I remember the first time I studied a Bible book. It was two years after I was saved, and I felt a burden to abandon my superficial readings to dig deeper into the Word. Never having received training in Bible study, I made a few mistakes that hindered my progress. The most detrimental one was treating the Bible as a manual about me instead of a story about Jesus. It is an error Jen Wilkin and I share.
She spent years studying the Bible backward before learning how to handle the Word of God rightly. And she wrote Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Minds to teach women to do the same.
She said, “This book intends to teach you not merely a doctrine, concept, or storyline, 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.”
Though Women of the Word will benefit all genders, its primary audience is women. That’s probably because of the disastrous state of women’s ministries. Most female Bible teachers today emphasize emotion over logic and self over Christ. Studies always revolved around our feelings, what we should do, our identity, what Scriptures meant to us, etc. This is wrong because the Bible is not about us, and our minds, not our hearts, must guide our studies.
This realization encouraged Wilkin to develop a framework for an efficient Bible study in what she calls the Five Ps of Sound Study. A technique designed to help women grow in biblical literacy and consequently in their knowledge of God.
The five Ps stand for purpose, perspective, patience, process, and prayer, and Wilkin expounds on each of these elements in five chapters featuring illustrations in using them. She concludes the book with a sample of the five Ps in action and useful pieces of advice for aspiring female Bible teachers.
Women of the Word has many strengths. The most notable one is that it teaches us how to feed ourselves from the Word. Many female teachers write studies that spoonfeed us and make us depend on the milk they give us. But a mark of spiritual growth is graduating from milk to solid food, and Wilkin provides us with spoons to feed ourselves. She gives several helpful information not only to study God’s Word rightly but also to deepen our love for it.
The five Ps method is straightforward and easy to apply. It doesn’t overwhelm you with advanced techniques like reading different genres of the Bible, or word studies in the original language. Depending on your needs, it could be a drawback or an advantage.
If you have taken a hermeneutics class before, you might be familiar with several of the things she mentions in the book. But you will still benefit from it. I got many wonderful insights from her book, particularly the prayer section. I loved how she used the ACTS model of prayer and applied it before, during, and after study. It encouraged me to saturate my time in the Word with prayer, not just a few words at the beginning.
Reading Women of the Word motivated me in my current study of Genesis and made me consider new things during study time. It’s a book that will benefit any woman looking to grow in her knowledge of the Bible. I highly recommend it!
Favorite Quotes
The knowledge of God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand. In fact, there can be no true knowledge of self apart from the knowledge of God. He is the only reference point that is reliable.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
Any study of the Bible that seeks to establish our identity without first proclaiming God’s identity will render partial and limited help.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
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.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
The heart cannot love what the mind does not know… We must love God with our minds, allowing our intellect to inform our emotions, rather than the other way around.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
Bible literacy matters because it protects us from falling into error. Both the false teacher and the secular humanist rely on biblical ignorance for their message to take root, and the modern church has proven fertile ground for those messages.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
A well-rounded approach to Bible study recognizes that the Bible is always more concerned with the decision-maker than with the decision itself. Its aim is to change our hearts so that we desire what God desires, rather than to spoonfeed us answers to every decision in life.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
We can’t fully appreciate the sweetness of the New Testament without the savory of the Old Testament.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
The God of the Bible is too lovely to abandon for lesser pursuits.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
Our study of the Bible is only beneficial insofar as it increases our love for the God it proclaims. Bible study is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It is a means to love God more, and to live differently because we have learned to behold him better. And it is a means to become what we behold.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
If we want to feel a deeper love for God, we must learn to see him more clearly for who he is. If we want to feel deeply about God, we must learn to think deeply about God.
Jen Wilkin, Women of the Word
