Awakening Faith: Daily Devotions from the Early Church by James Stuart Bell with Patrick J. Kelly

Awakening Faith: Daily Devotions from the Early Church

By James Stuart Bell with Patrick J. Kelly

(I received this book for review purposes.)

Genre- Religion / Christian Church / Leadership

Published by- Zondervan

Copyrighted- 2013

Number of pages- 176

Age Group- Adult

Description of book- hardback (ISBN: 978-0-310-49450-8, $18.99)

Are you looking for a new devotional for yourself or someone you know?  Awakening Faith, by James Stuart Bell, along with Patrick J. Kelly might be what you are looking for.

Awakening Faith contains 366 Scripture readings and devotions from some of the earliest Christian Church Fathers.  Bell and Kelly have updated the language to make the language easier to understand. 

Some of the Church Fathers include Patrick, Tatian, Ambrose, and Hippolytus.  In the back of the book is a list of the Scriptures and short biographies of the Church Fathers.

About the authors-

James Stuart Bell currently lives with his family near Chicago.  He has written, edited, or compiled more that 140 books.  He has worked at Doubleday and Moody Publishing.  He currently owns Whitestone Communications, Inc., a literary development agency.

Patrick J. Kelly currently lives near Chicago and has degrees in English, philosophy, and systematic theology.

My thoughts- I thought Awakening Faith, by James Stuart Bell and Patrick J. Kelly was an excellent resource and daily devotional.

I really liked that I could study the works of the Church Fathers from the first eight centuries.  I was especially appreciative of the fact that Bell and Kelly took the time to modernize the language.  I do have a degree in English with an emphasis in Old English, but the language has always been hard for me to understand easily.  The modern English language made the devotions a joy to study and I felt that I really began to understand how the Church Father’s thought and what their lives were like.

At the top of each page it listed the topic of the devotion.  I would have liked to see a list of those topics in the back of the book with the corresponding devotions.  I enjoyed reading the biographies of the Church Fathers.  I would have liked the section in the front though, so I could have learned about them before I read their writings.

Awakening Faith was an excellent book.  I highly recommend it to everyone who is looking for a new devotional.

Disclosure of Material Connection- I received Awakening Faith: Daily Devotions from the Early Church, by James Stuart Bell with Patrick J. Kelly, for free through Cross Focused Reviews.  I was not required to write a positive review.  The opinions I have expressed are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.  All links were current when posted.