Women of the Word

 
Women of the Word Book Cover
 
 

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

“Disciple means ‘learner’ As a disciple of Christ, you and I are called to learn, and learning requires effort.”

“Sound Bible study transforms the heart by training the mind and it places God at the center of the story.”

I felt a little overwhelmed reading this book, but I think in a good way.

I grew up in the church, reading my Bible regularly. As you can see on my website, I’ve read and reviewed tons of devotionals and theology books. The Bible is very familiar to me.

And yet.

I’ve always been too intimidated to sit down with a book of the Bible and study it on my own with no commentaries or supplementary books. I feel a little embarrassed to say it. I know God’s Word is sufficient and accessible, but I’ve never been willing to take the time to try the types of methods of study as Jen describes in her book to try to understand the Bible for myself. I haven’t always want to put in the effort. And I felt convicted about that while reading this book.

First things first.

Jen Wilkin is by no means presenting this method of study as the ‘right’ or ‘only biblical’ way to study the Word. This is what she has found to be helpful and what she uses when she writes her Bible studies. I’ve done her 1 Peter and her Hebrews studies and though it was often hard, it was always good.

She also acknowledges the reality that we go through seasons of life where intense Bible study is not in the cards. This book is not an attempt to make anyone feel guilty about not doing enough or being a bad Christian.

I love that she says this:

“If a life stage is making it difficult for you to set aside regular time for study— either with a group or in your own personal efforts, please hear me say this: That’s okay. Give the Lord what you can and trust that he will honor your faithfulness in the small things. Trust that the Lord knows your circumstances better than you do and that he sees your desire to learn and grow. And trust that those times are being used to mature you— to teach you that it is a privilege to be able to devote yourself to learning and studying, and to write more deeply on your heart the truths you have already learned.”

I received this book a few years ago. If I had read it then, I would have definitely felt overwhelmed— though I shouldn’t have. The reality is that a few years ago my four kids were 5 and under. That’s not a recipe for an hour long quiet time with all the highlighters and meditation. That was a season for shorter devotionals or reading a chapter from the Bible here and there.

Now I am in a season where my youngest two will be at preschool every morning and my others are in full time school. I’m entering a season where I now have the time and mental capacity to try to tackle something deeper. I am thankful for that season but I understand how our Bible study times will fluctuate and change and look different from day to day or year to year.

You will have to read this book and evaluate your own season. If you find Jen’s writing to feel like it’s pushing you, do honest reflection. I think she does want to challenge readers and inspire them to dig into the word and not settle with things like the Jesus Calling devotional or habits of randomly opening up the Bible every day and hoping for something to make us feel better.

If we are followers of Christ we need to look like Him. How else can we know what he is like than by reading about Him and reading his very Word? To imitate someone, you have to make a study of them. An intentional study of them. And we should love to read his Word. It should fill us up and comfort us, yes, but it should also reveal hard truths and grow our discernment to detect lies and bad theology.

I know the temptation to ‘give ourselves grace’ when God is actually calling us to do something hard and time consuming. I crave answers and efficiency and I am often skipping devotional questions because I just don’t want to sit there and think about it too hard.

Only you can answer that question for yourself— are you in a season of life where God is calling you to study your Bible in a deeper way? Even if you don’t use Jen Wilkin’s method, find something else, but be obedient and faithful where God has you now. Like Jen said, wherever you are, give God what you can and keep looking for season-appropriate ways God is growing you and teaching you. No season should be without that!

It seemed like a lot of the negative reviews for this book had a similar theme of worrying this book would be a discouragement to readers so I just wanted to share all of that on the front end to hopefully help you read it with the right mindset. The heart behind this book is truly to light a fire in women to desire and love God’s Word and to grow in understanding to be more like Christ. To encourage women that you CAN do it.

So moving on.

I shared that my pitfall in studying Scripture is to always have a commentary or supplementary book at hand to help answer my questions or guide my reading. Jen called this the ‘telephone game’ bad habit. Her method is not about eliminating those great sources, but allowing yourself to wrestle with the text on your own first, before seeking those out. To force yourself delayed gratification and allow the learning process to work organically.

She lists some others off that you too, may find describe your pitfall: Xanax (the Bible is there to comfort me and make me feel better); Pinball (randomly opening the Bible and asking the Spirit to work through it); Magic 8 ball (easy answers to our questions); Personal shopper (focusing on topical, fragmented knowledge); and Jack sprat (pick and choose books or characters or stories or NT and avoid all others).

She’s not saying that the Bible can’t comfort us or that the Holy Spirit can’t speak through a single random verse or that it doesn’t have answers to our questions, what she is advocating in this book is Bible literacy.

Primarily reading the Bible with these habits don’t increase Bible literacy. She describes Bible literacy as “steadily moving toward knowledge and understanding of the text.”

“Bible literacy stitches patchwork knowledge into a seamless garment of understanding.”

Her method of Bible study details this journey towards Bible literacy with the 5 P’s:

  • Purpose (taking into account the metanarrative of the entire Bible- creation, fall, redemption, restoration; also looking at genre of the book you’re studying- law, poetry, narrative, etc.)

  • Perspective (there are five archaeological questions to ask that she does say to look up- who wrote it? to who? when? why? in what style?)

  • Patience (emphasis here is on being willing to get lost and trust the learning process and that it takes time to understand; it goes against the instant gratification we’re used to)

  • Process

    • This is where a bulk of the work lands. She explains it further in her book but it involves having a printed copy of the text that you can mark up, underline, write questions, and add in cross references. This part also involves paraphrasing, outlining the text, and looking up definitions.

    • There are three steps here: comprehension (what does it say?), interpretation (what does it mean?); application (how should this text change me?)

  • Prayer- “Prayer is what changes our study from the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of God himself”

“In short, if I never allow myself to get lost, I never allow the learning process to take its proper course. If I never fight for interpretation on my own, I might accept whatever interpretation I am given at face value. And that’s a dangerous route to drive.”

“We think that if the Bible would just tell us who we are and what we should do, then our insecurities, fears, and doubts would vanish. But our insecurities, fears, and doubts can never be vanished by the knowledge of who we are. They can only be banished by the knowledge of ‘I AM’”

A couple other notes on negative reviews.

One negative reviewer had concerns about her saying that “Not all contact with scripture builds Bible literacy”. Wilkin did say this in the book but the reviewer understood it to mean that Jen was saying that if our Scripture reading isn’t perfect, God can’t use it for our good. I don’t believe that is the intent behind this statement. I think she would agree that God can use imperfect Bible study for good. The key words in this statement is ‘Bible literacy.’ If we randomly open to a Psalm and read it and then go about our day, that’s not increasing Bible literacy because we didn’t ask any questions about it or seek to understand it. Can it still be encouraging? Yes! It just doesn’t really build our understanding of the Bible as a whole.

Another reviewer had concerns about the emphasis on the more academic aspect of learning instead of ‘heart learning’. Though I’m not entirely sure what the reviewer was trying to say, I don’t think Jen Wilkin believes this method of study is the only way we learn about God! The premise of the book is to help Christians to do the academic side of learning because that’s where we struggle to know what to do. We do need to learn about God and his truth in other more experiential ways, but that is beyond the scope of this book. I do think there is an important difference between ‘heart’ and ‘intellectual’ learning if the heart learning is outside of Scripture. Feelings and experiences are fallible. God’s Word is not. I still think understanding God’s Word should be our primary source of truth and knowledge about who God is. And like Jen says, our head knowledge turns into heart knowledge so our heart is connecting to God through the truths our heads learn.

Another reviewer was disappointed that this book didn’t get into Greek and Hebrew words or that it didn’t offer guidance on which commentaries were best. I do think there is another layer of study that I would be interested to learn but that feels a little next level than where this book needed to be. I do wish she would have included some recommendations for commentaries because I think there are a lot of people who are going to find the wrong ones. I’m thinking she wanted that to be part of the learning process— to look up multiple commentaries and to do the work of analyzing and seeing which ones are good or bad so that readers learn how to discern good theology from bad. And she probably didn’t want to pigeonhole anyone to thinking only these two commentaries are correct because of primacy bias. I don’t necessarily have a ‘go-to’ commentary, but a good place I would recommend to start would be to search on Crossway or The Gospel Coalition and find sources that either of those places reference or recommend.

All that to say, this book is not the end-all be-all for Bible study methodology nor the only information you’ll ever need to understand the Bible. It’s not trying to be. It’s an OPTION for studying your Bible. I know enough about Jen and her teaching to trust the heart behind this book and her heart in trying to teach people to study Scripture.

Take it or leave it, but don’t leave it if the alternative is not prioritizing your ability to understand God’s Word.

Recommendation

This review does not detail exactly how to do her method— you would need to read the book for that. Is it a method worthy of trying— I think yes.

Here’s where I’m at with it:

Because I’m in a more feasible season of life to attempt a more in-depth Bible study, I am planning to try her method for myself. There’s part of me that still feels scared about it and worried that I won’t know what I’m doing. But I plan to not set any sort of timeline on it— it takes me however long it takes me, I may not be able to do it every day and that’s okay. I also plan to start with a shorter book of the Bible like 2 Corinthians or something so it’s not like Genesis or Romans.

The worst that could happen is I finish my outline and paraphrasing and interpretation and then I look up some good commentaries and find out I missed something. And then I correct it. I still will have spent all that time in the word and trying it. I’m guessing there will still be growth!

I’ll try to update this review whenever I finish a book and let you know my thoughts on the back end if there is anything I would change or let you know how it went.

But on the front end, I would recommend reading this book and evaluating for yourself if now is the time for you to try it.

If you still feel too intimidated by it, then I would definitely recommend doing one of her published book studies. You’ll be doing her method but without having to do it all on your own. Plus some of them have video teaching to go along with it which is super helpful.

I can see how this book might feel especially overwhelming or intimidating for new believers. If you are a new believer and read this book and want to try the method, I would recommend finding another believer to do it with you. If you are a new believer and you read the book and you have no idea what to do or where to start, I would recommend finding someone to go through one of Wilkin’s Bible studies with you.

(You can also check out the You Can Handle Truth Book I linked below.)

I have listened to a lot from Jen Wilkin and read many of her books and I continue to grow a lot under her teaching and am thankful that she has spent so much time working to teach other women to become Bible literate.

You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.


 
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