Two New Great Adventures in Odyssey Imagination Station series

The latest books in the Adventures in Odyssey Imagination Station series that I read with my now 5 year old son were Battle for Cannibal Island and Escape to the Hiding Place by Paul McCusker and Marianne Hering.  The books continue to follow the cousins Patrick and Beth and their adventures in Mr. Whittaker’s imagination station.  These books are more independent of the other books as individual adventures.

My son really enjoys these books.  He was very excited to get some more and since reading them he was disappointed there weren’t any more available.  We have encouraged him to write a letter to the author for more.  He really likes their adventures and gets into the places they go and things the cousins do.   I enjoy the adventures and the topics they bring up.  We have had some great times talking about how we could make wise choices in similar situations.  My son has a vivid imagination and these help give him some focus.  I look forward to reading more as they come out and would highly recommend them to others.

I received a complimentary copy of the book for review purposes from Tyndale House.

Has God Spoken by Hank Hanegraaff

Has God Spoken by Hank Hanegraaff is his final book in a series meant to address questions that Christians face regarding the Bible.  It is laid out with the acronym MAPS to assist the reader in assimilating the massive amount of information that Hank offers the reader.

This book is thick and meaty and will take some time to get through versus other apologetic type books that I have read.   Hank has done his research and does his best to put it out in a manner that it easy to consume, but it does take a while to get through.  I appreciated the material in the book and found myself learning a good deal.  I felt like the book went beyond simply providing evidence to specifically address the prevailing lines of thought against the Bible currently and even pointed towards specific people who lead those arguments.

I appreciate books like this as I like to know why I believe what I believe.  I find them most useful in strengthening a believer’s faith in Christ by showing the complexity of our Lord, but less to convince a skeptic.  And I found this book good to equip believers so they aren’t ignorant of the prevalent criticisms in our culture today.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program.

Life Application Study Bible Devotional

I recently received the Life Application Study Bible Devotional from Tyndale Publishers.  This devotional is setup slightly differently from others that I have.  Instead of dates it uses weeks and days.  This may seem like a minor change, but it really does promote a daily reading schedule  as it can be difficult to find your day if you only pick it up occasionally other than just reading randomly.  Each week has a theme centric to Jesus in some manner bases on scripture and accompanied with devotion and questions.

Overall I found this to be a decent devotional.  I love reading scripture, so having that on each page was good.  Personally I felt the devotional portion to be a bit lacking.  The inferences read into the scripture with these were overreaching.  That being said I did enjoy the questions portion.  I found them to be thought provoking in a manner that would really make one think of how to apply the scripture to one’s life.  I would simply put in more scripture from the New and Old Testament and less story telling.  All in all I found it to be a good book and one that would encourage the daily reading and application of God’s Word.

Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a review.