Alone with God: A Practical Plan for Dynamic Devotions

By Jason Janz

Book Overview

In Alone with God: A Practical Plan for Dynamic Devotions, Janz shares his journey toward understanding that daily private worship has as its basis the building of an intimate relationship with the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591666252
• ISBN13: 9781591666257
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Journeyforth
• Length: 155 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A definite help - good resource

Jason Janz does and excellent job with the topic of creating and maintaining a fruitful devotional life. I will be using this as the textbook in a seminary course on the subject of the believer's devotional life. Thank you for this good resource.

If You Only Read One Book This Year...

If you only read one book this year, read Alone with God. Why do I say that? Well, for starters, if you currently have a consistent daily time with God which is incredibly rich and truly transforming your life, then you can stop reading right here; you don't need this book. What, still reading? I thought so. Me too. There are usually 2 classes of books: books of deep insight and impeccable doctrine which I enjoy reading, but 2 months later if I was asked how the book actually changed my life I would be stumped. The other class of book is one which is a great read and contains a lot of practical tips which I can incorporate into my life, but which merely contains human wisdom (even if it is wrapped in a Bible verse), and never really approaches the level of life transformation that true teaching of the Word should. Alone with God belongs to that rare 3rd class of book which starts with the word of God accurately taught and then applies it in concrete, practical terms that can truly transform the life. Chapter by chapter, Jason lays it out: Chapter One: It's All About a Relationship, introducing how important investing ourselves in time with God is. Chapter Two: The Foundation-- salvation, the Holy Spirit, prayer, the Bible, and the goal of a growing relationship with God. Chapter Three: The Need, opens up our need for inner renewal, to seek God, to depend on God, to find satisfaction in God, to realize the work of the Spirit, for immersion in the Word of God, for focused prayer, for spiritual discipline, for quality time, and for planning. In Chapter Four he next confronts the myths, such as "I'm the only one who struggles with daily devotions" and "I don't have time." After laying the groundwork, he then launches into a planned eight step approach for spending either 20 or 30 minutes with God each day, broken down into confession, revelation, adoration, transformation, communication, meditation, and application. There are also chapters on meditation, friendship, and several helpful appendixes. So, what's the bottom line? First, this is well written stuff, bringing together a lot of diverse teaching and wisdom about time with God organized in one book, and is great to help prime the pump of our eagerness to spend time with God. Any guy that quotes Bonar, Sanders, Boice, Grudem, Piper, Pierson, Mueller, Edwards, Packer, Horton, Lewis, Murray, Tozer, & MacArthur all in one book gets an A+ from me. Second, although it is easy (at least for non-regimented types like me) to reject seemingly artificial constructs for spending time with God, there's wisdom here. Although it seems constricting to say I'm going to spend 5 minutes praying then 10 minutes reading then 5 minutes meditating, what it really boils down to is a personal liturgy, a personal order of worship. If any of us attended a church worship service with no structure whatsoever, not knowing for sure how long or if there was going to be singing or preaching or praying, we would imme

This one's a keeper!

This book was so well reviewed by the previous reviewer I will only add this one thought. This book is incredibly valuable even if you already have a regular time with God using another method. I personally use an idea outlined by Jim Berg in Changed Into His Image; but this book is a treasure even if you "skip" the chapter using his particular methodology. You want to own this book - it's rich enough to re-read often. The appendices alone are worth the price of the book.