Has Anyone Ever Seen God?

 
No one has ever seen the face of God, but we can be sure He is near.
Cheerful artwork with a modern whimsical style wraps around honest, easy-to-understand answers to your toughest questions about God, the creation, and the Bible. Has Anyone Ever Seen God? will inspire and offer comfort as you grow closer to God and gain a better understanding of his character, the world he created, and his Holy Bible. Also serves as a heartfelt gift of love and promise to those who are considering faith or are new believers.

“Has Anyone Ever Seen God?,” written by Carolyn Larsen and featuring cute illustrations by Amylee Weeks, answers 101 frequently asked questions about God.

The author breaks the book into three parts: questions and answers about God, about God’s world, and about the Bible. Each page features a common question, with its answer and a verse from the Bible applicable to that topic.

In the first section, questions include, among many others, who God is and what His character is, who Satan is, what sin is, why God allows bad people to succeed, where is God when terrible things happen, and why He sent Jesus into the world.

The second section focuses on topics like why and how did God create the world and mankind, the Garden of Eden, do animals have spirits, and our responsibility toward creation.

And the third sections tackles issues like the Bible and its importance, how to study the Bible, and Jesus and the gospels.

Overall, “Has Anyone Ever Seen God?” is a good, VERY BASIC introduction to many of the commonly asked questions about God and Christianity. Some of the answers are fairly generic, but this book offers a good overall synopsis — and it does it in a cute way with Weeks’ illustrations!

 Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.

Gratitude: A Prayer and Praise Coloring Journal

 

Gratitude: A Prayer and Praise Coloring Journal invites you to bring creative journaling and the calming act of coloring into your quiet time with God. This beautifully designed interactive prayer book from Tyndale’s Living Expressions collection helps guide your thoughts as you pray about concerns such as health, overcoming stress, personal relationships, and more. Gratitude gives you a way to celebrate and give thanks to God for the many blessings he provides. Filled with over 100 designs to color, plenty of space for journaling and sketching, and 40 needs-based prayers, Gratitude helps you express your devotion to God with your whole heart!

I was impressed with the beautiful feel of the book. It has a durable, beautiful cover that is thick and sturdy. Despite the hard cover the book opens easily to spread the pages flat for writing and coloring. Each page spread contains a short prayer, a related Bible verse in NLT, either lines for writing or a space for other artistic pursuits like making a collage, writing with more freedom for size/space, sketching, etc. AND a beautiful variety of areas to color in yourself. Some pages are just to be colored, some have places to write on. This book seems perfect for the journaling type interested in trying coloring or the coloring type who's interested in journaling.  The book is ready for whatever mood you are in, no pressure to do it page by page!

What I didn’t like - It’s a minor thing, but some pages have one picture covering both the right and left page so when you are coloring you can’t color well in the crease and the picture doesn’t quite line up. Also, some pages have parts of the picture colored in. I can see where some people might like this, but I would prefer to choose my own color pallets. 

What I liked - I found it is a good way to change up my quiet time with God. The pages have prayers on them and spaces for journaling. It is peaceful to sit and color and praise God for His character.

Overall, I find this book to be very inviting, warm, and its creative beauty welcomes a reader to the devotional experience it allows without making you feel like you'd need to be on a schedule or need to hurry through a lot of text. I think combining the ability to both journal or color will really help me to slow down and dwell on the prayer and Scripture.  I appreciate the thoughtfulness in the writing of the prayers. While the overall feeling of the journal is one of encouragement, love, and appreciation, there are prayers with sound doctrine that prompt us to consider our own sin, to be forgiving to others, and to look for opportunities to share the Gospel with others sprinkled throughout. It's not a pushy to-do list. It's a gentle reminder and encouragement to live out the faith we've stated we commit our lives to.

 I think it would make a great gift item for those times you want to give something tangible but just aren't sure what. This could be given at baby showers, graduations, to someone needing a get-well encouragement, as well as birthdays, holidays, etc. Everyone needs gratitude!

 Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.