This is a first here on this website. I too read devotionals regularly. Lately my main go to is T. Austin-Sparks (1888-1971) writings. Here is one of his writings that I can’t improve on, and there is no need to modernize it. And you might discover after reading a lot of my stuff that he has had quite an effect on me. So here it is.
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You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life. John 5:39-40
The value of everything is its livingness. The value of the Scriptures is not that we know our Bibles and can handle our Bibles and can give addresses, wonderful addresses, from our Bibles, and that we can quote Scripture fully and accurately and all that sort of thing. It is not that we bear the name of associates of Christ, Christians, not that we have this great inheritance and tradition. It is the livingness of it all which is proving itself in all ways, that the risen Life of Christ should prove itself… That is a strong thing to say, it is a searching thing to say. You have the Christian tradition and a great deal of Christian teaching, perhaps you know your Bibles very well, or think you do, perhaps you have many advantages in your associations, but the question arises. Not do you know it all, have you got it all, all the teaching, the truth, the Bible knowledge, the association, and that you are at all the meetings and you have heard it for years and years past and your association with it has been very close. That is not it. You can have all of that and yet you yourself not be marked by this vital something that you become a vital factor in the whole thing. You are still a passenger, perhaps a parasite; not really in the good of it yourself. Let us be frank about it. We must face this as a personal matter.
The answer is in the resurrection…. Resurrection is not to be only something that happened with Jesus, but it is something that has happened in us and taken place inside of us. There is a counterpart of that by His risen Life imparted, that we have been raised together with Him. And that is not just doctrine either. That is real, that is vital truth and something to happen in us as well as in Jerusalem so many years ago. It is not just history and tradition, it is experience…. We have not only to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but we have got to be alive ourselves with Him in that resurrection and on that ground.
From: The Testimony of the Christ – Chapter 9
And all of T. Austin-Sparks writings have this disclaimer.
In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely – free of any changes, free of any charge and with this statement included.