The purpose of Lundgaard’s book is to draw our attention to the Beloved—to the triune God. It is to draw our attention to Him, not so we can admire Him from a safe and comfortable distance, but so we can truly draw near to Him. 

We make a lot of all the distractions that come with life in the modern, always-on, electronic world. And certainly it can be hard to have minds that remain focused for any significant stretch of time before the next beep, the next buzz, the next little burst of dopamine. Yet we do not need to look far into the annals of church history to find that distraction—and especially the kind of distraction that keeps us from being spiritually minded—has always been a challenge and that God’s people have always had to take action against it.

Centuries ago, John Owen wrote a book about issues like this. The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded is not one of his better-known works, though perhaps it should be. But there is a legitimate concern when it comes to reading it today: while Owen’s works were never particularly easy to read, the intervening years have made them harder still. Some of his language has become antiquated and many of his illustrations have become opaque. Thankfully, Kris Lundgaard has done us a service by bringing the best of Owen’s old work into modern times in The Devoted Mind. This is the third time Lungaard has done this with Owen’s books, with the others being The Enemy Within and The Glorious Christ (the first two of which have just been reprinted so the trio now has a consistent and contemporary cover design).

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