One of my favorite things is watching women develop a love for reading the bible. When the feelings of have to drop away and picking up their bible transforms into a get to it is the start of something beautiful.
The key to making this happen is…well you and I can’t make that happen. Any transformation that happens is the work of the Holy Spirit. That is pretty awesome to hear isn’t it. The transformation of the heart and the desire to pick up our bible comes from the Holy Spirit.
The transformation usually doesn’t fall from the sky like manna. God uses people sitting with each other in community, reading their bibles together, sharing insight, and writing books. We are not created to live in isolation. We are created to live in community. Reading our bibles is something we do in community.
Jen Wilkin has created a great resource Women of the Word. It is one of those tools given by God, through his people, to help transform our hearts and our minds.
Wilkin confronts the problematic ways we use our bibles. Chances are we have all fallen into one of these camps before. At times I can declare my bible reading a success if I feel better afterwards. This however is not always the case. The bible can be over whelming so I can use what Wilkin calls the pinball approach and just read whatever page I flip to. This leaves behind the necessary context of scripture. Life can get tricky and we can use our bibles like a magic eight ball to give us answers for what to do. As I said before the bible is a big book so we rely on the experts for all the answers. We spend all or most of or time reading about scripture instead of studying scripture. Or maybe we just avoid whole sections of scripture because they are not our favorite.
Wilkin provides a guide for how to study our bibles. The tool she provides does not make us rely on our emotions, circumstances, or outside knowledge but instead on what the bible actually says. What the bible talks about through the whole book is the fierce love Jesus has for us. When that is what we see in the pages we will want to pick our bibles up.
If you are looking for a way to study your bible other than flipping through the pages and relying on outside sources this book will provide a great one.
Loved In Spite of Self 