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It was a daunting task that we put before 15 of Christian Reader's contributing authors: to identify the best devotional books of all time. But the panel of judges made their selections, we compiled the votes, and we offer you a description of, and an excerpt from, the top ten. Consider this highly recommended reading. Proven nourishment for the soul.

The top devotional book selected by the CHRISTIAN READER panel was originally written as a series of talks to young adults. Oswald Chambers, who died in 1917 at the age of 43, delivered these as lectures at the Bible Training College in Clapham, England, from 1911 to 1915, and as devotional talks while serving in Egypt with Australian and New Zealander forces guarding the Suez Canal during World War I.

First published in book form in 1928, Chambers's meditations became the best-selling devotional book of the twentieth century. Recently a new edition was released (Discovery House), which clarifies and updates the language of the original.

… my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed" (Phil. 1:20). We will all feel very much ashamed if we do not yield to Jesus the areas of our lives He has asked us to yield to Him. It's as if Paul were saying, "My determined purpose is to be my utmost for His highest—my best for His glory."

To reach that level of determination is a matter of the will, not of debate or of reasoning. It is absolute and irrevocable surrender of the will at that point.

An undue amount of thought and consideration for ourselves is what keeps us from making that decision, although we cover it up with the pretense that it is others we are considering. When we think seriously about what it will cost others if we obey the call of Jesus, we tell God He doesn't know what our obedience will mean. Keep to the point—He does know. Shut out every other thought and keep yourself before God in this one thing only—my utmost for His highest.

Our judges offered personal testimony of the power this classic allegory of Christian's journey to the Celestial City, written from prison by John Bunyan, a tinker (repairman) arrested for preaching without a license in seventeenth-century England.

"From childhood on, this book has given me mental pictures that have helped me apply the fundamentals of my faith," wrote CHRISTIAN READER columnist Ruth Senter.

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