you brain cramps and spiritual groans for the rest of your life with trying to really get it and apply it to your life, where applicable.  And with a single paragraph, you could throw something richly empowering and even provoking at someone without a lot of stuff about your having gotten into such and such a doctrine, necessarily, if it were worded right.  But overall, do you think devotionals are genuinely regularly used by anyone other than denominational folks that do very minimal spiritual growth?  And do you think it's safe to say that 99% of them just gather dust without even being read all of the way through one time? 

Andrew Murray, over a hundred years ago, liked the idea of writing his books into 31 chapters to give someone a 31 day course about whatever he wanted to talk about, whether the Blood of Christ, prayer, et. al. and pocket sized paperback books were just starting to come into real usage in his day and he loved the idea of trying to keep it from being really big chapters 'cause he honestly had a devotional thing in mind about it, but definitely more to process and work out the lifestyle aspect with than you'd get in those half a page a day daily devotionals.  I don't think all of his books follow that format 'cause sometimes he wanted to really dig into a subject, but a lot of 'em are small books deliberately written that way.

I could see how a group of authors could contribute to one that would essentially take you through all of St. Paul's epistles in 12 months, or all of the way thru Romans or 2Corinthians or Isaiah or Song of Solomon or Proverbs in 12 months and for it to be that page a day format, but in such a way and with such depth that you could sincerely devote a decade to that "devotional" and it continually have more and more to offer you.  Just because some of us may have known of sorry examples of 'em doesn't mean it couldn't skillfully be done, and as soon as any of us yield to the temptation of saying they're all nonsense, then that very week God puts into our lap a reprint of one from 1888 or whatever and it's our constant companion besides our Bible for the next 120yrs 'cause we spoke too soon and generalized too quickly about them.

Does anyone happen to know of any honestly good ones?

[MacPherson]

I only have two myself. Day by day with Billy Graham and Oswald Chambers My utmost for His Highest. Day by day is a simple paragraph per day and easy reading. Chambers is deep stuff to me. A lot of times he has me saying "wow" under my breath. I like them because it helps me see things from someone else's perspective, in little daily bites. Pick up on little nuggets I might have missed, or even to come up with one myself that they missed.

[Doc]

I think they're helpful/ practical for getting God's word into your heart on a regular basis, though It's awfully easy to make a "rule" out of it...

[Beloved Servant]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSUa1l0aXBA&feature=related