Bringing God and the Bible into Your Life for All Ages

 Disclosure: Kregel Publications sent me copies of these books free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Do you want to bring God and the Bible into your life more or perhaps into your child's life? Today I am sharing some books and a printable game for kids to do just this. Going by age we will start with the book for the younger child, The Bible and Me: Stories with a Message to Live By retold by Lois Rock and illustrated by Alida Massari.  

This book is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. It shares nine Old Testament stories and eleven New Testament stories. Each story begins with a scripture and ends with a version of verses from Psalms or other scripture to go with the story. The stories flow well and have the important parts in them. The illustrations are beautiful. We are really enjoying reading the stories in this book each night. It is a wonderful introduction to Bible stories for younger children.

This summer Hazel discovered cootie catchers. Do you remember these from your childhood? After playing with her telling my future or answering questions I started to think about using them to bring God into our daily lives. I decided to make one with Bible and/or Godly messages.

I tried to pick colors that reminded me of church: purple, green, red and rose (for the third week of Advent). Then I started picking numbers from the Bible like 40, 12, and 7. The messages are meant to remind the players of God and Bible stories. To print your own copy click here. For a tutorial on making a cootie catcher check out here. At Hazel's camp there were kids aged four to eight and the seven and eight year-olds seemed to like the cootie catchers. The younger kids were not that interested in them.

Our next book The Think Tank by Martin Saunders is the perfect book for bringing the Bible into every day life for teenagers. The book shares different stories and has discussion questions about the stories. Then it suggests scriptures to read and relates the stories and the scripture with more discussion questions. It is the perfect book for a youth group or young adult class. Currently I am not working with any teenagers so I have not been able to try it out with any, but I love how it relates every day issues to the scripture and shows that the Bible is still relevant to today's life. I always find this to be important when working with teenagers.

Our final book is for the adults!! If you are like me, your own time is right when you wake up and/or go to bed. This is the time I usually pray or try to focus my day on God. God Moments by Jennifer Rees Larcombe. This book has thirty reflections that include a story about trying to find God in daily life, scripture and ends with a prayer. There are photographs throughout the book that tie into the stories. To me this is the perfect book to get a quick daily message and time to reflect and communicate with God. I absolutely love the messages in the book and really am enjoying this one. 

So if you or someone you know is looking for ways to bring God and the Bible into their lives on a more daily basis, check out these books and try our fun cootie catcher!!