Jessie North’s Intimacy with Jesus (Cultivating Holy Beauty #1)
Description
A personal relationship with God is key to the Christian life – but how do you get one?
Jessie North had come to know Christ, but it wasn’t until over 10 years later that she actually fell in love with Him. Now, she invites you to become a disciple of Jesus, deepen your relationship with Him, and fall in love with the creator of the universe. Weekly lessons are pointed and filled with encouragement and guidance on how to study scripture, providing tools to both new Christians as well as those who have been in the Church all their lives.
Disclosure
I received this book for free as part of a bible study group in our Church, it was provided for my personal use. There was no agreement with the author, publisher, or any third party that I would publish a review. The following review is unsolicited, unbiased, and all opinions are my own.
Review – Spoiler Free
This study is designed for weekly group meetings – one lesson a week for 8 weeks. It has content specifically for the group leaders as well as group participants. Lessons generally begin with a story, move into application questions regarding the story, and then to the core of what the lesson will teach.
It is easy to follow and, with the included Leader content, anyone in the group can step in to lead. This makes it flexible for groups when the leader may be unable to attend, or when all the participants are in similar levels of their Christian walk and can choose who wants to lead when.
My favorite thing about this study is that it taught some basics of studying scripture that I hadn’t learned before, It’s like a 101 crash course in scripture study and memorization. For someone young in their faith, it’s starting them out with a good step. For those who have been in a Church their whole life, it’s a good, intentional look at how you study scripture – do you just read it, or do you strive to understand it?
There is a lot in here, it could be really helpful, or really intimidating. While it taught great practices for deepening or beginning your study of the Bible, it also asks for a lot – weekly verse memorization, four or more weekly quiet times, reading the lesson before attending meetings, among other things. It could be very easy to look at these things and put the book down completely because that’s a lot of time commitment. North argues that we are talking about your personal relationship with God, and that that should be a priority in your life regardless of the time it takes. This is all well and good, but just because something is true, doesn’t make is any less difficult in practice.
If you’re having difficulties with the time commitment, take it one step at a time and remember: progress over perfection, grace over guilt. Aim to learn what you can and apply it how you can, working your way up to all that this book asks you to do.
This book also has a lot of repetition … and bullet points. It doesn’t take away from the lessons, and is mainly because the lesson openings and closings are pretty similar in each lesson. It’s just something that irks me.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I didn’t feel like it was particularly challenging or deep diving, and I mainly took Biblical study strategies from it. I can see it being a great resource for those looking to begin getting into studying the Bible better. I’ll be keeping my copy mainly for reference, and I’ll be working through book 2 soon as the bible study group moves on to that next.
Quote
“You are more likely to fail at taking your relationship with God to the next level if you do not set aside purposeful time for growing your relationship with Him.”
Intimacy with Jesus, Jessie North
Ratings
- Quality of Writing – 3
- Insightfulness – 3
- Ease of Reading – 5
- Ease of Application – 5
- Overall Enjoyment – 3
- Final Rating – 4 (Actual: 3.8) – Really Liked It
Want to learn more about the numbers I use for rating, and the qualities I’m thinking about when writing a book review? Check out my post How I Rate and Review.