Pilgrims Progress Devo

A great personal study of an all time favourite! This devotional really helps the reader to understand the symbolism of this classic story - and how it relates to Salvation and the Christian Life. Each daily devotional has a portion of the Pilgrims Progress with a comment about this section. There are also a few Bible passages to reinforce the "lesson" for the day followed by a prayer which carefully summarizes the personal application of the passage. A great way to read the "story" and then apply it to our daily lives! The language used in the comments is "adult" in style ... but still easy to read. My teenagers are enjoying this insightful devotional. Highly recommended

The Pilgrim's Progress is a wonderful Christian classic that the author John Bunyan wrote while in jail for his Christian faith. It is a wonderfully rich book which charts the ups and downs of the Christian faith, as the character Christian finds his way to the Gate where he will find relief for the burden on his back. Amid the fiery trials that comes his way, he meets people like Evangelist and Help who offer him sound advice, while others like Worldly Wise attempt to lead him off the narrow and straight path. This commentary by Cheryl Ford does justice to this great classic. The author of this book dispenses scriptural lessons from the original classic. Each day's devotion is full of rich insights that is backed up by scripture verses. It offers sound theology that does not shy away from commenting on where Christians sometimes trip up on our walk. For example, there is a point where Christian falls into the Slough of Despond, because his awareness of his sin becomes overwhelming. But the message is that God's grace is greater than our feeling of condemnation. Each day's devotion also comes with a prayer that asks God to help us guard against these weaknesses. Definitely recommended.

Though it's a bother converting the julian date, and the quotes from Pilgrim's Progress seem a little small in comparison to the commentary, this book makes for great devotional reading with my 10 year old boy. He enjoys looking up the two or three scripture references at the bottom and the prayer after that is always appropriate to the story above. Each day brings a new lesson in the Christian graces.

It remains to be seen how many literary works of our day will survive even the minimum duration of popularity to reach classical status. Judging the current day classics against our modern day offerings, I suspect our number of contributions will be woefully lacking. Measured against the best selling book of all time (Bible), the structural basis of this book, Pilgrim's Progress, rates second. Why? Because as with the Bible, it deals with and addresses man's inherent needs to know who am I, where did I come from, what is my purpose in life and how do I achieve it? Cheryl Ford did an outstanding job segmenting this complex work, dealing with the convoluted issues of life, to daily doses of spiritual meditations. Who should read this book? Only those who have the intellectual honesty to face the issue of who we truly are.....God's fallen creation and then, the courage to begin their own personal pilgrimage back to God.