How Self-Esteem Ruins Bible Reading

00:00:00.000 | We're joined one last time with our guest Jen Wilkin, a wife, mom, Bible teacher, and

00:00:09.320 | the author of the fabulous book, Women of the Word, How to Study the Bible with Both

00:00:14.040 | Our Hearts and Our Minds.

00:00:15.680 | Jen, you once tweeted this, "Women teachers, let's shift the emphasis from 'Girl, you're

00:00:22.760 | a precious daughter of the King' to 'Behold your King, lift up your eyes.'"

00:00:31.460 | That sounds like it's right at the heart of your whole aim of what you're trying to accomplish

00:00:34.840 | in equipping women to read their Bibles whole, cover to cover.

00:00:40.360 | So expound on that tweet for us.

00:00:42.360 | What were you getting at?

00:00:43.360 | So the number one topic that I'm asked to speak on when people invite me to come speak

00:00:49.040 | is identity, what is my identity in Christ?

00:00:53.320 | Women are consumed with, "Who am I?"

00:00:57.120 | And that's a valid question.

00:00:59.240 | That's probably the most basic question that any human being can ask.

00:01:02.480 | But the Bible is not silent on that question.

00:01:05.540 | It says that we are image bearers, we're created in the image of God.

00:01:09.240 | But we have a hard time understanding the implications of that.

00:01:11.640 | And not only that, but because we as humans are so inward focused, part of, I would say,

00:01:19.800 | the first step in becoming a child of God is recognizing that the center of the universe

00:01:28.120 | is Him, not us.

00:01:30.040 | And so I think that the reason the self-esteem messages that are common in women's circles

00:01:34.600 | don't stick to our ribs is because self-esteem detached from any idea of who God is, is just

00:01:42.480 | not a lasting message.

00:01:43.920 | It requires constant reaffirmation.

00:01:47.720 | But what we lack is a vision of God high and lifted up.

00:01:51.720 | That once we understand that the God who has thought relationship with us is a transcendent

00:01:56.360 | God, it rightly orients us first to Him, and then it rightly orients us to ourselves, and

00:02:02.040 | then it rightly orients us to our neighbor.

00:02:04.240 | It helps to get the order right for us to be able to live out the great commandment

00:02:08.760 | to love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

00:02:12.200 | It is accurate to say that our lack of self-love is prohibiting our love of neighbor.

00:02:21.080 | But the root problem is not that we don't love ourselves accurately.

00:02:26.040 | It's that we don't love God accurately.

00:02:28.400 | And when we begin to love Him the way that we should, then our self-love falls into the

00:02:33.720 | right category.

00:02:34.720 | We understand that we are accepted in Christ, that we have been given much grace, that God

00:02:41.440 | is faithful to His covenant, whether we are faithful or not.

00:02:44.080 | And all of these ideas, right thinking about God, then train us to love our neighbor from

00:02:50.840 | a place of graciousness, because we understand we're loved from a place of graciousness,

00:02:54.600 | and so on and so forth.

00:02:57.240 | The precious daughter of the king language is everywhere in Christian women's circles.

00:03:04.120 | And while I want to point it out and ask some questions about it, I don't want to diminish

00:03:10.080 | that it is a beautiful idea.

00:03:12.360 | I just want the idea to be framed within the beauty of who the king is, rather than some

00:03:18.840 | princess mentality, which I think we could all acknowledge has not done women any favors

00:03:23.680 | in any variety, whether it came from Disney or whether it came from fairy tales or you

00:03:29.760 | name it.

00:03:30.760 | We are precious daughters of the king, but it is because of the king's preciousness that

00:03:35.360 | we can understand the significance of that statement.

00:03:38.240 | That's a really good word.

00:03:40.320 | And I think this next question is related, or it seems to be to me, what would you say

00:03:45.160 | to Bible readers who on a regular basis open their Bibles with some felt need in their

00:03:51.040 | life and then they go and look for the one verse that applies to that felt need?

00:03:55.800 | It becomes almost a default way.

00:03:57.480 | I'm not saying it's wrong to do that on occasion, but this almost becomes the default way many

00:04:02.280 | people approach their Bibles.

00:04:03.660 | How do you address this pattern?

00:04:05.440 | I actually have a name for that method of Bible reading.

00:04:08.040 | I call it the Xanax approach to Scripture.

00:04:11.800 | And it's where I just want to medicate my feelings with the Bible.

00:04:16.960 | And so, you know, if I've had a week where I'm feeling anxious, then I'm obviously going

00:04:20.760 | to write Philippians 4, 6 on a note card, be anxious for nothing, but in all things

00:04:26.040 | through prayer and supplication, I'm going to write that down.

00:04:28.360 | I'm going to repeat it like an incantation over myself and ask the Lord to give me comfort

00:04:34.520 | around that.

00:04:35.640 | If I'm exhausted, I'm going to quote, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden."

00:04:42.000 | And even though that's actually about soul rest, not about physical rest, but that's

00:04:46.240 | not going to bother me because I'm just tired, man.

00:04:48.080 | I just need some answers.

00:04:49.080 | You know, if I and if I feel ugly, I mean, this is the one that the women, you know,

00:04:53.040 | when we make pink parts of the Bible, if I feel ugly or my pants don't fit, I'm going

00:04:58.160 | to go to Psalm 139 and tell myself that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made about 500 times.

00:05:03.880 | And so I'm not just going to self-medicate.

00:05:09.080 | When I find something like that, that I think hits me in a warm and fuzzy place, I'm going

00:05:13.400 | to begin dispensing medication to all of my friends via social media with these verses

00:05:18.240 | that I found.

00:05:19.600 | And I think the issue is that when we come to the Bible that way, we're asking the Bible

00:05:25.240 | to operate according to our terms rather than asking the God of the Bible to speak to us

00:05:32.640 | on His terms.

00:05:33.800 | So I don't know anyone who's having a bad week who looks up Jeremiah 17 9, "The heart

00:05:38.760 | is deceitful and desperately wicked.

00:05:40.240 | Who can know it?"

00:05:41.240 | There are plenty of passages in the Bible that don't deliver an immediate dose of emotional

00:05:45.280 | satisfaction to us, but they serve a very important formative purpose for us.

00:05:50.000 | So we end up when we read the Bible that way, we end up with spot knowledge of the Bible

00:05:55.840 | that is ultimately unhelpful, because we have picked only those passages that yield something

00:06:01.480 | to us immediately.

00:06:02.960 | You're never going to read the book of Leviticus if this is your approach to the Bible.

00:06:09.120 | You're never going to read Lamentations.

00:06:10.860 | You know, you're going to stick to the parts that give you what you think you need from

00:06:14.760 | the Bible rather than asking the God of the Bible to ministry to you through His word

00:06:20.120 | on His terms.

00:06:21.520 | That's brilliant and exactly right.

00:06:24.280 | Plenty of passages in the Bible don't deliver an immediate dose of emotional satisfaction

00:06:29.440 | to us, but they all serve an important formative purpose within us.

00:06:34.960 | So I'm tweeting that as soon as we're done, Jen.

00:06:37.700 | And our time is ending.

00:06:39.440 | What a wonderful week.

00:06:40.440 | Again, Jen's book, Women of the Word, four years old and has now sold 200,000 print copies.

00:06:47.520 | It's a book, but it's a book not for women only, as you like to tell men, just rip the

00:06:51.500 | cover off.

00:06:52.500 | Rip the cover off.

00:06:54.800 | That's right.

00:06:55.800 | That's all you got to do.

00:06:56.800 | You might have to Google rheumatites and just see what those are.

00:06:59.840 | But other than that, you should be fine.

00:07:01.480 | Well, whatever.

00:07:02.480 | I have no idea what those are.

00:07:04.480 | But this was an edifying week, Jen.

00:07:06.160 | Thank you.

00:07:07.160 | Thanks for having me on.

00:07:08.560 | That was Jen Wilken, grateful for her time over the past week.

00:07:12.240 | And next time on Wednesday, John Piper is back in the studio.

00:07:14.760 | We have a question from a listener who says she doesn't want to waste her life, but she

00:07:18.040 | also feels like she is only wasting her life because her life is trapped by unremitting

00:07:24.240 | fatigue.

00:07:25.240 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:07:27.360 | We'll see you on Wednesday with Pastor John.

00:07:29.680 | We'll see you then.

00:07:30.280 | [END]

00:07:30.780 | Pastor John, thank you so much for being here.

00:07:31.780 | We appreciate it.

00:07:32.780 | We appreciate you being here.

00:07:33.780 | I'm going to be a little bit more quiet, but we appreciate you being here.

00:07:34.780 | And we appreciate you being here.

00:07:35.780 | We appreciate you being here.

00:07:36.780 | And we appreciate you being here.

00:07:37.780 | We appreciate you being here.

00:07:38.780 | We appreciate you being here.

How Self-Esteem Ruins Bible Reading

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