Courageous Christians

First I loved “Courageous Christians” by Joyce Vollmer Brown, then I didn’t like it, then I did again. {G} I enjoyed the author’s thoughts at the start of the book. The observation on how one believer’s life influences another….we are all more “connected” than we often realize. I agree with the premise that we need to make the effort to find heroes and role models for our children. This generation has a lot of celebrities but few real role models.

The author has taken 60 people and written a short biographical sketch on each one. The sketch is followed by one or two questions for discussion.

These are billed as “family devotional readings”. OK – for devotions – I’m not sold. I want my children to get into the WORD and so I prefer to read a passage and discuss it with them, look up words we need to look up and memorize them. I found these summaries and one question to be inadequate to term “devotional” but many enjoy them.

I did enjoy this book because it had a lot of variety in the 60 people it chose. They were not all missionaries and they didn’t all live before 1600. There were current people and “heroes” I’d never heard of as well. I found this book in the library and was glad to have read it.

I also have Hero Tales (Vol 1 and 2) by Dave and Neta Jackson. For young children I prefer these volumes. They have appealing line sketches of each character. They give a short bio and then 3 quick sketches from each person illustrating specific character trait. I feel like we got MORE info on each person. They also have questions for discussion. I wouldn’t’ use this book for devotions either, but I DO read it to the children to give them Godly heroes. I do use it to read about various characters when we are studying that time period in history….

I love this quote by A.W. Tozer, “Next to the Holy Scriptures the greatest aid to the life of faith may be Christian biography.” This book awoke in me the desire to read more Christian biographies. They encourage, challenge and motivate me to walk closer with my Lord and Savior. I copied the “bibliography” from the back of this book for this purpose.