Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling devotional (2004) promises something that many people crave: an intimate experience of Jesus’ presence amid the stress and uncertainty of everyday life. That probably explains why the Jesus Calling brand (which now includes journals, children’s devotionals, a magazine, a podcast . . . the list goes on) has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 35 languages.
Promoted by popular Christian voices like Dolly Parton, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, Bear Grylls, Dallas Jenkins, and Jonathan Roumie, this best-selling book franchise isn’t going away any time soon. Jesus Calling, written in the first person as though Jesus Himself is speaking directly to the reader, will continue to shape Christian spirituality for decades to come.
But is Jesus Calling biblical? Could this book about Jesus be subtly promoting practices that encourage readers to seek divine truth without Jesus? Is Jesus Calling a New Age book?
God says to us: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God.” (1 John 4:1).
That’s what we’re going to do—not using our feelings but using the Bible, the unchanging law and testimony of God that reveals whether messages come from the light or from the darkness (Isaiah 8:20). In this article, we’ll examine:
The New Age spiritual movement offers a broad collection of beliefs and practices centered on power, healing, and enlightenment. Often sneakily, these beliefs and practices embolden people to seek power within themselves, convincing them that spiritual truth can be found apart from Scripture and salvation can be attained apart from Jesus Christ.
The Bible is clear about these issues. In Isaiah 8:20, God instructs us to identify spiritual truth using only His law and testimony (Scripture). And Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
The New Age movement arose primarily in the 1970s, but it remains popular today—leading many into practices like crystal healing and Reiki, modern witchcraft, and false religion.
Learn about the dangers of New Age spirituality from two people who experienced it personally:
In the introduction of the original 2004 version of Jesus Calling, Sarah Young wrote: “I had been writing in prayer journals for years, but that was one-way communication: I did all the talking. I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more.” (emphasis added)
In this broken world, we suffer the effects of sin; we long to be fully connected to God. But should we seek Him beyond what Scripture describes? Should we embrace spiritual practices that feel good over the study of God’s perfect Word, which completes us, equips us to do good, refreshes our souls, enlightens our worldviews, brings us wisdom and joy, and continuously reveals the sin in us (2 Timothy 3:16; Psalm 19:7, 8; Hebrews 4:12–13)?
Sarah Young’s intentions may have been right, but her desire for a deeper spiritual experience seems to have drawn her and her writings away from biblical foundations. Here are just a few times New Age beliefs and practices appear in the Jesus Calling devotional series:
Similar New Age writing: “Guided Imagery in Spiritual Direction: Recovering a Creative, Ancient Practice”
Similar New Age writing: “All About the Fifth Dimension and the Shift in Consciousness”
Similar New Age writing: “The Attunement Experience”
To explore even more of Jesus Calling’s eerie ties to New Age spirituality, watch the FREE 2026 documentary Jesus Calling Investigated.
Scripture says: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
Although a relationship with Jesus brings peace and joy, feelings of peace and joy do not automatically indicate His favor or presence. The New Age movement and Jesus Calling argue differently.
However, the strongest evidence pointing to New Age influences in Jesus Calling may be the devotion’s connection to God Calling and automatic writing.
Editor A.J. Russell’s name appears on the front page of God Calling, but he did not write it. He makes that clear in the introduction of the nearly 100-year-old devotional, explaining: “I did not write this book. I wish that I had done so. . . . Not one woman but two have written this book; and they seek no praise. They have elected to remain anonymous and to be called ‘The Two Listeners.’ But the claim which they make is an astonishing one, that their message has been given to them, today, here in England, by The Living Christ Himself. Having read their book I believe them.” (emphasis added)
In Jesus Calling’s original introduction, Sarah Young wrote that she had read God Calling multiple times, describing it as a treasure to her. It makes sense, then, that her popular devotional mirrors the 1935 devotional in both name and format (both are daily devotionals written in the first person, with “I” designating God/Jesus). But the similarities don’t stop there; they run much deeper, to the inspiration.
Describing The Two Listeners, Young added: “These women practiced waiting quietly in God’s Presence, pencils and paper in hand, recording the messages they received from Him.” Young explained that their method caused her to wonder if she could receive messages from God in her personal time with Him, ready with “pen in hand” to write down whatever she “believed He was saying.”
Scripture says: “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man.” (2 Peter 1:20b–21a)
Former New Agers Warren B. Smith and Doreen Virtue call God Calling a “channeled” book full of unbiblical New Age ideas, such as the “universal” spirit of God and “many-sided truth.”
You can watch Smith, Virtue, and other experts discuss God Calling’s deceptive nature in Jesus Calling Investigated.
At times, God Calling blatantly promotes practices that directly contrast biblical teaching, going so far as to advise necromancy: “How often mortals rush to earthly friends who can serve them in so limited a way, when the friends who are freed from the limitations of humanity can serve them so much better, understand them better, protect better, plan better, and even plead better their cause with Me. You do well to remember your friends in the Unseen.” (God Calling, September 6)
The Bible says:
“Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:31)
“And when they say to you, ‘Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,’ should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isaiah 8:19)
God did not give The Two Listeners the messages written in God Calling because He does not contradict His own Word (2 Timothy 2:13; Numbers 23:19). In light of Jesus Calling’s clear connection to God Calling, what does the latter’s dark roots and clearly deceptive content reveal about Sarah Young’s written messages and how she received them?
Automatic writing is a spiritual practice in which a person attempts to quiet their own thoughts and record messages they believe originate from an external spiritual source. New Agers and occultists use this practice to gain wisdom from spirit guides and ascended masters.
As one psychic explained: to practice automatic writing well, you must “put your ‘thinking brain’ to sleep,” as “you do not want your intellectual mind to interrupt the psychic flow of information.” The same instructions apply to New Age meditation.
Although God asks us to trust His wisdom over our own, He never asks us to turn our minds off and dismiss our ability to discern. He never advises us to trust our “spiritual intuition” over the truth He has revealed in His Word, which we are able to read and study only because of the minds He has given us.
“ ‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:18a)
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7, emphasis added)
Anyone would be remiss to state with full confidence that Sarah Young channeled Satan to create Jesus Calling. But her own description of how she produced the book, as well as the nature of some of its messages, suggests a correlation to the dangerous practices of automatic writing and New Age meditation. Take the devotional’s July 9 entry as an example:
“Ask My Spirit to quiet your mind so that you can think My thoughts. This ability is an awesome benefit of being My child, patterned after My own image. Do not be deafened by the noise of the world or that of your own thinking. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Sit quietly in My Presence, letting My thoughts reprogram your thinking.”
Within this paragraph lay beautiful biblical truths (we are created in God’s image; God does want us to lay down our worries, “the noise of the world,” before Him; God promises to transform us by renewing our minds) and subtle New Age deceptions (“quiet your mind”; “sit quietly in My Presence”; we can adopt God’s thoughts as our own through passivity of mind and inactivity). The Bible explains that we become more like Jesus through action: the study of His law, obedience to His will, and the active reproduction of His character.
“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. . . . Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:23–27, emphasis added)
Practicing automatic writing and New Age meditation techniques may feel good and safe in the moment, but does silencing the mind and then writing/thinking what you believe the divine is telling you produce true godliness? Or do these practices produce just the opposite?
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Jesus Calling is not biblical because its messages do not align with biblical instruction. This devotional speaks to the human heart, providing snippets of truth while quietly but strongly promoting New Age spirituality. The evidence, as we’ve seen, is clear:
Sarah Young’s intentions may have been pure, her experiences real, and her character kind. But is sincerity enough?
No, not when the human heart is so easily deceived. Remember, even Satan disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Of course God’s enemy would use moments of spiritual ecstasy and peace to pull us away from God.
We all experience spiritual thirst, a need for more than this world can offer: greater joy, greater peace, greater wisdom, greater truth. At Jacob’s well, Jesus recognized this thirst in a sinful Samaritan woman—who, by Jewish standards at the time, He should not have spoken to, much less cared for.
But full of love, Jesus said to her: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13–14).
Jesus knew this woman. He knew the sins she was engaged in, and He knew that she craved righteousness. He offered her hope by describing His mission as the Messiah and the role of His people: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (verses 23–24).
Spirit and truth. This is how we seek God. This is how we hear God’s voice.
When we sincerely approach God in truth—craving His righteousness and recognizing who He is by His Word—He will transform our characters by the “renewing” of our minds, that we “may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).
It is God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who helps us search, compare, discern, and judge spiritual things, granting us the “mind of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:11–16). How do we receive God’s Spirit? Through thoughtful obedience (Acts 5:32). And how do we obey? By learning God’s voice through Scripture.
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16)
“And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. . . . My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:4–5, 27)
The greatest spiritual experience possible—that “fountain of water springing up into everlasting life”—is not hearing a new voice from heaven. It is not found in books like God Calling or Jesus Calling or New Age practices like automatic writing. It is discovering the true Jesus, who is exemplified and speaks to us through the Bible. He is more beautiful, more trustworthy, and more life-giving than anything we could ever imagine.
To learn more about the New Age deceptions hidden in Jesus Calling and the true Jesus described in Scripture, don’t miss the 2026 documentary Jesus Calling Investigated!
If this article stirred something in you—whether it be scorn, defensiveness, realization, or curiosity—we invite you to dig deeper:
Many are waking up to the influence of New Age spiritualism on the entertainment they consume, their faith, and their families. That’s why we created Jesus Calling Investigated and a variety of other videos on spiritualism, the occult, and the danger of practices like yoga and unbiblical meditation. In them, we break down the messages behind today’s most popular trends and media.
Come with your Bible. Bring your questions. And prepare to see pop culture in a whole new light.
Watch now at LittleLightStudios.tv or on our YouTube channel.
We get it. You have questions, and this article didn’t answer them all. To learn more about God, Scripture, and the spiritual forces fighting over you right now, visit lls.tv/bibleschool.
For further reading on hearing God’s voice, the importance of Scripture, and other topics we covered here, check out:
“Dear Father in Heaven,
Thank You for loving me enough to reveal Yourself through Your Word and through Your Son, Jesus Christ. Forgive me for the times I have sought spiritual experiences apart from the truth You have already given. Please give me a discerning mind, that I may test every spirit and hold fast to what is good. Teach me to hear Your voice through Scripture and to trust Your promises above my emotions. Keep my heart and mind fixed on the Lamb, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
In His name—in Jesus’ name,
Amen.”
