When our daughter was little, she would wave forlornly as her dad drove off to work. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend time with me or that we weren’t going to have any fun without daddy. It was that children want and need both of their parents to be fully engaged with them. Our daughter knew when daddy drove away, he would be unavailable to spend time with her for several hours.
Our kids need their dads to be fully engaged in their parenting. They need and want their dads to be as godly and focused as they need and want their moms to be. Our society often encourages both parents, but especially dads, to ignore the needs of their children in favor of work or other responsibilities and activities. Just like moms, dads need a lot of encouragement to “do the godly thing” whenever there is a choice.
I was excited to hear there is a new men’s devotional Bible available. The Men’s Bible
The beginning of the Bible has nine pages of scriptures to consult when dealing with or studying a variety of real world topics from being a good leader to dealing with anger and everything in between. In the middle of the Bible, there is an insert printed on another paper stock. The insert contains sixty devotionals featuring a variety of writers.
Each devotional covers topics of special concern to men. The authors provide key Bible verses, their thoughts on the topic and several reflection questions, challenges to perform and even suggested things to pray. The devotionals seem easy to understand, short enough to cover in a few minutes for a busy man and best of all, practical.
The very end of the Bible contains another dozen or so special challenge devotionals focusing specifically on marriage, pornography and friendship. Evidently a study was done highlighting these three topics as key areas of concern for the majority of men. The devotionals in this section break down those three issues in smaller pieces to cover them more thoroughly.
I haven’t had the chance to share this devotional Bible with my husband to get a man’s perspective, but from a woman’s viewpoint, they cover many of the topics I hear wives complaining about to their husbands. My only two critiques of the Men’s Bible is that I wish it were available in other translations and I wish they had not gone the insert route for the middle set of devotionals. I know from a publishing perspective it cuts costs, but the quality of the paper in the book is a little less quality than I personally want in a Bible. (Although, it does make it affordable in the $15-$20 range.)
Personally, I think this makes a great Christmas or New Year’s gift for any man in your life. I will say it is difficult to find at this point and when I checked Amazon there were only eight copies left (I have provided an affiliate link as I couldn’t find it when searching by name – the ISBN number is 9781941449035 in case you want it from another retailer.)
If you give your husband this book, I encourage you to discuss the devotionals with him occasionally. Ask him what the authors wrote and his feelings about the topic. Encourage him to share his struggles as a husband and father. Don’t judge, but really listen to his heart. You may discover the two of you are more of a team than you realized.
This Bible was provided to me for free in exchange for my honest review.