Review: One Year Alone With God

Christmas is coming and many people will choose new devotional books either as gifts or for their personal reading during 2012. I thought I’d repost the review I did last year for Ava Pennington’s devotional One Year Alone With God, 366 Devotions on the Names of God.

My blog posts normally revolve around fiction, specifically, Christian fiction. However, when I had the opportunity to review Ava Pennington’s new devotional, One Year Alone With God, 366 Devotions on the Names of God, I jumped at the chance. After all, the more we know about God, the easier it is to see Him involved in all aspects of our lives and the more we want to praise and follow Him.

The first surprise about the book was its cover—a hardback with soft colors and a soothing design that invited me to relax while soaking up the words inside, reading the scripture, breathing the prayer, contemplating the thought-provoking question(s) at the end of each devotion.

The second surprise was in how she has approached each of the 122 names and attributes from three different avenues. The first devotion points upward, allowing us to see things from God’s perspective. The second points inward, urging us to grow our relationship with God. The third points outward, showing us how a deeper knowledge of God and ourselves can be applied in our assocations with other people.

This is a book meant to be savored over a full year and, for the sake of honesty, I haven’t read every devotion yet. (I do want to save some for my own daily reading.) But the many I randomly chose to read and absorb have been well worth the time. For instance, the last sentence of the second devotion on God’s Glory reads, “When our motive for good works is to garner the praise of others, we trade the glory of God for the glory of men.” Yipes! A simple statement that packs a wallop!

If you are looking for a deeper understanding of who God is and who you are in Him, this book provides scriptures that will point you in that direction.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This book came to me free from the publisher, Revell, with the hope that I would mention it on this blog. There was no requirement for me to write a positive review and the opinions I have expressed above are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.