10 of those

Get Your Story Straight

I work with teenagers at a local Bible study that I participate in and I have a child who’s only a couple of years from his teen years, so I find myself very interested in resources for teaching the Bible to teens these days. So, when I received the opportunity to review a new teen devotional called Get Your Story Straight: A Teen’s Guide to Learning and Living the Gospel, I knew that it was a devotional that I wanted the opportunity to look through and imagine how it could be used with the young people that I teach. Get Your Story Straight is a fifty–two week devotional for teens that is really a great discipleship instructional manual. Beginning with the concept of getting the story of the Bible straight, the devotions continue to build on each other over the weeks, branching into how our lives are part of the story and then taking that and branching it out into how our lives intertwine with others and how you can share and be Jesus to other people in your life. Each devotional is broken into five days of work for your teenager to complete. This is how the days break out: Day 1: Straight from the Word–This contains one or more passages of scripture and your teen is expected to take those scriptures and answer the questions below the scriptures. In case you’re concerned that your child is not able to do this, don’t worry, the introduction gives examples of how to complete these assignments. Day 2: The Word Applied–This is a devotional lesson for your teen to read each week. Day 3: Straight to My Heart–These are more questions about the text for deeper thought on behalf of your child as they read through the passage for the third time. Day 4: Word and Deed–Now your teen is ready to take the lessons they’ve been learning into the scripture and answer some questions designed to make them apply these scriptures to their heart and lives. Day 5: Journaling and Prayer–This is an opportunity to take what you’ve learned over the past week (and over the whole course of the devotional) and determine how it has affected your life and what you’ve changed as a result. It’s also an opportunity to pinpoint some areas for change and growth. Make sure that you don’t skip or try to shorten your reflections in this section. I felt like this was an excellent devotional. For the most part, except for about a page of commentary, the devotional is a whole week for your teenager of taking a passage of scripture and deeply meditating and reflecting on it and how this applies to him/her. I love the way that it gets you into the scripture and truly, at the end of the day, allows the scripture and the probing questions to do the work of helping your teen to develop the Biblical knowledge that they’ll need for life. I highly recommend it to all teens, and I feel like I could benefit from working through the devotional myself.

Rebecca Ray