From ‘The Chosen’ to the Bible: Lessons about God’s goodness that Amanda Jenkins learned

While Dallas Jenkins has created and directed the hit show “The Chosen” for the past several years, his wife Amanda Jenkins has been busy writing.

Amanda Jenkins along with Dallas Jenkins and Douglas Huffman released “God’s Goodness for the Chosen: An Interactive Bible Study” that focuses on Season 4 of the show. The book has quotes directly from the show and discusses ideas that come up in the episodes.

“All of our Bible studies go deeper into the show in the sense that we take the themes of each season and then we go to the Bible and we study those things from the Bible,” said Amanda Jenkins. Her writing process involves lot of quiet time along with prayer and Bible reading.

What is the Bible study about?

This most recent study is about the goodness of God, said Jenkins. “It’s interesting because we’re marching toward the cross in the show and we’re seeing Jesus’ suffering increase. We’re going to see the disciples suffering increase. And yet we have the benefit of knowing how it ends — that it ends in God’s pure and perfect and enormous goodness.”

Jenkins said her writing partner, Huffman, is someone she and Dallas Jenkins have known for many years — they met him when they were all in school at a Bible college.

Though the study is ultimately about God’s goodness, there is discussion of suffering and grief.

“The study was born out of just suffering,” said Jenkins, adding she was enduring personal struggles. “I had to learn how to suffer and some of the reasons behind God’s suffering, and ultimately, how God’s goodness eclipses our suffering.”

But Jenkins said the suffering provided on-the-job training for her. And she is still learning about another quality — gratitude.

“I think Christians are really good at skipping steps,” said Jenkins, explaining she said she doesn’t think people should skip over suffering. “Even right now, I want to answer better than what I’m about to answer — I’m not thankful for suffering yet fully, I’m thankful for a corner of it.”

Jenkins said we need to be patient in the process and gratitude will emerge in the process as God’s goodness will become more clear.

“When we’re grieving and we meet with (God) in our brief, not that we ourselves cure our brief, but that we just go to him in our grief, he becomes the comforter,” said Jenkins. The comfort can eclipse our grief because it’s bigger than us.

Jenkins said the trio turn to the Bible for inspiration when writing, including the sections on prayer.

“I think a lot of our inspiration is from Psalms,” she said, explaining David is a good teacher on prayer because he was full of laments. “I think we see in David’s prayers that we don’t have to pray pretty. We don’t have to polish up our words and then bring to the Lord.”

Anything can be brought to the Lord in an honest prayer, said Jenkins. “The heroes of the Bible that we see, that we portray in the show, are really flawed people, and again and again, we see Jesus meeting them with grace,” said Jenkins.

When asked what her favorite part of Season 4 was to meditate on and write about, Jenkins said she loved how mercy filled Jesus was.

“He was spending time preparing his disciples for the suffering ahead that would mostly be based on his own suffering,” said Jenkins, explaining Jesus experienced loneliness, betrayal and sadness.

God’s goodness is at the center, said Jenkins.

Though Jenkins said her family has not received the miraculous healing they would like to receive, God has expanded his presence.

“We received answers, but we haven’t received the ones we want,” said Jenkins. “But experiencing him in that, in his faithfulness, in his own grief, I really learned he’s grieving with us.”