Let's Bust a Recap : Women of the Word

Hi again! This is the second post this week for the second week in a row. Look at us go! Dare I say the blog is officially revived? I think I'm going to try to keep up this Monday/Thursday schedule until we're all caught up. But of course now that I've said it, you probably won't see another post around here for a month or so. (And if you're sitting there thinking, "There she goes, trying to hedge her bets"—you know me so well.) 

Anyway, today we're picking up another one of the books that's been sitting in my trusty book cart since I finished it last year: Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin. This Bible study aid published back in 2014 is Wilkin's first book and probably her most well-known. I know it's the one that has been recommended to me the most often. I read it over the course of two months last year—mid-August to mid-October—with three of my friends. This was a great book to read with company and there are helpful discussion questions at the end of each chapter for that exact purpose. 

Although I've had this book for several years and, as aforementioned, it's the Jen Wilkin book most often recommended to me, it's the one I've been most hesitant to read. I have long felt cautious about treating the Bible like a textbook or just another source of helpful information as opposed to what it actually is: the very Word of God to His people. Jen Wilkin's study method seemed intense to me (SPOILER ALERT: it is) which put it—in my mind—in the danger zone of making the Bible wholly academic. The perilous flip side of my own way of thinking is never studying the Bible at all. I certainly don't want to fall into that trap either. Jen Wilkin comes out swinging at the beginning of her book with the challenge that if we love God, we will want to know Him intimately. And the place we go to know Him is His Word. 

Touché, Jen. 

She also argues that you can't love something with your heart that you don't know with your mind.

Chalk another point up for Jen.

So right away she got me thinking and one of the conclusions I came to before even getting into the meat of the book is that if I say I love God with my heart, but I don't know Him—through His Word—with my mind, I'm prone to love a God of my own making, not the God who has actually revealed Himself to me in Scripture. 

All right then, Jen, let's get into it. 

She goes on to outline some common Bible study methods that aren't great, giving them amusing nicknames like The Pinball Approach, or The Magic 8-Ball Method, or The Personal Shopper. She then encourages her reader to take in the whole counsel of God. As a rule, tackle it expositionally rather than topically. 

Then she really gets into the nitty-gritty of Bible study. Some of this part of the book felt a bit like I was in an English Lit class, but it was a good review of how to read well. I appreciated her point that if we don't look at the context—Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? In what style was it written? Why was it written?—we are apt to misinterpret what we're reading. The Bible can't mean something to me that it didn't mean to its original audience. 

Although the process that Wilkin outlines and recommends is intensive and I have not used all of her methods; in reading Women of the Word I felt, if truth be told, affirmed in my own approach to Scripture. That is definitely not a credit to me. I'm very thankful that I was raised by parents who taught me the whole counsel of God—at home and from the pulpit—and encouraged me to read and study the Scriptures for myself. I particularly resonated with Wilkin's encouragement to treat Bible study like a savings account. Her advice is to keep reading and studying God's Word even when we don't understand it. Save that away. The Holy Spirit may illuminate a particularly tricky passage years later after we've read it hundreds of times. I know I've experienced this in my own study, and it was validating to hear her articulate my own experiences back to me.

She closes out her book with a chapter about teaching and common teaching pitfalls. I especially appreciated her warning about feminizing the Bible. It seems to be a trap that modern Christian writers can fall into and my radar is constantly up when I'm reading books by female authors I haven't encountered before. 

Ultimately though, I think the best thing Wilkin says in her entire book has to do with bathing our study of Scripture in prayer. 

"Without prayer, our study is nothing but an intellectual pursuit. With prayer, it is a means of communing with the Lord. Prayer is what changes our study from the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of God Himself."

Exactly right, Jen.  

You can read my reviews of the other Jen Wilkin books I've read here and here. How do you approach the Bible? Has your study of God's Word benefited from other books? And if yes, what books?