Review: Mighty Acts of God

Mighty Acts of God, A Family Bible Story Book
Written by Starr Meade
Illustrated by Tim O'Connor

Mighty Acts of God is a Bible story book written for elementary school-age children in mind.  It is published by Crossway.  A principle point of the book is to show the attributes of God displayed in the Biblical accounts, not so much about the individuals involved and how they behaved and whether or not we should imitate them.  The overarching theme is to point to God's plan of redemption through out the Bible.  The stories are in chronological order, both Old and New Testament.  Stories include a key verse either from the story or clearly showing a lesson to be learned from the Biblical account.  The verses are in the English Standard Version.  There summary statements in a colored font to easily pick out the major doctrinal point.  A neat feature at the end of the stories are "As For Me and My House" sections, they are practical activities or points of application to be discussed with the children.

I really enjoyed Mighty Acts of God.  I think it will be a wonderful tool to teach my children about God and how the accounts in the Bible show us God's character and demonstrate His amazing love.  I think too often we can get caught up in act like this Biblical person (except when they did this activity) or not like this one.  Showing the consequences of human's actions is a great thing too, of course we would rather our children learn from other people's mistakes instead of making them themselves, but the real point is for God to reveal Himself to them.  I have a hard time calling Bible accounts stories, because children mainly hear stories as make believe and I want my children to know these are historical events.

I really enjoyed how this book didn't put words in the individual's mouths in accounts that scripture does not state.  For example, I don't really enjoy when a book says Noah said this or thought that,  he may have, but the Bible doesn't state that.  Might Acts of God seemed to stay true in that area for me.  I also struggle with illustrations in children's Bible books.  I teach my children they are probably not what Jesus or Moses or anyone in the Bible looked like, they are an idea of what they may have looked like.  The illustrations in this book are a lovely artist's viewpoint.  I think parents will still have a lot of questions to answer and definitions to explain while reading this to their children.  There are some words defined within the story, but the language of this book is more complex for younger children, not that is a bad thing, just something I observed with my young children.  I think it gives opportunity for the parents to further instruct their children and expands a child's vocabulary.  I am thankful that I will have Mighty Acts of God to use with my children, to teach them more about our wonderful Father.

I was provided a free copy of this book for the purposes of review, the opinions expressed are my own.