TL;DR
7/10. A year of daily readings, each a scripture, a short devotional, and space to write. Built around Isaiah 40:31 and the promise about renewed strength. Unremarkable as writing and well made as an object, and the format is the reason it works.
Three hundred and sixty-five entries, one for each day, each pairing a passage with a page of reflection and a prompt.
The physical edition is imitation leather with a zip-around cover, a ribbon marker, and uncoated paper meant for writing on. That sounds like packaging and it turns out to matter, because a book you can close around a pen and carry survives contact with a life in a way a paperback does not.
There is no named author. BroadStreet produces these as a publisher line, with parallel editions for teen guys, teen girls, and other audiences, which is worth knowing before you go looking for a voice.
Why does the daily format work?
Because it asks for a few minutes and then closes.
That is a low enough bar to clear on a bad day, and clearing it on a bad day is the entire mechanism by which a practice holds. A book that requires forty minutes and a clear head will be abandoned the first week something goes wrong, and then the abandonment itself becomes a reason not to go back.
The dated structure also removes a decision. There is no question of where to start or how much to do, because the date decides. For anybody who loses practices to the overhead of choosing, that is not a small thing.
And it requires no memory of yesterday. You cannot fall behind, because there is nothing to fall behind on. Miss a week and you open it at today, which is the opposite of how a reading plan or a study course punishes you.
How does this relate to a brain that resists routine?
I have written about the difficulty of religious practice with a brain that will not sit still, in The ADHD Christian, and the devotional format solves a specific version of that problem.
The failures are predictable. A long reading loses attention halfway and produces guilt. A structured plan accumulates a debt of missed days that eventually makes returning feel worse than staying away. A practice requiring a specific time collapses the first week the schedule moves.
A dated daily devotional is immune to all three. It is short enough to finish, impossible to fall behind on, and the entry point is always the same. That is not a spiritual argument, it is a design argument, and design is usually what determines whether a practice survives.
The journaling space does more work than the readings. Writing something down converts a passive few minutes into an active one, and the blank page is the part that produced anything for me. The devotional gives you a prompt and then gets out of the way.
Is the writing in Strength for Today for Men any good?
Competent and general, which is what a book serving a whole year and a whole audience has to be.
Nothing here will surprise a reader with any theological background, and it is not attempting to. The entries stay close to a passage, draw a plain application, and stop. There is no argument being developed across the year and no position being staked out.
That is the trade a devotional makes. Depth would require specificity, specificity would exclude readers, and the format needs to work for a man reading it at six in the morning before work with a cup of coffee and eleven minutes.
Judged as a daily prompt it succeeds. Judged as writing it is unremarkable, and the two are different jobs. A reader who wants theology should buy theology and use this for the other purpose.
Who is Strength for Today for Men for?
Somebody who has decided they want a practice and has failed to sustain longer ones.
If you already have a working discipline, this adds nothing. If you read serious theology, this will frustrate you. If the problem is that you keep starting things and stopping, the format is worth more than the prose, and the prose is adequate enough not to get in the way.
It also makes a reasonable gift, which is clearly part of the design given the binding, and gift books usually go unread. This one has a better chance than most, because opening it costs almost nothing.
Verdict
A good example of a format doing the heavy lifting. The writing is ordinary, the physical object is well made, and the daily structure is what makes a practice possible for somebody who cannot sustain a longer one.
If routine is the difficulty and not interest, the format is worth more than the prose. Buy it for the design and use the journaling space, which is the part that produces anything.
Explore further
The ADHD Christian: faith and practice with a brain that resists routine.
