Transformed by Truth

Crossway has done it again. They have produced another book by a teenager for teenagers. This time around the author Katherine Forster who is some Bible memorisation genius and has won some awards for her talent. In this book, it is all about God's word, the Bible. Why you should study this book as a teenager and how to study it. While the last half of the book was really my jam, as she was promoting an inductive Bible study method, I still appreciated the first bit to motivate teenagers in reading God's word.

Coming from the Do Hard Things line of thinking, Katherine tries to push back against the low expectations adults put on teenagers and their Biblical knowledge. Studying God's word can be hard, it takes work and a regular routine, it will mean giving up other things like 20 minutes of sleep every morning and some days it may not feel like you took anything in. But even though it can be a hard habit to start, it is worth it. Looking at God's word is worth it because we get to know God. He has spoken and we get to listen.

I appreciated the chapter on "How to obey God's Will". It talks about law but stresses that obedience to God isn't about following a set of rules, it is about a change of heart. This is hard, but we have the Spirit who empowers us to have a change of heart. There was a neat linking of having faith which leads to obedience which leads to love. God's word, with the help of the Spirit, will change us to be those who love God and love others more.

The last half of the book I really appreciated because I have already drunken the cool-aid of the inductive Bible study method. I teach people to use the inductive Bible study method because it removed the teacher-student dynamic in a small group, lets the text dictate the discussion and application and you don't need someone else pre-written material to get something out of the Bible. About a month ago, it made my week when a year 10 girl said she had started using "my method" on the school bus, looking at Romans, a chapter at a time.

We should have confidence that the Bible is clear, that you don't need to know Greek to understand it and that it can stand on its own without help from experts or discussion leading questions (there is a time and a place to read commentaries, but it is definitely not near the beginning of the process, and it is not a necessary step in the process).

The method put forward in this book has three steps. 1) Observation - What does the text say? 2) Interpretation - What does the text mean? and 3) Application - How does this change me? Throughout these sections, Forster gives good explications of the process and points to useful free tools online to help with the interpretation process, even explaining how to use Strongs concordance.

What I also found helpful mainly in this last section, was at the end of each chapter she had a practical example of going though John 3 with questions to help you put into practice the process she just explained.

Like This Changes Everything, this would be a great book to put into the hands of any Christian teenager.