The Chosen Book Three: 40 Days with Jesus is the third devotional tied to the television series, published by BroadStreet. It is written by Amanda Jenkins, Kristen Hendricks and Dallas Jenkins, and Amanda Jenkins carries the bulk of the writing.
That matters because this page previously credited Dallas Jenkins alone. He is the show’s creator and director and the recognisable name, but he is the third author listed on the cover, and the voice you are reading for forty days is largely Amanda’s.
How it works
Forty entries, each anchored to a moment from season three of the show and the Gospel passage behind it. Every day gives you the Scripture, a reflection on the Gospel story, a prompt for prayer, and questions meant to be answered rather than admired.
The pairing with the series is the whole point and also the honest catch: the devotional assumes you have watched season three. Read cold, without the episodes, a good number of entries reference scenes you have not seen. It is not unusable on its own, but you are getting maybe two thirds of what it was built to do.
One thing this page had wrong
This was previously sold as a men’s brotherhood resource, with a description of how it builds accountability between men. It is not a men’s book. There is nothing in it addressed to men specifically. It is a general-audience devotional for anyone watching the show, and the majority of its readers are women.
That does not make it a bad fit for a men’s group. It makes it a general devotional that a men’s group could use, which is a different claim and the honest one.
What it does well
The best entries take a familiar Gospel scene and slow it down to the human speed the show is good at, then ask what you would actually have done standing there. Amanda Jenkins writes with a plainness that avoids the two failure modes of devotional writing: she does not moralise, and she does not disappear into feeling.
It is also genuinely short. Ten minutes a day, forty days, and the questions are specific enough to be worth writing answers to.
Limitations
The show is a dramatisation, and it invents dialogue, characters and backstory that are not in Scripture. The devotional is careful about this and repeatedly points back to the text, but a reader should keep the line clear in his own head. The Chosen’s Matthew is a character. The Gospel’s Matthew is a source.
Depth is limited by design. Forty short entries cannot do much theological work, and if you want to study a Gospel rather than be moved by it, this is not the tool.
Who should read it
Someone who has watched season three and wants to sit with it rather than move straight to the next thing. It also works well as a first devotional for a man who has never kept one, because the show gives him a reason to come back on day nine when motivation runs out.
The Chosen Book Three: 40 Days with Jesus on Amazon