The word for today – devotional review

This is a daily devotional site, and is currently the only one I use regularly (which is the whole point!). I find that every week there will tend to be a couple of challenging or uplifting comments for me. If you live in the UK you can even have a hard copy posted to you free of charge at the following address : http://www.ucb.co.uk/index.cfm?itemid=124

If you live elsewhere, you can go to the main UCB page to see if they cover your country.

It is not as theologically deep and rewarding as Spurgeon’s daily readings (a link will be added for this soon), but this is the best modern daily devotional I have come across. It tends to be pretty easy to apply to your daily life, and as mentioned is often challenging. For me this is a key part of any devotion, as by its very nature a daily devotional will often be something I pick up and read for 5 minutes and I don’t want to have to always dig into my theology books to clarify things. At the same time though, if it is light on content and not having any impact on me spiritually then there is no real point in reading it and I would rather be reading a newspaper.

Personally, I prefer the hard copy they provide but if you are worried about your carbon footprint you can access it through various ways on the internet including an RSS feed. Of course if you don’t live in the UK you don’t have much choice, although you can download a word document for three months at time (in advance).

It is worth noting there is also a youth version called The Word 4U 2DAY. This is more focused on the kinds of issues younger people (mainly teenagers) may face, and can also be listened to by podcast.

Sometimes the daily messages will just not be relevant to you, although of course in many ways this is the nature of the beast! However, I would say that ‘My Utmost for his Highest’ tends to be more regularly applicable to my life.

Ease of use and navigation

The website is easy to use, and has an extensive back catalogue of previous entries should this be of use.

It is easy to find your way to the various formats (word document, RSS etc.)

Summary

This is a good quality daily devotional, and unlike some of the older great devotionals (e.g. My Utmost for his Highest) you know it will be a new message each day of your life. Perhaps not as theologically strong or deep as Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening, it is nonetheless regularly challenging and easy to understand.

Ratings:

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Strengths

• Can be delivered to your door (UK only)
• Regularly challenging
• Youth version available
• Easy to understand

Weaknesses

• Sometimes the devotions are not applicable to you

Links

Website: http://www.ucb.co.uk/biblehelps

Main UCB website (non-UK): http://www.ucb.com/myhome/