If you’d like to get encourage your young person to develop a study of the Scriptures in 2012, you can help them along the way with some resources I’ve developed. I’d like to share about two of them here:
Teen People of the Bible, Celebrity Profiles of Real Faith and Tragic Failure
This was my first book and it continues to sell well. It’s a unique, 100-day devotional that features the stories of 29 young people in the Scripture. Each day shares a bit about the Biblical teen, offers a contemporary story about a teen and/or a few practical life lessons, then offers journaling space. Each day also comes with a probing question answered from the Bible and some thought-provoking discussion ideas. I wrote this book to help young people get interested in the Bible. Quite often they crack open the Scriptures and might get lost in Leviticus or think that perhaps the Bible only speaks to folks with gray hair. This is a 100-day devotional, so you might, as a parent or youth pastor, give a 100-day challenge and see if they can’t read through one devotional and the corresponding Scriptures once a day for a 100 days. If you’ve had a hard time getting your teens into a Bible-reading discipline, this is a great resource. You’ll also like that I didn’t try to “dumb down” the Scriptures. So often teen devos are so light and fluffy they actually insult kids by insinuating that they can’t actually grasp difficult ideas.
This is what bestselling authors Jim and Elisabeth George said about Teen People of the Bible:
With creativity and a clear understanding of a teen’s heart and life, Daniel shares biblical truths in this daily devotional that will set a young person on God’s path day by day. His passion for God’s truth and his knowledge of the struggles and temptations young men and women face is heard on page after page as he dispenses life-saving—and life-changing—help. Every teen will benefit from this powerful book, and every parent will want to give this volume to the young adults in their life! What a great way to put the next generation on a sure path of godliness!
It was also nominated for a Gold Medallion award and was endorsed by Focus on the Family’s (now defunct) Brio and Breakaway magazines. You can read more endorsements here.
Crash Course, Forming a Faith Foundation for Life.
This is another 100-day devotional. This is formatted similarly to Teen People, but instead of covering the stories of Biblical young people, it walks through the five most important areas of a young person’s life. The book is divided up into the 5 “d’s.” Doctrine, Direction, Decisions, Devotion, Delight. It begins with the doctrine section to help kids understand why we believe what we believe. We explain pretty deep concepts like the Trinity and the Holy Spirit in a fresh, but faithful way. I also recommend resources for digging deeper if they want to further study out that concept. Each of these sections contains 20 devos.
So this might be a resource you’d give a high-school junior or senior or a college freshman or sophomore. It’s a concise core of the most important truths we want our young people to understand and make their own. And like Teen People, it’s a 100-day devo, so they can knock it out in like three months. I did it in the devotional format so they could meditate on once concept per day.
Susie Shellenberger, former editor of Brio (Focus on the Family) and founder and editor of Susie magazine says this about Crash Course:
Today’s teens want truth, guidance and authenticity, and they quickly see through the opposites. That’s why Crash Course is a must for every teen’s backpack! Filled with faith-building stories, truth about God’s plan and genuine guidance on how to live out their faith in the midst of life’s toughest moments, Crash Course takes teens on an incredible ride to developing solidity in their relationship with Christ. Daniel Darling has definitely proven himself as an excellent communicator to today’s generation, and I’m excited about the message inside these pages!
Free Resources:
You might also encourage your teen to sign up for my weekly teen devo on Crosswalk, which also appears weekly at the teen site: Clash Entertainment.