Over the past ten years, a number of people have asked if my commentaries and messages on the radio were available in print. I was writing about 4,000 words per week for several of those years, preparing for my Take Note radio program, podcast, and alwaysabounding.audio devotionals. None of those words were written with print in mind. They were written for the ear. Each was created to be spoken for listeners on-air or online. The answer, therefore, had to be “no.”
The paragraph formatting, sentence structure, and even punctuation were all wrong. The language was too simple and too repetitive, because language needs to be simplified for listeners. Complexity tends to clang off the ear and without repetition, certain words float by without being heard, especially in a noisy car or on headphones while washing the dishes.
With all of this being said, the suggestion “put it in print” never left my mind. And one day while wrestling with another concern – choosing a thank you gift for radio station donors – I was reminded of it.
Our station’s 29th anniversary was coming up (in March of 2025) and I wanted to offer a high quality, hand-crafted, and from-the-heart gift to everyone who made a financial contribution. A book seemed like the obvious choice, but I had only one body of work large enough to make a book: my daily devotional scripts.
After several helpful discussions with people who liked the idea, my wife and I began editing. We worked for nearly five months on 366 devotionals (pulled from a collection of 500) that we decided would work well enough for print.
The book would provide disciples of Christ with notes of application on one passage of scripture every day. In it, we would cover 23 books from the Old and New Testaments. It was intended to be used in conjunction with personal study in those passages.
We decided to include a QR code on every page, which links readers to the audio version of each piece. Anyone with a copy can read or hear every devotional. The links help explain the unusual (and succinct) writing style and allow those who click to experience the message in its original format.
With the help of Logan Barth, who works on the Harvest communications team, we self-published enough copies for every $30 (or more) donor to Harvest Family Radio to receive a copy. I also gave copies to some friends and family members and had a box left over.
I hope everyone who received and read it was encouraged to study the Bible more for themselves.