A comment on using devotional guide for your quite time:

One caution in using this kind of guide, however, is the temptation to just read the story and skip the Bible reading for the day. Once this become a habbit, the believer can find his life built on inspirational thoughts instead of the Word of God– a spiritual life that is built on very shaky ground.
from Keeping Our Appointments with God (Discovery Series).

It is interesting that the quote is actually taken from devotional guide producer itself Our Daily Bread. I am still subscribing to Our Daily Bread (ODB), but rarely use it for quiet time anymore. I used to use it when I was in Indo. Back then, I found reading bible was difficult and boring, that’s why I need ODB to keep me motivated to read the bible. As suggested by the quote, I skipped the bible reading for most of the times 🙂

But now reading the bible is fun and exciting!! So nowadays I read ODB just for the fun of it not out of necessity anymore. ODB does come with useful materials once in a while, the last one that I got is “Keeping Our Appointments with God”. It contains some useful tips, thoughts and qutable quotes like:
– Devotions are a matter of our heart more than a discipline of our daytimer.
– Spending time with God is based on our relation with him.
– “It’s better to practice 15 mins a day every day, then to practice several hours on a few day”, here the author argues is better to spend short time every day than longer time but fewer days.
– Write down what you’ve learnt, prayer points etc.
And the list goes on..