Virtue Training Bible {a review}

* I was blessed to receive a copy of this product for review. All of the thoughts and opinions expressed in this review were my own. I would never recommend a product I didn’t love and use for my own family.

How do you train your children to live out the godly character as it is described in the Bible? Do you chose to discipline after they show ungodly character? Or do you find it better to focus on how to display the godly character traits you are striving for before a problem happens?

We have found in our home that focusing on the good, rather than punishing after the behavior goes bad, is a much more effective approach. This is why I was so pleased to have the opportunity to review the Virtue Training Bible.

Putting this Bible together is the part that takes the longest time, but the pay-off is SO worth the time you put in! You are left with a resource that will be used over and over again. All you need to do is gather your list of needed supplies, grab a cup of coffee (or whatever your preferred beverage may be), and get to work marking and tabbing the Bible verses.

By the end of your work, your Bible will have 42 virtues labeled and ready for teaching. There is nothing better than training your children with scriptures straight from the Bible! Most of the virtues also list a person from the Bible that lives a life portraying the virtue. For example, the man best known for showing wisdom was Solomon. So you highlight the given scriptures for the story of Solomon and mark it with the appropriate tab. Then you can quickly locate it any time your children need to hear a story about having wisdom.

There are also prayers to lead you in praying for each virtue: one to the Father, one to Jesus, and one to the Holy Spirit. After the prayer a scripture is listed where you can find the inspiration for the prayer. So as you are teaching your children each virtue, you already have the opening to wonderful prayers to ask for these virtues!

And now I have a few pieces of advice for you when put your Virtue Training Bible together. Make absolutely sure the Bible you choose is big enough. The suggested size is 9″ x 6″…don’t go even 1/2 an inch smaller (ask me how I know:)! Also, make sure you don’t have toddlers with busy hands around you as you try to get this put together…they love the post-it tabs way too much! Another thing that was helpful for me (and this is just a personal preference) was to highlight around the whole scripture section, instead of underlining each line (see below).

I used a star to mark when there was a Biblical character that showed this virtue. It just made it easier for me to locate it. And because I am cheap :), I used the gray marker that came with the marker set for the light blue passages instead of buying an extra light blue highlighter. What can I say…every penny counts! It was different enough from the dark blue to distinguish it, and I still used the light blue tabs to mark it.

Also, as a way to distinguish the different marking of the Trinity (since all of them were marked with yellow tabs) I wrote an “F” on the yellow tab for the ones marking Father, a “J” on the ones for Jesus, and “HS” on the ones for the Holy Spirit. This just helped me to distinguish them a little more easily.

So what do we use this for? I have found it to be an excellent resource to use as we work on different character issues that come up in our house from time to time. When I see we are struggling with a certain virtue, we read some scriptures about it. This Bible makes it so easy for that to happen! Even I use this Bible for my own “training”. Yes, even moms struggle with sin from time to time:) So with my morning devotions I pray that God will reveal to me which virtue I need to focus on. Then I follow the scriptures, and prayerfully read them. This also makes me a lot more familiar with the scriptures for the times I need to use them to teach my children. We have so many great verses to use for Bible memory work now too!

This is really a resources I think every Christian home would benefit greatly from. It is very inexpensive, and once it is put together, it can last forever! I am so glad we have the Virtue Training Bible now. If you had a resource like this, how would you use it?