Book Review – Help! My Bible is Alive!

Many Christians have the desire to dive more deeply into God’s word – not just reading, but really digging in and studying. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t ready, or able, to take a few years off from the other things we’re doing to attend Bible college. What is needed, then, is a basic but effective introduction to studying the Bible that can help ordinary Christians, those of us without a seminary education, unlock the Scriptures. Enter Nicole Unice, and Help! My Bible is Alive! 30 Days of Learning to Love and Understand God’s Word. I discovered this book as I was preparing to teach a class at my church in basic Bible study, and I was quite impressed.

The book explains what author Unice calls the Alive Method, which is, in large part, an adaptation of an introductory college textbook titled Grasping God’s Word, by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, as the author herself acknowledges. The method involves studying a small passage of Scripture by asking four questions: What does it say? What’s the backstory? What does it mean? And what does it mean for me? Over the course of thirty lessons, the book explains each step in simple terms; perhaps too simple for some readers, although the author’s lively writing style may keep them engaged anyway. Even a complete novice who completes the lessons in this book will learn enough to be able to do a very respectable job of studying God’s word.

The book begins by looking at why we should study the Bible. The author demolishes several common myths, such as “only super-Christians and crazy people hear from God” and “I can only understand if a Bible expert teaches me.” Following this, the main part of the book deals with the four questions, with five lessons being devoted to each one. Along the way, Unice teaches the reader how to find the key words in a Bible passage, how to use helps such as study Bibles, commentaries and Bible dictionaries, how to identify the main point of a passage, and how to move from understanding the Bible to applying it. The final section explains some of the major genres of literature found in the pages of Scripture: parable, poetry, narrative, wisdom and letters, and gives tips on how to deal with each of them. This is not a book to just read through, however. It’s only in doing the work of completing the exercises that the reader actually learns to study the Bible. Without that effort, the book will be of only limited value.

The thirty lessons are arranged in six groups of five. Although the intent is that they will be completed in thirty consecutive days, this arrangement also makes the book ideal for a six-week class, with five lessons to do at home each week. After each group of five lessons a reward, in the form of a pretty picture with a Bible verse on it, is “unlocked” – meaning that you now have the author’s permission to cut it out of the book and display it somewhere. Personally, I find this kind of hand-holding motivation slightly annoying, but clearly some people like it. In any case, it’s easy to ignore and does not in any way affect the usefulness of this book.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I discovered this book while I was preparing to teach a class in basic Bible study. That class, sadly, had to be cancelled due to a lack of response. But if, in the future, I ever do get a chance to teach that class, Help! My Bible is Alive! is definitely the text I will use. However, you don’t need to be in a class to get the full benefit from this book. All you really need is to commit to doing the exercises every day as you work through the thirty lessons.

Our generation today has more access to God’s word than any group of people in human history. Sadly, we have largely failed to take advantage of this incredible situation. Mark Twain is credited (perhaps incorrectly) with having once said, “the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read,” and this is just as true of the Bible as it is of anything else. This book by Nicole Unice can teach you the skills necessary to effectively study the Scriptures. But it’s what you do with those skills that will determine how much of a benefit you gain.