Every Woman's Bible Journaling Edition, Filament Enabled - Book - Page 26
1328
Theo s
IM AGE
MY STORY
WITH GOD
God’s Story Shows Us Our Own
SCRIPTURE CONNECTION: JOHN 5:31-47
The Bible is . . . a faithful declaration of the presence and holiness of God. We ask it to tell us
about ourselves, and all the while it is telling us about “I am.” . . . We must read and study the
Bible with our ears trained on hearing God’s declaration of himself.
Does this mean that the Bible has nothing to say to us about who we are? Not at all. . . .
The Bible does tell us who we are and what we should do, but it does so through the lens of
who God is. . . .
If I read the Bible looking for myself in the text before I
look for God there, I may indeed learn that I should not be
We answer “Who
selfish. I may even try harder not to be selfish. But until I see
am I?” by learning
my selfishness through the lens of the utter unselfishness of
God, I have not properly understood its sinfulness. The Bible
“Whose am I?”
is a book about God. . . .
In the New Testament, we find Jesus addressing the same
problem with the Jewish leaders . . . ([see] John 5:39-40). The Jewish leaders searched the
Scriptures asking the wrong question, looking for the wrong image to be revealed. . . .
If our reading of the Bible focuses our eyes on anyone other than God, we have gotten
backwards the transformation process. . . . We must turn around our habit of asking, “Who
am I?” We must first ask, “What does this passage teach me about God?”
IMAGINE
JEN WILKIN Taken from
Women of the Word: How
to Study the Bible with
Both Our Hearts and Our
Minds by Jen Wilkin, ©
2014 pp. 26-27. Used by
permission of Crossway, a
publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers,
Wheaton, IL 60187,
www.crossway.org.
How might we read the
Bible to know God better
first?
So many books promise
self-help, but the Bible says
God is our help. How can
this lighten our load to live
as though it is not up to us
but up to God?
“A vision of God high and
lifted up reveals to me
my sin and increases
my love for him. . . . And
I begin to be conformed
to the image of the One
I behold.”
