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We’ll close off this week’s focus on devotionals with a quick look at some good audio devotionals—daily devotionals that you can listen to via a podcast or online radio stream. Some of us find it easier to listen to Bible verses and devotionals read out loud, rather than reading them. If that describes you, see if one of these devotionals appeals:

• Just Thinking is a daily fifteen-minute message broadcast by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. If your local radio station plays it, you can tune in there, or you can subscribe to the MP3 podcast feed. The RZIM ministry takes a fairly intellectual approach to faith and Christianity; in their own words, Just Thinking explores “issues such as life’s meaning, the credibility of the Christian message and the Bible, the weakness of modern intellectual movements, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.”
• If fifteen minutes is a bit too much to fit into your daily schedule, you can go the short, inspirational route with the Bible Minute with Woodrow Kroll. It’s one of many programs by Back to the Bible, and aims to start off your day with a short but meaningful Bible reflection. Here’s a list of the different ways you can tune in.
• We’ve mentioned RBC Ministries’ popular Our Daily Bread devotional already this week. But it’s not the only audio devotional they’ve got—Daily Strength is another excellent choice. Each day you’ll hear a short reflection about issues that confront us in our daily lives. One nice touch is that each message closes with several life-application questions to get you thinking about how the words you’ve heard apply to your situation. As with the other devotionals here, you can get the audio in a variety of ways, but it’s probably easiest to just subscribe to the podcast feed.
• The Words of Hope daily devotional is another good short devotional—each short reflection is based around a particular Bible passage and closes with a prayer you can use to get your day started on the right foot. You can listen at their website or grab the podcast feed.
• Last but not least, if you prefer to spend your devotional time just reading the Bible (without any additional commentary or devotional), the Bible Gateway has several audio Bibles you can listen to. If you stop by the Bible Gateway each day to read a Bible passage (perhaps using one of the reading plans), check at the top of the passage you’re reading for the “audio” button. If there’s audio available for the Bible version you’re reading, you can listen to it right there on the Bible Gateway.

There are plenty more devotionals (in text, audio, and pretty much every format you can imagine) to discover if you explore around the Gospel.com community. Hopefully, at least one of the devotionals we’ve mentioned this week caught your eye. Have fun exploring all these devotionals, and we’ll see you next week as we look ahead to Easter!

Albeit lighter on Christian theology than some devotionals, Daily Wisdom strives to offer insightful advice for all people, whether they follow Christ or not. They publish a devotional the majority of days that you can have sent to your inbox or RSS reader.

The following excerpt from their author’s page does a perfect job of explaining their mission and direction:

DW is not a conventional “devotional” but a daily message with an evangelistic or apologetic emphasis. Since DW is meant to appeal to a not-necessarily-Christian audience, we avoid phrases like “we, as Christians…” and words like “sanctification” that only believers understand. We steer away from “Christianese” - cliches only Christians use - and references to Bible verses, etc. understood exclusively by Christians. That’s not to say we don’t quote Scripture, only that when we do, we quote the verse itself, avoiding phrases like, “In Matthew where Jesus talks about the narrow gate…” We prefer “Revelation chapter 3, verse 6 says…” to “In Revelation 3:6, God says…” Submissions must not assume the reader is familiar with Bible stories or books of the Bible.

Read the latest from Daily wisdom here. Or, if you’re interested, you can read their archives.

The site also publishes a quotation every day called 1liner. While not always written by theologians, they often have theological implications.

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!

Devotionals seemingly just appear. One finds them in waiting rooms, in churches, being handed out in the streets, sent to one’s email, one’s mailbox. Where two or more Christians are gathered, a devotional booklet or book is sure to be found.

There are devotionals for women, for men, for children, for marrieds, singles, for animal lovers, for food lovers, for every color and stripe of person and people group. And whether the devotional in question is written by a pastor or a layperson they all try to do one thing: show you God.

Devotionals are the thoughts of humans reflecting about God. This can be in the form of a meditation on a passage of scripture, a story, or a teaching. So, this week on gospel.com we thought we would search the gospel.com community for online devotionals that you can use to help explore your relationship with God. Whether it be in the form of a classic devotional like My Utmost for His Highest, or maybe something more like Power Up!, which is geared towards sports fans; devotionals can be life changing.

You can expect a few in-depth reviews of devotionals in the coming days from us, but if you’re feeling lucky, jump on over to the devotional topic page and browse around. You might be surprised by what you find.

Our Daily Bread

Daily Wisdom

Daily Encounter

Back to the Bible devotionals

A Word With You

Who doesn’t have a blog these days? I was pleasantly surprised to discover recently that Woodrow Kroll, the man behind Back to the Bible’s daily radio broadcast, now has a daily blog which features short devotional insights that expand on the day’s radio broadcast. Each post is open for comments, so you can stop by and share your thoughts. Go have a look, or grab the RSS feed!

Say “Christmas Eve” to me and I think meatballs. Mounds of delicious Swedish meatballs.

I also think of this hazy peaceful feeling that seems to crop up only on Christmas Eve, possibly due to the aforementioned meatballs. And then there’s singing Christmas carols in church whilst holding candles (all while failing to avoid the hot wax that has never been stopped by those silly little paper circle dresses).

Oh, and goodwill. I feel lots of goodwill on Christmas Eve.
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In our last post, we pointed out some classic sermons about discipleship. Soulation is another ministry with some excellent sermons and essays about drawing closer to Christ in your everyday life. Their sermon library has a large number of sermons in audio and PDF format on a variety of topics. Keeping with this week’s theme on discipleship, be sure to check out Loving God With All of You (PDF; part 1 of a seven-part series), which talks about the process of deepening your relationship with God. Loving God With Your Soul (MP3) is a good companion to that series.

Strangling Your Soul is a short, insightful look at the everyday care and feeding of your mind and spirit. There are many more good resources in their library—take a look around and spend some time reading and listening to their sermons!

As those of us living in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving today (our friends in Canada celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October), we here at Gospel.com would like to encourage all of us—no matter where we live—to take time this week to reflect on the many things for which we should be thankful.

It might be easy to call these days “uncertain times,” especially when we focus on the temporal events and concerns that bombard us each day. But God is at work in our world, and if we take the time to “be still” and look for Him, we can see that handiwork.

Our prayer this Thanksgiving is that each of us might know the reality of a living Savior, that we might have the eyes to see where He is at work in our world, and that we might have the courage to get involved where we see Him working.

May you and yours have a blessed Thanksgiving.

When is it appropriate to ask God for help, and if we do, what kind of response should we expect? What is our role in solving our own problems, and what kind of role should we expect God to play?

A three-part devotional series on Delve Into Jesus explores these topics by looking at the New Testament letters as well as how Jesus responded to those in need during His ministry. The first devotional explores the necessity of asking God to help us. Part 2 looks at the role God expects us to play in solving our own problems. Finally, part 3 examines the role anxiety plays in letting us know that something is not quite right in the way we’re dealing with our problems.

Back to the Bible has a brand new website!

All of Back to the Bible’s classic content—including the Bible Minute daily devotional and the Back to the Bible radio broadcast—are still there, but are now easier to find and use. You can take a tour of the new site (PDF) to get a quick look at their many different devotionals, radio programs, Bible studies, and more.

If you’re not familiar with the broadcast ministry of Back to the Bible, now’s a great time to get to know them! Start with their website tour, or for a bit of holiday spirit, check out their special Thanksgiving message.