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Easter is a very special time of year where loved ones gather together to celebrate the risen Christ. This Easter, draw your daughter into the precious Word of God with a journaling Bible that includes over 400 line-art illustrations to color plus extra space in the lightly ruled wide margins for creative journaling. Inspire is currently available in two editions, the Inspire Bible and Inspire PRAISE Bible. An exciting new addition to the line, Inspire Bible for Girls, releases this August with devotionals and journaling prompts written just for girls ages 8 and up by author Carolyn Larsen.

We encourage you to take a moment to read through the Scripture below from Luke 24 and listen for a word from God as you read.

What stands out to you in this passage? What did you learn about God? How might God want you to respond to what you’ve read?

The Resurrection

But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.

The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”

Then they remembered that he had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.

The Walk to Emmaus

That same day two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?”

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, “You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days.”

“What things?” Jesus asked.

“The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth,” they said. “He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.

“Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive! Some of our men ran out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said.”

Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn’t it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?” Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

By this time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, “Stay the night with us, since it is getting late.” So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!

They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” And within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem. There they found the eleven disciples and the others who had gathered with them, who said, “The Lord has really risen! He appeared to Peter.

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

Then the two from Emmaus told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were walking along the road, and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread. And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. But the whole group was startled and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost!

“Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt? Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do.” As he spoke, he showed them his hands and his feet.

Still they stood there in disbelief, filled with joy and wonder. Then he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it as they watched.

Then he said, “When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said, “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of his name to all the nations beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’ You are witnesses of all these things.

“And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.”

The Ascension

Then Jesus led them to Bethany, and lifting his hands to heaven, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up to heaven. So they worshiped him and then returned to Jerusalem filled with great joy. And they spent all of their time in the Temple, praising God.

Is God prompting you to invite anyone to church with you this Easter to hear the Good News?

Inspire Bible Contest Giveaway

We would love to hear your answer to any of the questions above. You’ll have a chance to win an Inspire Bible of your choice, including the soon-to-release Inspire Bible for Girls. See below for ways to enter.

Ten people will win an Inspire Bible of their choice, and one Grand Prize winner will receive two Inspire Bibles of their choice plus a $150 Amazon gift card to spend on Bible journaling goodies to fill an Easter basket. To check out the Inspire Bible line, please visit: https://www.tyndale.com/l/inspire-bible

Easter Journaling Bible Giveaway

Along with our friends at the Institute for Bible Reading we are so excited that the final volume of Immerse: The Reading Bible has been published. Here is a blog post from Alex from the Institute for Bible Reading on completing the project.

Immerse: The Reading Bible is Finished

by Alex Goodwin

This week our team is celebrating the completion of Immerse: The Reading Bible, a project we’ve been working on with our partners at Tyndale House Publishers for the past eighteen months. Immerse: Prophets arrived from the printer in late February and rounded out the six-volume set, which represents our best work yet in the “reader’s edition” Bible category.

Immerse: The Reading Bible contains several new innovations compared to our previous work with reader’s Bibles:

• We used scientific research on the length of the reading line, number of characters, margin size, and font size to find the optimal balance for the most comfortable reading experience.
• A fresh book order in the prophets, the order of Paul’s letters, and the order of the four gospel groups in the New Testament
• Custom watercolor cover artwork commissioned specifically for Immerse
• Brand new sections in the back of each volume explaining how each type of biblical literature works, and how the smaller stories of the Bible work together to create the grand narrative

The first two volumes, Messiah and Beginnings, have already found significant traction within churches across North America as part of the Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience church campaign.

Read more . . .

Immerse: Prophets, the final volume to be released in the Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience series, is now available!

This volume takes you through the prophetic words of the Old Testament prophets grouped together by four historical periods.

• Before the fall of Israel’s Northern Kingdom:
  • Amos
  • Hosea
  • Micah
  • Isaiah
• Before the fall of the Southern Kingdom:
  • Zephaniah
  • Nahum
  • Habakkuk
• Around the time of Jerusalem’s destruction:
  • Jeremiah
  • Obadiah
  • Ezekiel
• After the return from exile:
  • Haggai
  • Zechariah
  • Malachi
  • Joel
  • Jonah

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Find out more about the Institute for Bible Reading

Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience was created to be read in community, but we are often asked “where do I even start?” Our friends at the Institute for Bible Reading share some tips on how to read the Bible as a group.

5 Tips for Reading the Bible in Community//

Billy Graham was a quiet man of God, but he was also a visionary. He led hundreds of thousands to a personal faith in God. His books influenced millions. Many ministries can point to ways in which their work was deeply influenced by Mr. Graham. That is certainly true for us at Tyndale House Publishers. When Tyndale House was still a kitchen-table operation, Mr. Graham began to promote Living Letters, the first part of what eventually became The Living Bible. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association gave away millions of copies of Living Letters and the subsequent books in that series. And when Mr. Graham insisted on paying Tyndale House a royalty for the copies that were given away, Ken Taylor, the founder of Tyndale House, used that royalty check to start Tyndale House Foundation. Mr. Graham was criticized for encouraging people to read a paraphrase of the New Testament, but he recognized the value of a translation that reads “like today’s newspaper.” We thank God for the life and ministry of Billy Graham.

Mark D. Taylor

Chairman/CEO

Tyndale House Publishers

So many of us are getting into the Word of God in personal study. This is important, but we often forget the importance of coming together as a community and reading God’s Word together like they did in the early church. Communal Bible reading is at the heart of Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience. Read what Glenn Paauw, Institute for Bible Reading, has to say about getting back to our early church roots and reading the Bible in community.

How did early Christians learn and pass on their traditions about Jesus and his teachings? What did the first communities of Jesus followers do to maintain the authenticity of their understanding of the meaning of his work, and its continuity to new generations? Further, what place did the growing collection of apostolic writings to scattered churches have in first century Christian gatherings?

For some time the academic study of early Christianity has maintained an emphasis on the role of oral tradition and social memory in the initial spread and growth of the new Jesus movement. It was assumed that due to things like the scarcity of both writing materials and professional readers, actual communal reading from sacred texts must have been somewhat rare and limited especially to more urban areas, at least until later in the second century.

But now there is an increasing recognition that early Christianity, like the Judaism from which it was born, was a “bookish” religion through and through. (See our earlier article How the First Christians Challenge Us to Be Bible Readers.) Larry Hurtado, a New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity, has been a key voice helping us explore the evidence for this more closely. His books Destroyer of the Gods (2016) and The Earliest Christian Artifacts(2006) have directly examined this theme. Brian Wright’s new book continues this effort to bring more clarity to our understanding of the place of reading in the earliest church.

Wright’s key point is that communal reading was geographically widespread and that such reading was a way of avoiding any serious alterations in the traditions and teachings of the first Christians.

There are two backgrounds to this: first, the fact that public reading was a common feature of life across much of the Roman Empire. Letters, proclamations, poetry, and the great literary sagas of the time were all frequently read in public places. These did have a kind of performance aspect to them, but the point is that they were not performed from memory, but rather read aloud from written texts.

The second key background is of course the Jewish matrix from which Christianity emerged. Just as the Jews met and read the Scriptures together regularly, so did the early Christians. (See the chapter “Sharing Our Synagogue Bible” in my book Saving the Bible from Ourselves.)

Wright’s book is an important piece of detailed, collected evidence from the first century, in both the broader Roman culture and in specifically Christian settings. He includes chapters on relevant social, economic, and political factors, arguing that all of these were actually conducive to the widespread practice of public reading, making it a familiar feature of life for everyone. In the case of the Christian communities, it’s more clear than we’ve realized that the New Testament documents themselves are filled with evidence that they were expected to be widely shared and then publicly read.

In short, a standard part of the experience of the first Christians was the public, out-loud reading of the founding documents of the faith.

Should We Recover Communal Reading Today?

Of course most of the first Christians didn’t have any opportunity to own a personal copy of the Scriptures, and the preponderance of evidence remains that most people could not even read or write. But they were experienced, focused listeners, and this served them well. Christian formation in the early church was centered on immersion in the story of God, Israel, and the world as found in the sacred writings, both old and new. This tangible, practical focus on the Scriptures also helped ensure the integrity of the message over time.

But what about us?

In the modern era we’ve largely turned away from the early Christian practice of communal immersion in the Scriptures. Reading and study of the Bible is largely done individually, surrounded by all manner of reference-type helps, commentary, and devotional aids. The research evidence is clear that this is not working as an overall strategy for Bible engagement. People report that reading alone in this way is complicated and overwhelming. In short, it’s hard. And as a result, folks admit they’re not doing it much.

The consequences have been serious for both private and public expressions of the faith. Unfamiliarity with the Big Story has produced Christians who don’t really have a good chance of living into the story in our contemporary setting because they don’t know who they are or where they came from.

There is no shortcut to this biblical knowledge. It comes only from sustained attention to our founding narratives, letters, songs, and wisdom. It comes from reading big and reading whole, not piecemeal sampling.

So what if we were to reclaim the practice and simplicity of the early Christ-followers?

What if we were to rediscover the unique value of communal reading of the Bible?

There have been a number of shifts in the nature of congregational life in recent history. A new emphasis on small groups, a move toward contemporary music and worship styles, and others. Why couldn’t we commit to similarly shifting how and when and where we engage the Bible? What new kinds of communal encounters can we imagine? What new forms of public reading and dialogue around the text can we envision? There are lots of different kinds of churches, lots of different ways this might look.

A commitment to biblical fluency should be at the center of every church’s life.

We can all ask: What could my community do?

by Kevin O’Brien, brand manager for Study Bibles and Bible Reference at Tyndale House Publishers.

Sometimes it all seems like too much. Life presses in, and I am going to implode under the pressure.

It’s not supposed to be like that.

I know better.

I mean, I really know better. Not sort of, not I think so. For real.

I was in church before I was a week old. Gave my life to Christ before I started school and was always the “good kid,” whatever that means. Sure, I had my doubts in junior high and was silently, scarily rebellious in high school. I am by nature a skeptic. Faith comes hard for me. And yet I believe. I went to a Christian college, changed my major to pastoral studies my freshman year, went on to seminary for two master’s degrees, and did some more grad school in theology after that.

Knowledge. Got it.

I’ve built my life on the Bible. On the idea of the Bible. On the knowledge that it not only matters, it’s true. Really true. Stake-your-life-on-it true.

Still, for twenty years I have been haunted by a question a professor asked after I had given a short sermon in a preaching class: “Kevin, you clearly have the text. My question is, does the text have you?”

How do you answer that question? How do you know?

Life, not the classroom. That’s how.

My second son was diagnosed with autism at 4 years old.

What do you do with that? Does the foundation hold? Do I really believe? Did I simply get over my rebellious phase and follow the path that a good firstborn child follows or did something capture me? I have asked myself that question a lot over the past decade. I have wondered in silence and loneliness—and very much out loud as well. I have had my doubts and defeats, stress and helplessness along the way.

I cannot fix this. Not by a long shot. I cannot fix it for my son or my wife or my other children. I cannot fix the past or the present or the future.

But I can trust. I can hope. And I have since the beginning, since the day that we first heard the word “autism” attached to Nathan’s name. The day I came face to face with the reality that I actually do believe this stuff—God has captured me. But the pressure remains. Autism hasn’t magically vanished.

I have all this training in the Bible and it can still be hard for me to catch a glimpse of what God is up to sometimes. Still its truth has worked its way down into my very soul. Sometimes in surprising ways. Like the day we first heard “autism” and I didn’t panic. Didn’t cry out, “Why me?” I was able to say, “That’s Nate.” Not because I am better or more spiritual or even just numb. But because I actually believe this stuff. I believe that God is who the Bible says he is. That he is for us. That he wants us. That he is big enough to take care of the things that we cannot see past.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God is alive and powerful.

I have known this all my life. I have caught glimpses along the way. But it took Nate’s diagnosis to truly open my eyes to just how powerful God’s Word really is. To open my eyes to the fact that this living word points me to the Word—the one who doesn’t just save me from or for some future moment but in the messiness of the here and now. In the mundane routines of life. In the expectations and failures and hopes and dreams and, yes, even in autism. This message has sunk down into me, however imperfectly. It matters.

That’s why I make Bibles. I want to help people to see what is going on in its pages, to drink deeply of its message and hear its call. Ken Taylor, who created The Living Bible and started Tyndale, was often asked what the best Bible was. His reply was always the same: “The one you read.”

It’s often easier for us to say we believe the Bible than to actually read it. We half remember Bible stories from our childhood (and would be shocked at what is really in—and not in—them), we struggle over hard names and wonder what the point of Leviticus is anyway. Sometimes it just feels too hard. Study is for people who went to seminary and who know Greek. It’s stuffy and boring and takes the mystery and wonder out of our faith. It doesn’t help when people like me with years of training are tempted to turn the Bible into a textbook. You know, the kind of book you are supposed to read but don’t? The kind that bewilders and puts you to sleep?

It doesn’t have to be that way. It shouldn’t be that way. The Word of God is alive and powerful. We need constant reminders. Nate has been one for me. But even so, it’s easy to get caught in the routine, the day to day.

For the past couple of years I have gotten to be a part of an amazing project. We started with Taylor’s simple premise and asked ourselves, what would it take for people to want to study the Bible?

Not textbook study. Love-letter study.

The kind of study that sinks down in so that when life happens we have an anchor, not an answer.

What if we used color and photography, images and art to open our eyes to what God is up to?

I got to be a part of a team that went through the entire Bible asking what we should (and could) illustrate well. I got to rediscover the wonder of this thing we call the Bible, watching firsthand as each of us caught a glimpse of the breadth and the depth of God’s love for us. Remembering that this is his world, that he invites us to be a part of it. He carries us home when we wander, tells the father of an autistic child that yes, he can handle this, too.

I want to help people understand what the Bible is all about. Because in all of my crazy, messed-up life, in all of my knowledge and doubt and fear and wonder, I believe it is true.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I also got a reminder that the process is never done. Every day I have to open my eyes in wonder.

Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions.

                                                                                  Ps. 119:18

Check out the Illustrated Study Bible

Kevin O’Brien is a nerd. A full-blown liked school, stayed there far too long, Dr. Who–loving, bookworm sort of nerd. Who also won the lottery when he married a former cheerleader. (Yes, it really can happen.) He also happens to love hockey enough that he married a Canadian former cheerleader. He is a father to three kids, an ordained minister who currently serves as an elder at his church in the far western suburbs of Chicago, and a brand manager on the Bible team at Tyndale House Publishers (which is a fancy way of saying he does product development and marketing all rolled into one). He served as managing editor for the Illustrated Study Bible.

This was originally written in 2016.

Starting February 1st join us as we experience God’s Word using the Africa Study Bible.

The Bible is a beautiful gift from God to the world. As we encounter and learn from our brothers and sisters around the world we are better able to understand who God is and how he is working in many nations and communities. This month we will journey into the Bible together using a reading plan from the Africa Study Bible.

The Africa Study Bible brings together 350 contributors from over 50 countries, providing a unique African perspective. It’s an all-in-one course in biblical content, theology, history, and culture, with special attention to the African context. Each feature was planned by African leaders to help readers grow strong in Jesus Christ by providing understanding and instruction on how to live a good and righteous life. Join us as we take another look at God’s Word through African eyes.

Sign up today

Learn more about our partners at Oasis International

The new year means it’s time to set your reading goal for the year. For many, this means setting out to read the entire Bible over the next 12 months. If this sounds like you, we have something that can help, The One Year Bible!

The One Year Bible divides the Bible text into 365 daily readings so you can read through the entire Bible in one year. The One Year Bible is available in a variety of formats and come in two types of reading plans: a canonical reading where each day includes a passage from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs and a chronological reading. Do you like to color or journal? There are also One Year Bibles with lightly-ruled wide margins, and some wide-margin editions include line-art.

You can learn more about The One Yer Bible here – click here.

Enter to win a copy of The One Year Bible NLT!

Here’s how you can enter to win:

• Fill out the Gleam form below.
• Sign-up for our “Read With Us” devotional to earn an extra entry.
• Pick which Bible you want to win.

(Entries open to U.S. residents only.)

One Year Bible Giveaway

Find out what our partners at the Institute for Bible Reading are talking about and visit ImmerseBible.com to learn more about the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. Read Part 6 of the 6 part series by Bible Scholar Glenn Paauw.

What does it mean to receive the Bible on its own terms? Dynamic, living Bible engagement happens when a community:

• has good access to a well-translated text presented in its natural literary forms,
• regularly feasts together on whole literary units understood in context,
• understands the overall story of the Bible as centered in Jesus, and
• accepts the invitation to take up its own role in God’s ongoing drama of restoration through
  the power of the Spirit.

When the Scriptures are received on their own terms like this they can once again become God’s speech act—instructing, revealing, convicting, judging, comforting, healing, and saving with all their intended power

Part 6: The Bible’s Endgame For Us: Living the Story

The first answer to the question What are we supposed to do with the Bible? is to read it well. For this to happen, it’s essential that we go there—into the world of the Bible. Reading big and reading whole will open up this strange new world of the Bible for us. We will have the opportunity to begin receiving the Bible on its own terms. We will read the Bible in all of its contexts—literary, canonical, historical, cultural—and we will read the Bible as God’s great story of the world. Clearly, this is what God had in mind when he decided to give us the kind of Bible he did.

The second answer to our central question, however, has to do with coming back again into our own lives in this present world. The point of the Bible must never be only about then. It must also be about now.

The Bible still speaks a living word for us, in our own time and place and situation.

But how? This is precisely where so many modern strategies for getting meaning from the Bible fall down, and fall badly. Fragmentary ways of reading (or maybe using, since they’re not really based on reading) lead to a fragmentary Bible, unable to do its main work of transforming lives. Reading the Bible as if it is speaking directly to us, as if it is not historical, cannot be the answer. Rather, the answer is in the story.

Or better, into the story.

Yes, that’s what the Bible is trying to do. The way we can most honor the Bible is by living its story in our own lives. In fact, we could say it’s actually the other way around. The Bible wants us to see our own lives as little parts of its own bigger, grander story. The Bible wants us to enter into this judging-then-restoring narrative and work alongside God in his new creation project in our time.

The Scriptures have a saving trajectory—through the world-transforming work of Messiah Jesus—reaching beyond the pages of the Bible into our time and place and beyond. Our job is to know the backstory of God’s decisive work inside and out so we can appropriately improvise it on our own stage.

Really? Improvise? Yes, improvise.

The Bible is not trying to be an instruction book speaking directly to every situation we encounter in our lives, telling us exactly what to do. The Bible tells us what God has already been doing in the world, preeminently in the life and ministry of Jesus. The more deeply we know this story, the more clearly we will know how to bring this story to life in our world today with our 21^st century problems and questions. It’s true that history changes, but it’s also true that a lot of things in our human condition stay the same. Sometimes we face challenges similar to those of God’s people in the Scriptures, and we can learn directly from what God told them and how they responded.

But overall, the Bible is not trying to be an answer book. The Bible is a story telling us that we can step into it as a living drama. We can activate the Bible in our own lives by performing it, enacting it anew, as God continues to bring his salvation into our world. Story invites our understanding and insight, while drama invites our faithful action.

So knowledgeably with God’s Scriptures, powerfully with God’s Spirit, prayerfully with God’s help, and together with God’s people, we can discern how to live out the story of God’s redemption. We can live a robust and active Christian life as a work of art, looking for ways to fittingly and faithfully continue the narrative of God’s restoration of the world. We can give beauty back to beauty’s Creator.

The final step of deep Bible engagement is found in discovering the Bible as this drama. We must begin to embody the story. To live it out so others can see our biblical performance and be drawn into its light. This is why it’s so devastating when God’s people perform the story badly. Those watching us are repulsed rather than attracted to the Bible and to the God found within the Bible.

Biblical performance matters. The skill of our biblical improvisation matters.

We of course cannot even begin to enact this story today if we are only barely familiar with the story that’s gone before. Immersion in the Bible is the only way we’ll be able to pull off fresh new extensions of God’s grand narrative in front of this watching world.

Immersion, leading to improvisation. A Bible well played. This is the endgame of engagement with God’s holy Scriptures.

For further reading, see: Scripture and the Authority of God by N. T. Wright; Improvisation by Samuel Wells; and Faith Speaking Understanding by Kevin Vanhoozer

 Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading