How to write a devotional: the format, two full examples and a template

A devotional book is a collection of short readings meant to be read one at a time, most often each morning, beside the Bible. Each reading takes one verse, shows what it means on an ordinary day and ends in prayer. A Bible study works through a whole text; a devotional takes one verse and one idea. Five formats are common:

• Daily: one entry per date. Streams in the Desert (1925) has 366; Spurgeon's Morning and Evening has two a day, 732 in all.
• 30-day: one month on one theme, such as grief.
• 40-day: built for Lent, the 40 days before Easter not counting Sundays.
• Topical: entries grouped by subject, not by date.
• Journal: a verse, a prompt and blank space for the reader's answer.

To choose a publisher, start with the Christian publishers guide.

A devotional entry has five parts, always in the same order, and a reader should finish it in under two minutes. A working split for a 300-word entry: a verse of up to 40 words, a reflection of about 150, an application of 50 to 80, a prayer of 30 to 50 and one question.

1. Scripture: one verse or short passage, with reference and translation.
2. Reflection: one scene from ordinary life that opens the verse. One point only.
3. Application: one thing the reader can do today.
4. Prayer: three or four sentences, in the reader's voice.
5. Question: one question to carry through the day.

Both devotional examples were written for this page. Scripture is from the King James Version, public domain in the United States.

Example 1: a daily entry

New every morning

"It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22–23, KJV)

My neighbor sweeps her front step at six every morning, even in November, when the oak drops a fresh layer by noon. I asked her once why she bothers. "Yesterday's leaves were yesterday's job," she said.

These verses sit in the middle of a poem about a fallen city. The writer has lost almost everything, and he still finds one thing that arrives fresh each day. He does not say the ruins are gone. He says mercy shows up again before the work starts.

Most of us start the day carrying yesterday: the sharp word at dinner, the promise we broke. The verse says this morning's mercy is new, not leftover.

Today, write one thing you have already confessed on a scrap of paper, then throw it away.

Lord, you met me this morning before I thought to ask. Help me sweep today's step and leave yesterday's leaves with you. Amen.

What are you still carrying that God has already dealt with?

Example 2: a topical entry on worry

One day's worth

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6:34, KJV)

Every Sunday night my daughter lays out five outfits on her bedroom floor, socks included. By Wednesday it has rained, a sweater is missing and the plan is a pile. She is nine. She is also me.

Jesus says this at the end of a passage about worry: birds that store no food, lilies that spin no cloth. He does not promise that tomorrow will be easy. He says tomorrow has its own trouble, and today has enough.

Worry feels like preparation. Mostly it rehearses a day that never comes as pictured.

Tonight, write tomorrow's worries on a card and put it in a drawer. In the morning, read it once, then deal only with today's list.

Father, I keep trying to live five days at once. Give me today's strength, and teach me to leave tomorrow where you put it. Amen.

Which worry on your list belongs to a day that has not come yet?

A devotional topic works when it names a situation: "the first Christmas after a death" gives you more to write than "hope". Here are 30, in five groups of six (life events, struggles, practices, relationships, the church year), each with a passage to start from.

1. Grief (John 11:35)
2. A new baby (Psalm 139:13)
3. Moving to a new place (Genesis 12:1)
4. Children leaving home (3 John 1:4)
5. Retirement (Psalm 92:14)
6. Long illness (2 Corinthians 12:9)
7. Anxiety (Philippians 4:6)
8. Anger (Ephesians 4:26)
9. Doubt (Mark 9:24)
10. Loneliness (Psalm 68:6)
11. Envy (Psalm 73:3)
12. Waiting for an answer (Isaiah 40:31)
13. Learning to pray (Luke 11:1)
14. Sabbath rest (Mark 2:27)
15. Fasting (Matthew 6:16–18)
16. Giving (2 Corinthians 9:7)
17. Hospitality (Hebrews 13:2)
18. Confession (1 John 1:9)
19. Marriage (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)
20. Forgiving someone (Matthew 18:21–22)
21. Friendship (Proverbs 17:17)
22. Raising children (Deuteronomy 6:6–7)
23. Caring for aging parents (1 Timothy 5:4)
24. Loving an enemy (Matthew 5:44)
25. Advent (Isaiah 9:6)
26. Lent (Joel 2:12–13)
27. Easter (Luke 24:5–6)
28. Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4)
29. A new year (Isaiah 43:19)
30. Thanksgiving (Psalm 100:4)

A daily devotional entry should run about 350 words, a minute and a half of reading. That is the median of two classic daily devotionals measured for this page, and it sits inside the 350–400 word limit The Upper Room sets for the meditations it buys. A 365-day book at that length comes to about 129,000 words.

Method: each text was split at its date headings and every entry's words counted, verse included. The Streams figures cover 346 entries; 12 whose headings the scanner misread were left out. At 238 words a minute, the adult rate for non-fiction in Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies, 354 words take about 90 seconds.

Book length depends on the format. A 30-day devotional at 354 words an entry is about 10,600 words, and a 40-day one about 14,200. A full year runs longer than most spiritual books. The Anatomy of a Bestseller (47 books; 46 measured, the Bhagavad-gita being unscoreable) puts the median of its 17 spirituality titles at 80,712 words, with the middle half between 60,110 and 102,142. Each entry, though, is a fraction of a trade-book chapter: see how many words in a chapter.

Keep the reading level in the genre's band. The study's spirituality titles score 57 to 70 on Flesch Reading Ease, mostly through plain words: 1.48 syllables per word, against 1.53 for the median bestseller.

A five-minute devotional is a 300- to 400-word entry plus time to read the verse, pray and sit with the question. The Upper Room's guidelines give a three-step method: retell the passage briefly, describe one specific incident in concrete detail, then say how the reader can apply it. Its rule fits in four words: "Think snapshot, not movie."

Here is how to write a devotional journal: keep the verse and the question, and cut the reflection to a paragraph, leaving most of the page for the reader. On Amazon KDP, journals and prompt journals can count as "low-content books", which "do not require an ISBN", cannot use the free KDP ISBN and are not sold through Expanded Distribution. A journal with a reflection on every page may not qualify; KDP says "there can be exceptions."

What to write in a devotional book as a gift

A gift inscription needs the person's name, why this book now, one verse reference, and your name with the date:

• "Sam, for all the mornings after the cap and gown. One page a day; I'll be reading the same one. Joshua 1:9. Love, Aunt Ruth, June 2026."
• "Mara, I don't have words that are enough, so here are someone else's, one a day. I'm praying with you on every page. Psalm 34:18. Dan and Lisa."
• "Theo, welcome. This is the book that got me reading the Bible every morning. Start anywhere. Psalm 119:105. Your friend, Grace, Easter 2026."

A Christian testimony is a first-person account of how faith changed your life, told in four parts: before, encounter, after and invitation. Keep it to one turning point and 250 to 400 words, the length of a devotional entry.

1. Before: one concrete picture of your life then.
2. Encounter: the moment, person or verse, told as a scene with a time and place.
3. After: one specific thing that is different now, shown, not claimed.
4. Invitation: one sentence that opens the door, without pressure.

Bestsellers miss this too: in 11 of the study's 17 spirituality titles, the review asked for more sustained narrative from the author's own life. This example was written for this page:

For eleven years I kept the accounts for a hardware store, and I ran my life the same way: every column balanced, nothing owed, nobody needed. When the store closed, I had savings and no idea what to do on a Tuesday.

A man from the church down the street ran a food pantry and asked if I could count. By noon I was sorting cans with him, and at lunch he read Matthew 11:28 over a plastic table: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." I had never thought of myself as heavy laden. I cried in the parking lot anyway.

I still keep the accounts, now for the pantry, on Thursdays. The columns still balance. The difference is that I know I am the one who owed, and that the debt has been paid.

If your columns balance and you are still tired, that verse was written for you too.

The template is the five-part entry on one page, with a word budget for each part that adds up to 300 to 400 words. Copy it into your file once per entry, or print the PDF and fill it in by hand. Keep the parts in this order on every page.

• Day or topic:
• Title:
• Scripture, reference and translation (up to 40 words):
• Reflection, one scene (about 150 words):
• Application, one action for today (50–80 words):
• Prayer (30–50 words):
• Question for the day:
• Word count (300–400):

To write a devotional book for sale, pick the route before you finish the manuscript, because most large Christian houses take devotionals only through an agent. Zondervan's academic imprint lists "devotionals" among the unsolicited submissions it does not accept, and Deseret Book names "daily devotionals" among the books it does not want. Four routes remain:

• A literary agent who handles faith titles.
• A Catholic house that reads proposals directly: see Catholic book publishers.
• Self-publishing on Amazon KDP with a faith-literate editor, set out in the Christian publishers guide beside the pay-to-publish presses.
• A magazine first: The Upper Room pays $30 for each meditation it publishes, and "does not publish AI-generated content".

To find agents and editors, writers use the Christian Writers Market Guide, whose 2026 edition has more than 1,000 entries. If your devotional grows into a book of chapters, how to write a Christian book covers the length and reading level of 17 spiritual bestsellers.