Do You Want To Be Bible Savvy?

Do You Want To Be Bible Savvy?

Disclosure: I was provided a copy of the Bible Savvy book set for review.  Any and all opinions expressed are my own and have not been influenced.

Have you ever wanted to read the whole bible?  Did you set a challenge for yourself and not quite make that goal?  I remember the first time my husband said we would tread the entire bible in a  year.  He wanted to do it more than I did but we agreed that reading it together might make it stick to the challenge instead of giving up.  We were wrong.  We downloaded the app, got daily reminders of what book and chapter we are supposed to read but slowly we started to lose interest.  To me it just felt like I was just reading to read and I was certain that not much of it was sticking at all.  I was stumbling and bumbling over long and impossible to pronounce names in the Old Testament.  I was just ready to get to the New Testament and soon I just feel off.  I am not sure how long it took my husband to stop as well but neither of us finished in a year.  As a matter of fact we haven’t finished at all.  When I was first got the email about the Bible Savvy series I was excited to learn more about it.  When it arrived I was even more excited to dive in and get started with the four books in the set.

About Bible Savvy…

The Bible consistently appears at the top of lists of the world’s best-selling and most-influential books. Unfortunately, most people are not in the habit of reading this book for themselves. Some are put off by the Bible’s length—even the Reader’s Digest version is 767
pages long! Others are confused by their lack of knowledge of the Bible’s historical context. And still others have never been taught how to draw practical applications from this ancient book for their modern-day lives.

No wonder that 91 percent of the people who have recently begun attending church, according to a recent survey, say that they were motivated to do so by a desire to understand the Bible. Bible Savvy is a four book series that provides a brief but comprehensive overview of the Bible for everyone from first-time readers to Bible study leaders.

Epic: The Storyline of the Bible covers the Bible’s storyline, tracing the theme of redemption from Genesis to Revelation.

Like the box cover of a jigsaw puzzle, Epic provides a big picture view of the Bible to help everyone from first-time readers to Bible study groupies understand how its individual pieces fit together. Is it really possible that the Bible’s collection of 66 books actually has a single storyline? Yes! The theme of that storyline is redemption and Epic traces it from Genesis to Revelation.

Discover in the opening chapters of the Bible why redemption became humanity’s desperate need. Learn how God set this rescue effort into motion through promises he made to Abraham. Follow the unfolding of these promises through Old Testament history. Note the role of the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, in the overall drama. Witness Jesus Christ bringing redemption to a climax.

As you follow along in your Bible’s table of contents, you’ll finally make sense out of how books such as Leviticus, Psalms, Obadiah, Matthew and Colossians relate to each other, contributing to a single story that can change your life.

Foundation: The Trustworthiness of the Bible deals with a variety of apologetic issues that are related to the Bible’s trustworthiness.

Foundation makes the case that the Bible is God’s book. God “breathed” it out through human authors (inspiration), gathered its 66 books into one volume (canon), protected it from errors through centuries of copying (transmission), and faithfully reveals himself and his will for our lives in its pages (revelation). How can we be sure of these claims? Foundation provides plenty of evidence to back them up, giving us the confidence to build our lives on God’s Word.

This is a concise and readable summary of apologetic issues that surround the Bible. Foundation engages with some of the recent best-selling books by skeptics that have called into question the Bible’s credibility—and soundly refutes them. The book concludes with a well-reasoned appeal to prioritize the reading and studying of Scripture in an age when other media vie for our attention.

Context: How to Understand the Bible lays out some basic rules of interpretation that ensure an accurate understanding of the Bible.

Skeptics often complain that the Bible can be used to prove just about anything. The skeptics are right—if the basic ground rules for understanding the Bible are ignored. Just as with any great piece of literature (e.g. Shakespeare’s plays, Tolstoy’s novels, Frost’s poems), the Bible must be interpreted according to certain guidelines, which scholars refer to as hermeneutics. (Hermes was the mythical Greek god who brought messages from the gods to people).

Context is a mini-course in hermeneutics. Discover how to accurately interpret a Bible passage by unpacking its: historical setting; literary genre (there are a variety of these in Scripture); and key theological issues. Learn how to use a few simple study tools. Context is for everyone from first-time readers to Bible study leaders.

Walk: How to Apply the Bible teaches a very simple four-step process for applying the Bible to one’s daily life.

The epistle of James says that reading the Bible should be like gazing into a mirror—we should look for a true reflection of ourselves and note the changes that need to be made in our lives. Practically speaking, how is this done?

Walk  begins with a helpful explanation of the role that the Holy Spirit plays in this process. Then it teaches a simple-to-use four step method for enabling Bible readers to become Bible doers. This method is made memorable with the acronym COMA.

For every passage you read, you will learn how to: discover its (c)ontext; make (o)bservations about what’s important in the text; determine God’s (m)essage from one of those observations; and craft an (a)pplication of that message for your everyday life.

 

I really liked that the books were broken up into four unique parts.  You can purchase the whole set or buy each book individually.  You start off in the Epic book and everything is so simple and easy to understand.  At the end of each chapter is a study guide that has group questions and a reading guide so you are picking up the Bible and reading to learning and seeing how it applies to the questions asked in the study guide or in the chapter.  It’s not just aimlessly reading just to say you read something.  You get to string all the stories together and find the relationship in passages to one another even if they are in totally different books of the Bible.  I think my favorite of all the four in the set is Foundation.  I plan to spend the longest time in that book, re-reading the chapters and study guide over and over.  I also plan to do the same with the Walk book.  If you’re looking for something to help guide you in reading the bible then you can purchase the book set here.  It’s priced at $32.99.  To learn more about the author of these books and find more resources visit the Bible Savvy website.  You can also download an ebook of the Epic Book from Moody Publishers for free here.