40 Days in Psalms is part of a series of devotionals written for any Christian desiring to deepen his or her understanding of Scripture.
The Holy Spirit uses God’s Word to grow believers in their faith and increase their passion for Jesus. As each volume focuses on a particular book in the Bible, believers will find the study useful for the enrichment of daily devotional reading or as the basis for small group Bible study discussion.
In this volume, readers will be led through a daily study of the Gospel of Mark. 40 Days in Psalms breaks down the book of Psalms into chunks that present the “Big Picture” of the passage, then “Digging Deeper” into that section, and then moving to help the reader into “Living Out” the lessons that are taught in each section.
A decent devotional commentary to get a reader into the Psalms. Each chapter provided a brief introduction and overview, followed by a walk-through of the psalm, and concluding with a brief application section. I appreciated the attention given to the literary structure of each psalm, as well as the places where Betts pointed out the possible historical backdrop for each psalm.
The treatment of each psalm was, in my opinion, too lengthy to be a devotional, but too brief to be a commentary. Some psalms were treated together. Sometimes this made sense (e.g. Psalm 9-10, 42-43), but other times it felt forced. The book would have been more useful had it actually covered the entire psalter and not arbitrarily ended in psalm 50.
Good little devotional book. Needs a second and third addition. I appreciate that they only wanted to keep it to 40 days, but they should have just written this format for the entire book of Psalms and called it "devotions in the Psalms" or something like that. Short informative backgrounds to the Psalms with explanations on things we might not catch, along with how the Psalm applies to us today.