Be it Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest or Spurgeon's devotional work, it doesn't matter how insightful the writings are, I find my spiritual life withers if I rely solely on them instead of the Bible.
Here's my pattern: I read the supplementary classic devotional work and find tremendous help at the beginning. Even though the daily reading always centers on a Bible verse and one could open the Bible, read the passage that gives the context of the verse, meditate it before reading the "daily reading," I often just read the daily dose. Using with these devotioanl guides, I inadvertently end up not opening the Bible at all nor do much thinking. Afterall, what these great writers have on paper seems so insightful that one gets the false sense of sufficiency.
There's nothing wrong about what they wrote. Great stuff. I guess my pitfall lies in the convenience and mistaking someone else's meditation to be my own. The convenience also tempts me to skip meditating the Scripture on my own. That ultimately weakens me. I am switching back to reading the Bible, starting with the Book of Micah. I still use references to help me understand better. I use various Bible translations plus my long-time companion, IVP's Search the Scriptures. But I read the Bible first.
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