Women of the Word E-Book

Jen Wilkin

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 192

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A Trusted Guide to Help Women Study Scripture and Draw Nearer to God We all know it's important to study God's word. But sometimes it's hard to know where to start. What's more, a lack of time, emotionally driven approaches, and past frustrations can erode our resolve to keep growing in our knowledge of Scripture. How can we, as Christian women, keep our focus and sustain our passion when reading the Bible? With over 250,000 copies sold, Women of the Word has helped countless women with a clear and concise plan they can use every time they open their Bible. Featuring the same content as the first edition, now with added study questions at the end of each chapter, this book equips you to engage God's word in a way that trains your mind and transforms your heart. - Trusted Resource: With over 250,000 copies sold, this book has equipped countless women to engage deeply with Scripture  - Written by Jen Wilkin: A popular Bible teacher and conference speaker - Equips Women to Study Scripture: Outlines crucial components for studying the Bible, such as purpose, perspective, patience, and prayer - Supports Ministry and Discipleship: Offers practical guidance for women seeking to teach others about the Bible - Updated Edition with Questions for Reflection: Replaces ISBN 978-1-4335-4176-6

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“I have a passion for people to see and savor the God of the Bible, and a corresponding frustration when I see the hurt, loss, and lack of confidence that accompanies a lack of biblical literacy. That’s why I’m glad you are holding this book. Jen Wilkin takes knowing the God of the Bible seriously. She is one of the better Bible teachers I’ve had the opportunity to hear. Her approach in teaching people how to grow in their knowledge of the Scriptures is accessible and helpful regardless of whether you have been a Christian for decades and feel like it’s too late for you or you are a young believer who is hungry to know and understand the God of the Bible.”

Matt Chandler, Lead Pastor, The Village Church, Dallas, Texas; President, Acts 29 Church Planting Network

“I found Women of the Word to be so practical in the way it demystifies serious Bible study. Too many people—men and women—opt for just reading a few verses and hoping for some inspiration, rather than discovering the meaning of the text in the sweep of God’s redemptive plan. Women of the Word will help all who read it to find their way deeper into the Word of God without having to be seminary educated, a genius, or even an especially good student. My only caveat is that I wish the title didn’t make it hard for men to read . . . they need it, too.”

Kathy Keller, Assistant Director of Communications, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City, New York

“I’ve seen eyes misty with tears as women come to understand for the first time that the Bible is actually, literally God’s Word. What great mercy we have been shown—that the Creator who spoke everything that ever was into existence would give us his Word. Jen Wilkin knows this mercy in the core of her being. She has tasted and seen God’s goodness in his Word, and she doesn’t want a single woman to miss it. Read Women of the Word with your Bible open and your friends alongside you. Think of this book as a maître d’ of a Bible study banquet—have a seat, here are your utensils, dig in, and enjoy.”

Gloria Furman, author, Glimpses of Grace and Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full

“Jen lives what she teaches. Her servant heart in unpacking the Scriptures as well as her affection for the women she is teaching is evident the moment you meet her. I’m so glad she was obedient to the Lord’s call to write this book! It has served to clear the fog in my heart and mind when it comes to studying God’s Word, and I absolutely cannot wait to purchase many more copies for the women in my life who I know will love it too!”

Bethany Barnard, singer/songwriter

“This book responds to the feelings-driven, me-centered approach that has too often dominated our study of the Scriptures. Jen encourages women to grow in knowledge of the Word in order to know our Lord. She speaks out of her own joyful and growing experience of learning to dig in. May her voice be joined by many others!

Kathleen Nielson, author; speaker; Senior Adviser, The Gospel Coalition

“Reading the Bible can sometimes seem daunting. There are difficult passages, many interpretations, and often so little time to read thoroughly. Jen Wilkin recognizes this and provides tools to help us navigate it all. Women of the Word gives us a blueprint for Bible literacy. If we want to know the God we love, we must engage our minds and know his Word where he reveals himself. Wilkin’s tools may be new for some, but the effort will be worth the reward. Ultimately, it’s about seeing and savoring our Savior.”

Trillia Newbell, author, If God Is for Us; Fear and Faith; and United

“Jen Wilkin’s book is written with a winsomeness and warmth, which makes it easy to read. But she also writes with clarity of purpose that rightly pushes the reader to want to read God’s Word well. The bottom line: this book encourages women to know God better by developing good habits of reading his Word. Amen, sister!”

Jenny Salt, Dean of Students, Sydney Missionary and Bible College

“How can we go deeper than a little dabbling in the Bible for inspiration? Jen Wilkin shows us how in this must-read for every woman interested in teaching and leading Bible discussion groups in your church.”

Nancy Guthrie, author, Even Better Than Eden: Nine Ways the Bible’s Story Changes Everything about Your Story

Women of the Word

How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds

Jen Wilkin

Second Edition

Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds

Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Wilkin

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover image: Beth Rufener

First printing 2014

First printing of second edition 2019

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6714-8 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6717-9 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6715-5 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6716-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wilkin, Jen, 1969– author.

Title: Women of the word : how to study the Bible with both our hearts and our minds / Jen Wilkin.

Description: Second Edition. | Wheaton : Crossway, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019010899 (print) | LCCN 2019022068 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433567155 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433567162 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433567179 (epub) | ISBN 9781433567148 (tp)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible—Study and teaching. | Christian women—Religious life.

Classification: LCC BS600.3 (ebook) | LCC BS600.3 .W555 2019 (print) | DDC 220.071—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019010899

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2019-07-30 10:22:24 AM

To Jeff, who knows me best. You give me courage. Psalm 34:3

Contents

Foreword by Matt Chandler

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1  Turning Things Around

2  The Case for Bible Literacy

3  Study with Purpose

4  Study with Perspective

5  Study with Patience

6  Study with Process

7  Study with Prayer

8  Pulling It All Together

9  Help for Teachers

Conclusion: Seek His Face

Recommended Resources

Notes

Scripture Index

Foreword

When the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to believe, it was like being run over by a train. I fell in love with Jesus that night and have yet to get over it. But although my heart was aflame, my mind was empty. I asked hundreds of questions that night and in the following days.

In God’s gracious providence, he put a man in my life who was willing to teach me early on what the Bible was. This quote from Ed Clowney encapsulates what I learned in those early days:

There are great stories in the Bible . . . but it is possible to know Bible stories, yet miss the Bible story. . . . The Bible has a story line. It traces an unfolding drama. The story follows the history of Israel, but it does not begin there, nor does it contain what you would expect in a national history. . . . If we forget the story line, we cut the heart out of the Bible. Sunday school stories are then told as tamer stories of the Sunday comics, where Samson substitutes for Superman; David becomes a Hebrew version of Jack the Giant Killer. No, David is not a brave little boy who isn’t afraid of the big bad giant. He is the Lord’s anointed. . . . God chose David as a king after his own heart in order to prepare for David’s great Son, our Deliverer and Champion.”1

Over the last twenty years, the Holy Spirit has used the Scriptures to encourage me; rebuke me; shape my marriage, my parenting, my approach to money, and my outlook in the midst of tragedy; and to repeatedly draw my eyes to the One whom the Bible is about. I find in my heart a passion for people to see and savor the God of the Bible, and a corresponding frustration when I see the hurt, loss, and lack of confidence that accompanies a lack of biblical literacy.

Jen Wilkin takes knowing the God of the Bible seriously. She is one of the better Bible teachers I’ve had the opportunity to hear. Her approach in teaching men and women how to grow in their knowledge of the Scriptures is accessible and helpful regardless of whether you have been a Christian for decades and feel like it’s too late for you or you are a young believer who is hungry to know and understand the God of the Bible. The church as a whole must become people of the Word, and (don’t let the title fool you) this book provides the guidance we all need. So, that’s why I’m glad you are holding this book.

The five p’s of purpose, perspective, patience, process, and prayer covered in this book will serve you well in the days, weeks, and months ahead. I am confident that as you learn and practice Jen’s Bible study methods, you will be enthralled by both the Bible’s stories and its story, and you will be forever changed as you come to know the Hero of that story.

Christ is All,

Matt Chandler

Lead Pastor, The Village Church

President, Acts 29 Church Planting Network

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Collin Hansen and Dave DeWit for believing I had something to say, and for giving me a means to say it. You both knew I was a writer before I did.

To my faithful “freditors”—Lindsey Brittain, Kindra Grider, Lori Kuykendall, and Kristen Rabalais—thank you for reading all the clumsiest versions of my thoughts and gently helping me to be a better communicator. I value your edits, but I value your friendship more.

Emily Spalding and Sally Sturm, “free therapy” is a bit of an understatement. I love you both.

Tara Davis, thank you for giving me back the Oxford comma, and for untangling my sentences with patience and grace. Gloria Furman, you generously read my manuscript in the weeks after your fourth child’s arrival. I know firsthand you had other things to do, and your encouragement was a priceless gift.

Matt Chandler, you extended friendship and unqualified support of my ministry and message. Thank you for being my pastor. Kent Rabalais and Sara Lamb, your willingness to help me balance my role at The Village Church with my writing commitments kept me sane.

Matt, Mary Kate, Claire, and Calvin, you are my favorite children in the world. By giving me space to write and helping me keep our house standing you have partnered with me in ministry. Let’s not eat frozen lasagna for a while.

And to the women of Flower Mound Women’s Bible Study, whose hunger and thirst for righteousness has been an ongoing inspiration to keep my hand on the plow, thank you for sticking with me and for loving God with your minds. You are a precious weekly reminder that this work matters.

Introduction

How do you move a mountain?

One spoonful of dirt at a time.

Chinese proverb

This is a book about moving a mountain. The mountain is my own, though I admit that I overlooked its existence until I was in my twenties. I suspect it may be your mountain as well, but you’ll have to decide that for yourself. Unlike Pikes Peak or Kilimanjaro, this mountain does not immediately announce itself to our vision—it takes time to see. Thankfully, unlike a real mountain, this one can be moved. That’s a good thing, because there is something unspeakably beautiful to behold on the other side.

If there were such a thing as a church pedigree, mine would read “mixed breed.” I spent my childhood searching for a church to call home, following one or the other of my parents (who divorced when I was nine) to their current places of worship. I logged significant time in seven different denominations, during which I went to Sunday schools, vacation Bible schools, youth groups, and retreats. I was sprinkled as an infant and immersed as a teen. I sang hymns from hymnals set to organ music, and I sang praise songs from projection screens set to guitar music. I learned to raise my hands in worship, and I learned to keep them at my sides. I heard sermons read in monotones and sermons shouted with vigor. I learned the cadence of creeds and liturgies as well as the cadence of tambourines and dancing. I learned to have a “quiet time” and memorized numerous Bible verses to earn a free trip to summer camp. I learned how to share the gospel with my lost friends. I was a church kid—albeit a kid of many churches—and I could give answers to Sunday school questions that made my teachers beam with pride.

In college I continued my denominational travels, reading devotional books and attending Bible studies to fan the flames of my faith. By my senior year I had been asked to lead a study. But I carried a secret not uncommon to people with my background: I didn’t know my Bible. Sure, I knew parts of it—I remembered stories from vacation Bible school and I could quote verses from all over the New Testament and Psalms—but I didn’t know how the parts that I knew fit with each other, much less how they fit with the parts I didn’t know yet. Looming in my peripheral vision was a mountain of biblical ignorance that was just beginning to cause me concern. Though I treasured what I knew, I was growing troubled by what I did not know.

Spending time in all those different churches had taught me the worrying truth that all pastors had much to say, but not all pastors were saying the same things. Who was right? Was there a rapture or not? Did God have to answer our prayers if we prayed a certain way? Did I need to be baptized again? How old is the earth? Were Old Testament believers saved differently than New Testament believers? For the most part, my teachers sounded equally convincing. How could I know who was properly interpreting the Bible and who was teaching error? Learning firsthand the painful fallout of wrong teaching sparked in me a desire to know for myself what the Bible taught.

Marriage and motherhood increased my sense of urgency to learn, revealing how ill-equipped I was to fill those roles in God-honoring ways. But I didn’t know where to begin to fix the problem. It seemed beyond obvious that if God had given us his revealed will in the Bible, I should be spending more time trying to know and understand it. But the task seemed overwhelming. Where was I supposed to start? And why weren’t the things I was already doing making the problem discernibly better? How was I supposed to move the mountain of my biblical ignorance?

The answer, of course, was gloriously simple. The answer was “one spoonful at a time.” Thankfully, someone gave me a spoon.

I admit that I went to my first women’s Bible study looking for adult conversation and coffee cake, not necessarily in that order. The siren-call of free childcare was more than this young mother with a three-month-old could resist, so I went to get out of the house and get back into the land of the living. What I found was a thing of sweetness: a group of like-minded women to connect with in community, prayer, and study. What I found, though I didn’t know it at the time, was the beginning of a process that would transform me from student to teacher, leaving me lying awake in my bed at night plotting how to get more spoons into the hands of more women, praying that many mountains might be thrown into the sea.

This book intends to equip you with the best spoon I can offer. It intends to teach you not merely a doctrine, concept, or story line, but a study method that will allow you to open up the Bible on your own. It intends to challenge you to think and to grow, using tools accessible to all of us, whether we hold a high school diploma or a seminary degree, whether we have minutes or hours to give to it each day. This book intends to change the way you think about Bible study.

Perhaps your story is not like mine at all—perhaps you have spent your entire life in the same church or in no church at all. My guess is that you know the dim discomfort of living in the shadow of a mountain.

It has been said that we become what we behold. I believe there is nothing more transformative to our lives than beholding God in his Word. After all, how can we conform to the image of a God we have not beheld? On the other side of the mountain of my biblical ignorance was a vision of God high and lifted up, a vision stretching from Genesis to Revelation that I desperately needed to see. I have by no means removed that whole mountain from my line of sight, but I intend to go to my grave with dirt beneath my nails and a spoon clutched in my fist. I am determined that no mountain of biblical ignorance will keep me from seeing him as clearly as my seventy or eighty years on this earth will allow.

So this is a book for those who are ready to start digging. This is a book for those who are ready to face squarely the mountain of their fragmented understanding of Scripture, and brandishing a spoon, command it to move.

Questions for Reflection

1.  What is your church “pedigree”? How has your exposure to different churches (or lack thereof) shaped the way you view Bible study?

2.  How aware are you of your own need for greater Bible literacy? What events or experiences have raised your awareness of your need to know the Bible better?

3.  What experience have you had with false or poor teaching? How much of a role did ignorance of what the Bible says play into the teacher’s ability to spread error?

4.  How equipped do you feel to study the Bible on your own? What tools do you currently use when you study?

5.  What has been the greatest obstacle to your study efforts in the past? In your current life stage? What do you think could be an obstacle in the future?

1

Turning Things Around

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

2 Tim. 3:16–17

This is a book about equipping women through Bible study. Outside of my family, it’s the thing I care most about. But this hasn’t always been the case. Long before I had a passion for teaching the Bible, I had a deep and abiding passion for something else. Four-year-old-me had a passion for rhumba tights.

You remember rhumba tights—those tights for little girls made extra fancy by four rows of ruffled lace sewn across the seat? I absolutely loved them. I wore dresses to preschool every day so I could wear my special tights. When I ran out of dresses, undeterred, I crammed those tights under my jeans. Bulky? Yes. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. Beautiful? You know it.

I loved everything about them, except for one thing—the ruffles were in the back where the wearer could not enjoy seeing them. All that beautiful lace out of eyesight? Unacceptable. But a simple solution presented itself: I began wearing them backwards.

Problem solved. Until my mother caught on.

I don’t know if it was the heel section of the foot flopping out the top of my Mary Janes or the way my stomach bulged suspiciously beneath my skirt. Maybe it was the funny way I had to walk to keep them from falling down, or my frequent habit of twirling in front of mirrors. Let’s just say that wearing my rhumba tights backwards presented some coverage issues that wearing them correctly did not. My mother informed me that improper usage was not an option. Rhumba tights were made to be worn a particular way for a particular purpose, and I either needed to turn them around or give up the privilege of those four glorious rows of lace.

I wish I could say this was the only time in my life I got something backwards. It wasn’t. In fact, my passion for teaching women the Bible is actually the result of getting other things backwards as well. I want to tell you about two approaches I took to being equipped by Scripture that seemed right at the outset but were completely backwards.

It might seem that studying the Bible would be something we should know how to do intuitively. After all, if God discloses his will and character there, wouldn’t the Holy Spirit just open up its message to our hearts? But this is not the case. Yes, the Holy Spirit opens the Word to us, but not without some effort on our part.

Do you know that the word disciple means “learner”? As a disciple of Christ, you and I are called to learn, and learning requires effort. It also requires good study methods. We know this to be true of our schooling, but do we know it to be true of following Christ? Though I was a good student in school, I was not always a good student of the Word, and left to my own devices I probably would not have become one. But through the faithful teaching of others, my tendency to get a good thing backwards came to light. Turning around my two backwards approaches to Bible study started me toward a lifelong love of learning, applying, and teaching.