In accordance with the FTC guidelines for bloggers and reviewers, I disclose that I received a free copy of Beginnings from Passion Publishing/HarperChristian Resources through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
God Has Included You in His Unchanging Story.
In this beautiful Bible study series—brought to you by the makers of The Jesus Bible—you will dive in-depth into each of the six acts of God’s story and discover a deeper understanding of your own unique story by learning how the two are intricately tied together.
From the dawn of creation, God was thinking of you and designed your life to play a key role in the outworking of the grand story he’s writing. He says to us, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). But if you’re like most of us, it may sometimes seem as if your story is hopelessly off course.
Through six weeks of interactive lessons, BEGINNINGS will usher you through the first act of God’s unchanging story, weaving together key passages from the Old and New Testaments to help you get a better image of our creating God.
The Jesus Bible Study Series is designed to lead you through the six main acts of Scripture:
Beginnings
Revolt
People
Savior
Church
Forever
The series reveals how Jesus plays a key role in each and every story told throughout the Bible, and helps you discover God’s purpose and plan for your life in his great story.
Beginnings Review
I am a Bible study nerd. I love Bible study manuals. I collect them to be honest. I have the majority of the NavPress Lifechange series, the entire Jesus Calling Bible study series, and a few other books scattered here and there. So when I saw Beginnings on NetGalley, I knew I was going to have to grab it and go through it. I was not disappointed.
Format
Being from NetGalley, I knew that Beginnings was going to be an eBook. It was very well formatted. To my delight, it even included instructions on how to answer the questions when using an eBook copy. You won’t need a separate notebook – just use the note-taking feature included in your eBook reader. For me, I was using the Kindle version, which allowed me to simply highlight the [Your Response Here] text, tap on it, and tap the notes icon. From there, I was able to use the iPad keyboard to answer the questions. Easy-peasy!
This particular installment in The Jesus Bible Study series gives us six areas to focus on. That’s right, it only has six lessons. Each lesson can take a single day or a full week, depending on how quickly you want to go through the study. They are easy to read and while the questions will make you think a bit, they aren’t going to take you hours to answer.
Lessons
As I said above, there are six lessons in Beginnings. Those lessons cover Creation, The Trinity, Imago Dei (being made in the image of God), Uniqueness, Work, and Community. These lessons give you a good foundation of what God meant for us as human beings. One of my favorite lessons was The Trinity. It helped me to understand The Trinity and how God can be considered three persons in one. While most churches I’ve attended have believed in The Trinity, none of them gave a good understanding of how that can be. This book broke it down and made it easy to understand.
My Thoughts
This was an easy Bible study book to go through. It took me six days to complete all of the lessons, because I chose to do one lesson per day. The lessons were easy to read, easy to understand, and gave plenty of scriptures to back up what the authors were saying. The authors not only included actual scriptural text, but also included extra references.
My only gripe is that they didn’t really specify which translation of the Bible they were working with and I couldn’t immediately recognize it on my own. That being said, it is possible that some of the front matter of the book might have indicated what translation they were using and I simply didn’t see it.
All in all this is a great Bible study resource and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new Bible study series.