We're joined one last time with our guest Jen Wilkin, a wife, mom, Bible teacher, and the author of the fabulous book, Women of the Word, How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds. Jen, you once tweeted this, "Women teachers, let's shift the emphasis from 'Girl, you're a precious daughter of the King' to 'Behold your King, lift up your eyes.'" That sounds like it's right at the heart of your whole aim of what you're trying to accomplish in equipping women to read their Bibles whole, cover to cover.

So expound on that tweet for us. What were you getting at? So the number one topic that I'm asked to speak on when people invite me to come speak is identity, what is my identity in Christ? Women are consumed with, "Who am I?" And that's a valid question. That's probably the most basic question that any human being can ask.

But the Bible is not silent on that question. It says that we are image bearers, we're created in the image of God. But we have a hard time understanding the implications of that. And not only that, but because we as humans are so inward focused, part of, I would say, the first step in becoming a child of God is recognizing that the center of the universe is Him, not us.

And so I think that the reason the self-esteem messages that are common in women's circles don't stick to our ribs is because self-esteem detached from any idea of who God is, is just not a lasting message. It requires constant reaffirmation. But what we lack is a vision of God high and lifted up.

That once we understand that the God who has thought relationship with us is a transcendent God, it rightly orients us first to Him, and then it rightly orients us to ourselves, and then it rightly orients us to our neighbor. It helps to get the order right for us to be able to live out the great commandment to love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

It is accurate to say that our lack of self-love is prohibiting our love of neighbor. But the root problem is not that we don't love ourselves accurately. It's that we don't love God accurately. And when we begin to love Him the way that we should, then our self-love falls into the right category.

We understand that we are accepted in Christ, that we have been given much grace, that God is faithful to His covenant, whether we are faithful or not. And all of these ideas, right thinking about God, then train us to love our neighbor from a place of graciousness, because we understand we're loved from a place of graciousness, and so on and so forth.

The precious daughter of the king language is everywhere in Christian women's circles. And while I want to point it out and ask some questions about it, I don't want to diminish that it is a beautiful idea. I just want the idea to be framed within the beauty of who the king is, rather than some princess mentality, which I think we could all acknowledge has not done women any favors in any variety, whether it came from Disney or whether it came from fairy tales or you name it.

We are precious daughters of the king, but it is because of the king's preciousness that we can understand the significance of that statement. That's a really good word. And I think this next question is related, or it seems to be to me, what would you say to Bible readers who on a regular basis open their Bibles with some felt need in their life and then they go and look for the one verse that applies to that felt need?

It becomes almost a default way. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that on occasion, but this almost becomes the default way many people approach their Bibles. How do you address this pattern? I actually have a name for that method of Bible reading. I call it the Xanax approach to Scripture.

And it's where I just want to medicate my feelings with the Bible. And so, you know, if I've had a week where I'm feeling anxious, then I'm obviously going to write Philippians 4, 6 on a note card, be anxious for nothing, but in all things through prayer and supplication, I'm going to write that down.

I'm going to repeat it like an incantation over myself and ask the Lord to give me comfort around that. If I'm exhausted, I'm going to quote, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden." And even though that's actually about soul rest, not about physical rest, but that's not going to bother me because I'm just tired, man.

I just need some answers. You know, if I and if I feel ugly, I mean, this is the one that the women, you know, when we make pink parts of the Bible, if I feel ugly or my pants don't fit, I'm going to go to Psalm 139 and tell myself that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made about 500 times.

And so I'm not just going to self-medicate. When I find something like that, that I think hits me in a warm and fuzzy place, I'm going to begin dispensing medication to all of my friends via social media with these verses that I found. And I think the issue is that when we come to the Bible that way, we're asking the Bible to operate according to our terms rather than asking the God of the Bible to speak to us on His terms.

So I don't know anyone who's having a bad week who looks up Jeremiah 17 9, "The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" There are plenty of passages in the Bible that don't deliver an immediate dose of emotional satisfaction to us, but they serve a very important formative purpose for us.

So we end up when we read the Bible that way, we end up with spot knowledge of the Bible that is ultimately unhelpful, because we have picked only those passages that yield something to us immediately. You're never going to read the book of Leviticus if this is your approach to the Bible.

You're never going to read Lamentations. You know, you're going to stick to the parts that give you what you think you need from the Bible rather than asking the God of the Bible to ministry to you through His word on His terms. That's brilliant and exactly right. Plenty of passages in the Bible don't deliver an immediate dose of emotional satisfaction to us, but they all serve an important formative purpose within us.

So I'm tweeting that as soon as we're done, Jen. And our time is ending. What a wonderful week. Again, Jen's book, Women of the Word, four years old and has now sold 200,000 print copies. It's a book, but it's a book not for women only, as you like to tell men, just rip the cover off.

Rip the cover off. That's right. That's all you got to do. You might have to Google rheumatites and just see what those are. But other than that, you should be fine. Well, whatever. I have no idea what those are. But this was an edifying week, Jen. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

That was Jen Wilken, grateful for her time over the past week. And next time on Wednesday, John Piper is back in the studio. We have a question from a listener who says she doesn't want to waste her life, but she also feels like she is only wasting her life because her life is trapped by unremitting fatigue.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Wednesday with Pastor John. We'll see you then. Pastor John, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. We appreciate you being here. I'm going to be a little bit more quiet, but we appreciate you being here. And we appreciate you being here.

We appreciate you being here. And we appreciate you being here. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate you being here.