RENEW MY HEART, O GOD

A daily devotional offers quotes drawn from Christian Scripture.

Horacek’s debut book has a simple goal: “to cultivate within the reader, a desire to consistently pray and read God’s Word and be transformed by it to become the whole person God intended you to be.” Using a typical devotional strategy, the author takes his readers day by day through a year, highlighting a different religious theme each month, illustrating that idea with quotes from Scripture, and then elaborating on those citations with spiritual and life lesson writings of his own. The author mostly eschews the seasonally themed narrative anchors of such an approach in favor of straightforward evangelical preaching of a bracingly old-fashioned kind. No matter what the date, Horacek is concerned with a more eternal narrative of Christian eschatology composed of equal parts optimism and encouragement (“The furnace of life brings about silver and gold of immense value”) and stern fundamentalist warnings: “Serve God acceptably, with reverence, awe, and godly fear. Although He is gracious and merciful, He will also ultimately destroy all His enemies with a consuming and devouring fire in the times of the end.” The version of Christianity presented here is a stark combination of daily affirmations and detailed descriptions of Christian end times, with the author repeatedly stressing the hopeful, participatory side of faith, telling his readers that Jesus “persevered and endured the scourge of the Cross” for them, and that “the Divine Whisper” confirms that they belong to God. “He knows the path of your life,” Horacek writes. “Let Him guide you in the way, moment by moment.” The author’s prose is vivid and fast-paced, and his amplifications on the Scriptural passages he chooses are always decisive and thought-provoking. His Christian target audience should find much to both challenge and comfort them in these pages.

A dramatic Christian devotional full of fire and brimstone—and hope and encouragement.