Books: Biblical characters to learn from

DAVID ADAMS reads Max Lucado’s ‘They Walked With God’…

Max Lucado
They Walked with God: 40 Bible Characters Who Inspire Us 
Thomas Nelson, US, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-785294597

This hefty coffee table book features, as the title suggests, the stories of some 40 characters who appear in the pages of the Bible but who, more importantly, have had God “edit their story” as author Max Lucado puts it.

“For every person,  Scripture has a story,” Lucado writes in the introduction. “For every problem, God has a promise. For each occasion when we feel our story is coming undone, God steps in with a message: ‘Just trust me. I’m the author and the finisher of your life!'”

Those who appear in the book, arranged in alphabetical author, range from very well-known Bible characters such as Noah, David and Paul through to those whose stories are much lesser known – the likes of Abigail, Mephibosheth and Sapphira.

This is not a hard-core biographical read, but rather a text which reflects very deliberately on what we can learn from the lives of those included. And to do so this means Lucado often focuses on a specific part of the life of the person included – in the story of Mary, Mother of Christ, for example, the focus is largely kept to the period around the birth of Christ.

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In keeping with Lucado’s usual style, the book provides a refreshing take even on those characters we feel we know well – there’s a rather humourous passage for example as Lucado images Matthew, the tax collector (or Matt as Lucado refers to him), preparing for a party after his encounter with Jesus and a beautiful reimagining of what Joseph was thinking after as his wife Mary was giving birth to Jesus in Bethlehem.

Lucado takes you inside the stories in a way you may not have before and, as is his wont, he also references stories from his own experiences to draw out what he sees as the essential elements of each the stories included.

This is a book to be read on conjunction with the Bible – Lucado starts each reflection by pointing the reader to a relevant Biblical text – and at the end of each of the stories are some questions for reflection and discussion and space to make some notes (meaning this could well be something read in a small group context or used as a daily devotion).

An interesting and, yes, inspiring read, Lucado’s They Walked With God provides an incisive way to directly access the stories of the people whose lives God transformed in the pages of Scripture and is a great encouragement to further study of God’s Word.