Gospel.com Blog

As a quick look at the Devotionals page here on Gospel.com will show you, there are a lot of good, free online devotionals out there to pick from. Different devotionals will appeal to different people—but today, we’d like to highlight a handful of devotionals that have appealed to enough people over the years that they’re now considered classics.

Take a moment to get to know these classic devotions, all available for free online reading:

• First up is the famous My Utmost for His Highest devotional series, written by Oswald Chambers. Chambers traveled the world teaching the Bible during the early 20th century, and served as a chaplain during World War I. My Utmost is his most famous work, a collection of daily inspirational messages that’s been continually in print since 1935. You can a bit more about Chambers here, and of course you can read My Utmost for yourself at RBC Ministries’ website.
• A.W. Tozer was sometimes called a “20th century prophet”—and reading his devotional series Insight for Leaders, it’s easy to see why. His messages, intended for Christian leaders of every type, whether famous or humble, are just as relevant for today’s church and community leaders as they were when he wrote them decades ago. You can read about Tozer here, and his Insight for Leaders daily messages are online at the Literature Ministries International website.
• Charles Spurgeon is another well-known, highly influential preacher and writer who lived and ministered in 19th century Britain. His Morning and Evening devotionals are unique in that each devotional is split into two parts: one to read in the morning and the other to read at night. Wikipedia has plenty of information about Spurgeon’s life and ministry, and you can check in daily to read Morning and Evening at Answers in Genesis.

These aren’t the only “classic” devotionals out there, of course, but these three have been particularly well-regarded by Christians throughout the years. If you’ve never had the pleasure of exploring these vintage spiritual insights, take a few minutes to see why they remain popular so many years after they were first written!

Have you ever looked around, taken stock of the spiritual apathy and confusion in our culture, and wished for a nationwide religious revival? If so, you’re not the first Christian to do so. If you’re despairing that a society-wide revival could ever take place, you might be surprised to learn that just a few hundred years ago, that’s exactly what happened!

I’m talking about the “Great Awakening” that swept through America in the 18th century, sparking great church growth, renewed missions work, and inter-denominational unity. Sound far-fetched? Here are a few resources to introduce you to the Great Awakening and the evangelists who helped spark it:

• First, read a brief overview of the Great Awakening—who started it and what it meant for an America increasingly affected by spiritual malaise and the humanist philosophies of the Enlightenment.
• Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan preacher who, distressed by what we saw happening (or not happening) in America’s churches, began a preaching tour that kickstarted a great spiritual revival. His 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (link goes to an audio reading of it) is one of the most famous sermons in all of Christian history. (You can listen to many more of his sermons at Sermon Index.)
• George Whitefield, a British evangelist and friend of Ben Franklin, was another major figure in the Great Awakening. Greatly upset by the “lukewarm Christianity” he saw all around him, he did all he could to shake Christians out of their stagnant spiritual state. Read more about Whitefield’s evangelistic work, or check out some of his many sermons. For a shorter sample of his teaching style, see this brief Whitefield excerpt on the importance of “frequent and devout prayer”.
• Revival didn’t end with the Great Awakening— it wasn’t long after that a Second Great Awakening was sparked, with an even greater impact on American society.

The preaching of Edwards, Whitefield, and other evangelists had a profound effect on their society—and if you take the time to read some of their sermons, you’ll be amazed at how relevant they are. Some of them feel like they could just as easily have been written in 2008! So next time you’re tempted to despair at the all the religious confusion we see in society around us, remember the Great Awakening, and be reminded that what seems impossible to man is quite possible for God.

What’s the worst thing Christians have ever done?

If you said “the Crusades,” it’s hard to argue with you. What could be more disturbing than the followers of Jesus Christ—whose most famous sermon specifically praised peacemakers and encouraged his followers to “love your enemies”—taking up the sword to slaughter their foes? The Crusades’ bloody legacy continues to plague Christian-Muslim relations even today, 900 years after the fact!

Church historians have struggled for centuries to figure out exactly what went wrong—how the church of Jesus Christ came to champion violent “holy war.” As uncomfortable as it is to think about such an ugly period of church history, Christians need to grapple with the Crusades if they’re going to understand the story of the Church.

We’ve tracked down several resources from around the Gospel.com community that should help you better understand what the Crusades were, how they happened, and why they’re still so important to us today. If you know the Crusades were a stain on church history but don’t know exactly how and why, explore these links and see what you learn:

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This week’s focus at Gospel.com is church history—the often inspiring, sometimes discouraging chain of people and events that embodied the Christian church throughout the centuries. It seems fitting to kick off our church history week by commemorating the birthday of one of the church’s greatest and most influential minds, Thomas Aquinas!

Aquinas, who yesterday would have turned 783 years old if he were still alive, is considered one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Christian church. While the popular stereotype of medieval theologians imagines them sitting around debating minutia (”How many angels could dance on the head of a pin?”), Aquinas wrestled with many of the same fundamental questions about God and Christianity that skeptics and believers ask today: Can the existence of God be proven by logic? How can God be three persons in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? How can Jesus have been both fully God and fully human?

Here are a few links to explore if you want to get to know this great theologian/philosopher a bit better:

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