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. Ordinary 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 doesn’t.
A zip-around cover isn’t something I expected to have opinions about, and here I am. Devotional publishing is full of books that look lovely on a shelf and never get opened, and I respect this one because the publisher built it to be carried and written in. There’s no named author. BroadStreet produces these as a publisher line, with parallel editions for teen guys, teen girls, and other audiences. That’s worth knowing before you go looking for a voice. The missing author is a small mark against it. I prefer knowing who’s behind the words in a book like this, and a publisher line can’t tell you. It’s the main reason this doesn’t score higher.
Why does the daily format of Strength for Today for Men work?
Because it asks for a few minutes and then closes. That’s 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’s 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’s not a small thing.
I’m a big believer in stripping decisions out of a habit. Every choice you have to make before starting is a door out, and the dated page closes all of them. And it requires no memory of yesterday. You can’t fall behind, because there’s nothing to fall behind on. Miss a week and you open it at today. That’s the opposite of how a reading plan or a study course punishes you.
Watch: Daily Wisdom for Men - Book Trailer #2, BroadStreet Publishing
Do daily devotional books work if you have ADHD?
I’ve written about the difficulty of religious practice with a brain that won’t sit still, in The ADHD Christian, and the devotional format solves one 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’s short enough to finish, impossible to fall behind on, and the entry point is always the same. That’s a design argument, and it explains why people keep this practice going after longer ones collapse.
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. That’s 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’s not attempting to. The entries stay close to a passage, draw a plain application, and stop. The book develops no argument across the year and stakes out no position.
That’s 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.
I respect that trade more than some reviewers do. A critic who faults a devotional for lacking depth might as well fault a pocket notebook for lacking chapters, and it misses what the thing is for.
Judged as a daily prompt it succeeds, and judged as writing it’s ordinary. A reader who wants theology should buy theology and use this for the daily prompt.
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. The reader who keeps starting and stopping is the one I’d buy this for without a second thought. Guilt over a missed plan kills more good habits than laziness does, and a book you can’t fall behind on takes the guilt off the table. 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 book whose strength is its format. The writing is ordinary, the physical object is well made, and the daily structure makes a practice possible for somebody who can’t 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, because the writing you do there produces more than the readings. A seven from me, docked for prose that never takes a risk and for the missing voice behind it. As a tool it’s excellent, and I’d give it to a man who keeps meaning to start before I’d give him anything heavier.
Explore further
The ADHD Christian: faith and practice with a brain that resists routine.
