Latest / How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack / Jen Wilkin on Biblical Literacy, Womanhood, and Ministry... PLUS SO MUCH MORE!

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Jen Wilkin on Biblical Literacy, Womanhood, and Ministry... PLUS SO MUCH MORE! · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life of faith, from everything from books to Bible studies, even Bible study tips, this is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian walk.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've subscribed to this podcast and your favorite podcast streaming services.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Review this podcast so other people can find it and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with all that said, let's begin.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hi friends, welcome to the How to Faith a Life podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have a wonderful guest, Miss Jen Wilkin.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Jen is an author and Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: She has organized and led studies for women in home, church, and parachurch contexts, an advocate for Bible literacy.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Her passion is to see others become articulate and committed followers of Christ with a clear understanding of why they believe what they believe, grounded in the Word of God.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can find her at jenwilken.net.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jen, you know, I love your work.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've loved Women of the Word and talked about it a lot on my channel.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to read You Are a Theologian, which your publicist sent me, and I'm so excited.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I would love to hear more about your heart behind Women of the Word and then You Are Theologian.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Did they kind of feed into each other?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, first of all, thanks for having me on.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thrilled to get to be a part of this conversation with you today.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm glad to know we're both we're practically neighbors.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're in the same area, so that's kind of fun.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I started caring about the Bible literacy crisis probably uh about 25 years ago.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was leading in my local church, and I would say that both of these books are born out of being a local church practitioner.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm someone who is probably like a lot of your listeners.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just, you know, wanted to serve in my local church and meet a need.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started uh leading our women's ministry at the church I was at in Houston before we moved up to the Dallas area and um became aware that what we were offering women in the Bible study context was not always Bible study.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was um it was devotional content or it was people were reading books and discussing books.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like those are not bad practices, but when that's the vast majority of what you're offering, and and also when it's sort of targeted more at a feelings level than at a thinking level, then um you end up with women who may have attended something called a Bible study for years and years who who still don't know the Bible.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that was becoming increasingly obvious to me in the spaces that I was responsible for, and I felt responsible for them.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh started writing uh studies that were building literacy.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: I have an English degree, that's my formal theological training, which means I don't have formal theological training, but I applied the English degree to the Bible setting to begin to help people just know how to read the Bible better.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'd say about eight years ago, nine years ago, I bumped into JT English at my local church here in Dallas.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: And JT is a he's a formally trained theologian.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: He has a PhD in Trinitarian theology.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: He knows more about theology than I ever will.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and our worlds began to intersect.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: He he had a great concern for the theological literacy crisis in the local church.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the more that he and I uh worked together, the more it became apparent to me that um as much as Bible literacy matters, theological literacy is its twin.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: We need both of those things functioning in the church.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't that I wasn't aware that we needed good the theological training, it was just that as a honestly as a woman in the church, I had never had access to it.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I just thought I'm gonna keep slogging away over here with the tools I do have.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then with with JT as my colleague, I began to have access to rooms and conversations and books that I didn't even know about.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and we were kind of off to the races.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've touched on similar things in my circles online, and it's shocking to me how often I hear um any kind of intellectual practice with the Bible or with your faith being posed against the spiritual emotional.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And like we like you already touched on, we don't want it to be just emotional, but it's also not emotional less when you're right studying theology or the storyline of the Bible or the themes and the theology behind the Bible, you know.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, have you gotten that kind of criticism or felt that tension?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's why the subtitle of Women of the Word is How to Study the Bible with both our both our hearts and our minds.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because in my experience, our intellect has been pitted against our emotions.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, we're called to be whole people.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a saying that all theology should lead to doxology.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, all study or knowledge of God should lead to worship.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so historically in the church, there's always been recognition for the last 2,000 years that when we know who God is, we love God for who he is, and the result is worship.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I think that in a we're in a therapeutic age.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um the the everything around us is supposed to make us feel a particular way, and and too often our faith has been co-opted by the therapeutic messaging, and so we think of faith as feeling instead of faith as something that is a product of sound thinking and reasoning.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in fact, even you know, an emphasis, a lot of times the emphasis on the way the spirit works, um, we think that the spirit is in touch with our feelings and that our mind will inhibit our ability to hear from the spirit.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so n none of the church fathers would have thought that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, none of none of the people who were careful to guard the good deposit that was handed to them from the first century to the second century to the third century would have said that at all.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's gotten lost somewhere in the last 40 or 50 years uh here in the United States where we think that our faith is about how we feel, and we think that the most important aspect of our faith is our personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: So the emphasis on the personal and the therapeutic, I think, has robbed us of the life of the mind and of the shared understanding that the church has built over 2,000 years of what it means to be a Christian.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: On that note, why do you think there's an extra emphasis in women's ministries and women's Bible studies on just the feelings?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like you mentioned, there's a definite disparity there.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think some of it is out of uh necessity because we have not always had access to thinking conversations.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that has been too often viewed as the the domain of men.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you pick up most commentaries, they're written by men.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in in in my tradition, and I would imagine yours as well, pastors are men.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so um it can mean that if we're not careful, we forget that the priesthood of believers involves men and women serving in the church with the with the full expression of loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that a lot of the the messages around, hey, actually you have a brain too, women, they get lumped into that that label we put on anything that feels unfamiliar.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: They get called feminism, uh, as though women are more emotional and men are more rational.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't I I have a hard time with that because I feel like have you never watched a sporting event with a with a man who lobs the remote at the TV?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, men have emotions, like they're not emotionless, you know, they may process them differently.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, men have feelings and uh and women have brains.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so while we might set up an all-female study space a little different than we would an all-male study space, I think that that could be valid.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it doesn't mean that women are not meant to think hard about the things of God.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I also am not saying that we should only have all female spaces and all male spaces for that to happen.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: We need we need both kinds of spaces.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't talked to you about this, but I have openly struggled a lot online, very openly um with my wrestlings with growing up in complementarian circles, being married to a complementarian, you know, being taught at Covenant and Erskine with very complimentarian um professors, and then struggling with, okay, but they took my money and gave me a degree, and then how do what do I do with it?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you've touched on that a little bit, and I love how you walk the line of we're still honoring the fact that, like, you know, women don't need to be shepherds in the church or ordained ministers to still have a valuable role in the church.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, could you touch a little bit on some of those conversations?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've talked about it as making sure women flourish in the church, and I really like that language.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I even don't don't like to say that, you know, hey, we also have a valuable role.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: I like to think of it the way that we think about the roles of of non-elder men, right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: That that we need the contributions of both men and women uh for the church to to flourish.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um the gifts of women are not uh are not needless.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like God does not give gifts that aren't meant to be used.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we think about how the gifts of women contribute to the health of the church body, we should think of them not as also important, but as essential and indispensable, in the same way that we would say, Well, gosh, if we don't have a pastor, how can we have a church?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: We should be asking, well, if we don't have women involved in in in the ways that they are gifted and equipped to be involved, then we don't have a church.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so um really the most helpful way that we've thought about it in my own church is to think about the church as a family of God.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that is, I believe, the overarching metaphor.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: It is the beautiful story.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so, in in many of the circles that you and I would have been in, there's been a great deal of discussion about headship and submission, uh, almost exclusively.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's been the conversation.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: But when you think about the church as the family of God and you think about maybe your own family of origin, or I even like to say, what's the most functional family you've ever known?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's not yours, maybe it's someone else's, um, where you saw the husband and the wife flourishing, where you saw uh the children flourishing, that's what that's what we want the family of God to be like.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's what the family of God should be like.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's what the family of God will be like in the New Jerusalem.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so we could live into that now by recognizing that we're we're all important.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I did not expect to tear up, but that just hit me because I think so often I believe that my gifts are useless in the church and that they were misplaced.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: They should have been given.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: My parents always prayed for a boy and they didn't get a boy, and they just got me and my sisters, and um, you know, like maybe to the proverbial brother I should have had, you know, and um feel often misplaced and so grateful the Lord led me to randomly post a Bible study on YouTube towards this, you know.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But still, I mean, I think it's easy to believe that in the core of our being that we are misplaced um in the church.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or redundant.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Share a little bit.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Share a little bit here online for anyone who doesn't know.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You recently would it be like it's all it was good, but like you stepped down or stepped away from your position at the village?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: I did, yeah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's been uh a little over a month.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: And um when I in I I worked on staff at my church, I've been at my church for 16 years.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: I was on staff for the last almost 12.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um in the last role that I just uh stepped out of, I was served on our executive team.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: I had responsibility for our next gen family and care ministries.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um I also what most people know that I do is I oversee the women's Bible study space.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um although actually I have a there's a woman now who is the is officially responsible for that, and I get to just serve on the teaching team and the curriculum writing team and now as a volunteer, which is amazing.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: It feels actually very full circle for me because for most of my time uh in the church, I've been a volunteer.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, yeah, I feel light in my heart.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: I have a lot of family changes happening right now.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: I have aging parents who really need um flexibility in my schedule, and and I'm so thrilled.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: The last month has just been so uh such a clear um recognition for me that this was the right time and the right moment for that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then I have multiplying grandbabies, and so I want to be available to get there if they need me or to babysit or just to hang out.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um so and it was hard.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was a hard decision.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I think if there are women listening who are who are doing ministry in the local church, you know, or I hope you know that it's always a business of incremental gains, right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like you never go, oh, there, I've done everything I hoped to do, or I saw everything happen that I hope to see happen.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: And um we don't have to carry the weight of I have to, I have to make something be a particular way.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: We can just say, Did I did I leave it better than I found it?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I can say that.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: I can say looking at where things are at the village, I've I've left things better than I found them, and there are other women uh who can step in uh and men, honestly.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had you know I had um a lot of people coming along behind me who are able to step in and carry forward the work that we are we we've been doing there.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so beautiful.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I have a lot of listeners who have been ministered to by the village church, Matt Chandler, your books.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know I've recommended Women of the Word.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I loved your first Peter study and the Sermon on the Mount study, and the fact that they is it all of them that come with a video?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of them do, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh all the ones that are published, yeah.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're all so good.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the video helps, I think.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to see you say what's also written at times can be really helpful, or just to learn off of your lectures is something that I've kind of, I don't know, call me an imitator.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like follow that with my courses and want to make lectures like yours and worksheets like yours.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So uh anyway, you're just an amazing teacher, and I think now, hopefully looking forward, while you're having grandbaby snuggles or precious time with family, um, people will also be able to look at the like all of these great resources you've also built out online and no matter where they are in the world, benefit from them, which is so fruitful.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is one thing that you wish more women understood about the Bible, or even like a big misunderstanding?
• 14:19
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• 14:51
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• 15:01
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• 15:03
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• 15:03
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• 15:27
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• 15:27
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• 15:34
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• 15:35
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• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is one thing that you wish more women understood about the Bible or even like a big misunderstanding?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: I would say, um, well, there's two that come to mind.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't want to choose one of my two favorite children.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one of them is to remember always that the Bible is a book about God.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that is an obvious statement.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: I know that we would all say, yeah, the Bible's a book about God.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: But again, in a therapeutic individualistic age, too often, even though we would say that's true, we've actually been trained into a way of reading the Bible that makes it primarily about us.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's very pragmatic.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's, oh, you know, I have this problem or I have this struggle or this person's making me crazy, or I have this good thing going on in my life.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so, how can the Bible help me thrive in, you know, situation X or relationship X or challenge X?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we think about the Bible that way, we're we're really missing the way that we actually come to the conclusions about how we should inhabit our circumstances or our relationships, and that is by first having a vision of God high and lifted up.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: So my first answer would be help reorient yourself to reading the Bible, asking first, what does it say is true about God?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then my second challenge would be to let your feelings follow your thinking.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And here's why.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um if anyone has ever gone through a difficult time, um, we know that our feelings are, as a friend of mine says, our feelings are real, but they're not reliable.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you're in a time of crisis, your feelings are gonna lie to you.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna tell you that God is not seated on his throne, and they're going to tell you that the outcome of whatever this circumstance is is what will determine whether your life is pleasing to God or whether you can keep moving after this point.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to lie to you.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you're gonna forget that you're secure in Christ no matter what your circumstance.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna forget all of those things unless you've built a lot of muscle memory around what is true.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, we want our faith and our feelings to be grounded in the fact of who God is and in in light of that who who we are.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that takes a lot of work because ever since Genesis chapter three, thinking wrong thoughts has been easier and felt more natural than thinking true thoughts.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: So when we start retraining ourselves, it means that we want to think deeply about God so that we can feel deeply about God and so that we can have good understanding of the world around us.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord begins with right perception of the Lord.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to back into that.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: We've been told, hey, the Bible is supposed to make you feel a particular therapeutic, and the Bible is mostly about you.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that it's time for us for the good of our souls to to begin to uh turn those two things around.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we find that rock solid truth that doesn't waver with our tellings.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know as a baby Christian, it was so hard for me to uh, you know, open up my Bible and not just be like, okay, I'm trying to decide who to date or who to marry or what class to register for next year, you know, it was so me centric.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: But when I started changing my worldview to this is actually the story of God redeeming his people for his glory, then I was able to see, oh, God's at work in and through and despite me, you know, and and despite my lack of belief or my questions or my not me not knowing what's going on.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what ways personally do you feel like kind of rewiring your brain, or I talk about putting on lenses, like a new set of lenses, and what ways has this transformed the way that your faith meets your life, like in even practical ways?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so I I would say um, you know, I've I've devoted about 15 years to thinking about what's called the doctrine of God, like what is true about God, because it's one thing to tell people, hey, you should read the Bible like it's a book about God, and it's another to to to have the vocabulary to be able to do that.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like, if I if I were to ask uh someone like what's true about God, they would they would say, Oh, he's he's gracious or he's loving or he's kind.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: But usually the first word that falls off of their lips is not, oh, he's omnipotent or he's omniscient, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: There are things that are true about God that we don't often make meditation on.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: And when I began to make meditation on some of those things, um, so like for example, the omniscience of God, I began to realize that um I hadn't thought about it enough.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like the fact that God holds all knowledge, that he holds all knowledge of the past, present, and future, that he holds all knowledge of every sin that I ever have uh sinned, am sinning, or will sin, and the deep significance for just the way that I think about life and godliness is a result of that, because you can't doubt your salvation if you know that God set his love on you for all eternity, knowing every single thing you're gonna do.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: You can't hijack him with a future sin, right?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: He's not gonna go, oh shoot, I didn't see that one coming.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, the deal is off because he knows all of it.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: He sees everything from the end to the beginning.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of comfort.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: And also if he sees everything, it means that when I lie to myself and say I can commit this sin and no one will know.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's absolutely patently false, like God knows.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's both a good exhortation and a good um uh encouragement in in recognizing that God is who he says that he is.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: But then there's also that that issue of of Genesis chapter three, where the serpent said that weird thing to Eve, and we don't even think it's weird.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: He says, he says when she is considering his offer about the fruit, he says, God knows that in the day that you eat of it you will become like him.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a super weird thing for him to say, because in Genesis 1, 26 and 27, we just learned that she's already like him.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: So sir so the serpent is offering her a way to be like God that she's not created for.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so let's just take omniscience for our example.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know exactly how I try to be omniscient.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's this guy that I hold in my hand all the time.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's my phone, it's Google.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I feel like I can hold all knowledge, and I can't.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: We're not built for it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um psychologically speaking, we we go into lockdown when we have too much information.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I want it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think I want it, you know, and I also think if I had more information, I would make better decisions, um, which is also false.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And now in a in an age of disinformation, we have this vested interest in actually surrounding ourselves only with information that makes us more godlike.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: So um our idolatries are built around the way that we understand or fail to understand God's unique role in the universe.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not built to be omniscient, only he is.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: And when I strive to be omniscient, it will it will result in a breakdown of my ability to be what I'm supposed to be, which is human limited.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had Kelly Capack on.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: We talked a lot about the uh you're only human.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that totally connects some dots, hopefully, for some listeners and for me, um, even how this you know, it's a worshipful exercise to be like, I've reached my limit, I'm gonna rest in you, Lloyd.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and that you are more than enough.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think sometimes that can take more faith than actually acting in faith, if you know what I mean.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and you know, you think about that holding all knowledge, we we've actually spiritualized knowledge.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: We think that if we had knowledge of the future, we would make better decisions.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we're like, if I could just Lord, if you'll just tell me like which job to take, right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what we don't realize is we think we're at we think we're saying give me wisdom, but we're saying give me knowledge.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: And what we're essentially telling the God of the universe is, I know you told me to walk by faith, but I would prefer to walk by sight.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: So could you just let me see what's next?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and and we spiritualize it.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we say, Oh, I've had a word from the Lord, he's told me which job to take.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I don't think the Lord does that.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: He just he just said walk by faith.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: He tells his disciples, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: So why why do we spend so much of our time asking him to show us what what you know to give us sight?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's so good.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I need to just like tattoo that across my forehead or have that on replay in my brain.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's exactly what we do.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sometimes the the epitome of someone's relationship with the Lord is just like, oh, he told me what to do next.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: He told me what to do next.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: He told me what to do.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and then like if I'm not hearing those things and you are, I start to think, is the Holy Spirit even operating in me?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like maybe I am I even a Christian, you know, and so I think that we really need to pay attention to the way that we talk about these things because if you know it, and it's actually it's it's very Gnostic to use a term from historical Christianity.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's that God will give you special knowledge that then helps you to be better at being a Christian than everybody else around you.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that was a terrible boiling down of Gnosticism, but um, it's the special knowledge thing.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and I don't mean to say that you never have a moment where you know exactly what you ought to do next, but we've normalized it.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: We've made that, you know, hey, this is supposed to be your everyday experience.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: And if your prayer journal doesn't reflect that you're hitting 80 or 90 percent on this, you know, then maybe, maybe there's sin in your life or maybe the the Holy Spirit isn't speaking to you.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: As someone online, there's like this whole world of, oh, let me make content that people are wanting to find, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So on my little bit of research I've ever done on like the content that people want, it's always how to hear from God, how to hear a message from God, how to get direction from God.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's always up that vein.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's always comes down to like, well, I I can't tell you exactly other than his word and be praying and living into the Lord.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And people don't want to hear, like, maybe he'll just nudge you.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you just have to follow by faith, like you said.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, people don't want to hear that.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: We want that X, Y, and Z because all of the rest of life follows that way.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you go to middle school, so you can go to high school, so you can graduate and go to college or trade school.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't know how to function in just faith in this like Western culture.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that prohibits our spiritual, but actually like relationship life with the Lord.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say, in a in a culture where we have so many choices, it's easy for us to make our faith all about making choices.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um you think about people who live live in spaces where they don't have the freedom of choice that we do.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you think you hear about like missionaries who come back from the field and they go to the grocery store and they just want to shut down because there are so many choices.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we we're we're sort of in it and we don't realize that that's all around us everywhere, but we are people who have many, many choices.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so we can often diminish our faith to nothing less than a gospel of good decision making, which is actually works-based.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's not it's not faith-based.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um if I make a good decision, God will bless me, and if I make a bad decision, then he won't.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't there is something to be said for making wise decisions.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: There are blessings associated with that, but but uh also we make the decision point all about a circumstance or a relationship.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the Bible actually tells us um, you know, what God's will is for our lives.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: It says it explicitly in 1 Thessalonians.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: It says, this is the will of God, your sanctification.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you want to ask God, um, if you want prayer requests, he's gonna answer 100% of the time.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Ask him to make you holy.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Ask him to make you patient, ask him to make you loving or kind, no matter what happens in the circumstance that's in front of you, because he can use, you know, he can use a bad decision to sanctify you.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: You can make the wrong choice and it's not fatal for you.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um He can use a good decision to show you that when you make good choices, you actually have pride growing in your heart instead of humility.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so decisions matter, but they're not they're not ultimate for us.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's the decision to wake up and look like Christ every day, uh, no matter what choices uh or or where where my day takes me.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jen, you're spitting gold over here, man.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is too good.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, so you wrote Women of the Word, which is basically how to read the Bible um and yeah, apply it to your life.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um Andrew Wilson actually said, I think it was in the podcast I did with him, he said, like, I loved that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why she titled it Women of the Word.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then you wrote You Are a Theologian, which is to help um with the introduction to theology.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Would that be how you summarize it?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do you have a gaze on like future works or future studies?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you like at peace with share?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, I am not at peace.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, part of you know, leaving my role at the church was because I knew my husband has said for eight years you've had three jobs, and he's not wrong.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: I but you know, what a gift to be in midlife.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm 54, and you know, speaking of having a lot of choices, I've had I've had more good choices than I could throw a stick at.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so really it's it's like saying, what do I really need to spend the next 10 or 15 years of my life focusing on?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so things are loosening up that have been locked up, I think, for a while.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: I knew that being in the role at the church was going to mean setting aside some of those other things, publishing or um thinking deep thoughts about things that I might want to publish, and I can feel that loosening up.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say, yes, I will continue to write studies.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I have a revelation study that's gonna come out in July.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um right now I'm teaching it to a small group of people in my living room, and I'm just like, this is the best.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is so great to just be back, you know, doing first of all, it's fun to be in a living room again, I would just say, but um, but just working through how can I possibly solving the riddle of how to how to make it accessible um to learners.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then around books, I don't know.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think I want to, I'm I'm kicking around the idea of a book on um sort of the cycle of life.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it would have to do with aging, but it would have to do with more than just aging.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, increasingly I hear, especially from women, uh they'll say, hey, um, my friend who's 24 is getting Botox.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't I'm not here to tell you, I'm not gonna police whether you get Botox or not, but I do think that we should not ask and answer those questions thoughtlessly as Christians.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so increasingly I've thought, are we are we teaching women a th a healthy theology of aging?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: Or do any of us have a healthy theology of aging?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Is it talked about at all?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: And in a society that understands intuitively that youthfulness is a form of power that you relinquish as you age, um, how are Christians saying something different than the world around them with regard to how we walk into our latter years?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, ever since the death of my mom, I have had a lot of things stirring in me about how to think about aging, um, but also how we understand aging in light of how we understand the how we understand the second half of life in light of how we have walked through the first half of life.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll see.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I would love, I mean, obviously, I'm gonna pre-order the revelation study as soon as possible.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of my audience is gonna be like, can we pre-order it right now?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: When does that open up?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think you can pre-order it, but I um I there there's a thing with Amazon's algorithms where the price jumps around a whole lot until it hits a certain stage in the publishing process.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to pre-order it, pre-order it through the publisher because you'll get the actual price.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is LifeWay?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is, yeah, LifeWay.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is available for pre-order, but honestly, I don't I'm so busy trying to figure out how to teach it that I haven't even gone.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're busy.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're good.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that would be so interesting.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, even moving back here to Dallas, where somewhere I grew up, you know, yeah, and having all that re-influence.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, oh yeah, we send our boys to a small private school here and just the other moms alone.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh boy, I do not measure up.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: I am not hitting the standards that they are looking for.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so shiny.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Shiny?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: It is, it's shiny.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there is something to be said.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, again, we're not, I'm not gonna get in any, I'm not gonna mandate what people should do, but um it is it is to some degree.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: You have to pay attention to where you are as you're as you're as you're going through these conversations with yourself.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: It you know, on the East Coast, they're like, what?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: I never wore makeup.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why are why why why did I start now?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big generalization about my East Coast friends.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, in California, it looks different than it does in Texas.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: But um, but again, if we're gonna be aliens and strangers, then we then we process even these decisions from a different vantage point than than those who are around us.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jen, I love to always ask my guests, what is your favorite Bible study resources or commentaries or even just ministries that have served you?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've you know, I I've said this a lot of places.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: It won't be new to people who followed me for a while, but Ligineer Ministries and uh RC Sproul's ministry had a huge impact on me.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we used to save up our pennies to go to those lighener conferences when we were in our 20s and 30s just to hear some of the teaching.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um his his style of teaching impacted me so much.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: He obviously had plenty of formal theological training and was able to take the cookies from the top shelf and put them on the bottom shelf without doing any damage to them whatsoever in their content.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, it's one of the reasons that we wrote You Are a Theologian was in the in the spirit of of his own writings, um, was because we need to bridge the academy and the church.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: We need to have translators, and that's what he was.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: He was such a beautiful translator of those those thoughts.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so one of one of my books that I love, if you're just getting started, is um What's in the Bible.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's by RC Sproul and Robert Wolgamuth, and it's just a story of scripture in a story form.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: It tells you the whole story of the Bible from start to finish, and I just love it.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so if you're trying to get oriented to the story of the Bible as a whole, that's a great place to start.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then favorite commentators.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: And the way that I started to develop my list of commentators that I loved was to read the footnotes of the ones that I had already found and to just figure out where were they drawing from.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but this was given to me by someone about 20 years ago, it's Dale Bruner, um, his his Matthew commentary.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's I it this is one of the best commentaries that I've ever come across ever.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: But Bruner is an example of the kind of commentator that I like because he was also a pastor, and so um his commentaries are written in ways that are accessible for teaching.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So they're not just for the student to learn, and you know, because I'm I'm constantly just having to turn around and give it to someone else.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I appreciate when I think that pastor theologians are better at moving us from the realm of uh the academy to the realm of the local church, and so while I value more academic um commentaries, I do tend to look for those that are written by pastors.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: So another one of my favorite commentators is James Montgomery Boyce.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he was yeah, yeah.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: I at one point in my Bible study writing, I would I would choose what study to write next based on whether he had a commentary over it or not.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I think, you know, I think people from the you would know this, Faith.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think people looking in on like Bible study writing, they think that we sit down with a blank page in front of us and just start trying to come up with what direction to take it.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I have no interest in that.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't want to do novel or new things.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's actually a huge penalty in Christianity for doing things that are new and novel.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I just want to retrieve.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: I want to retrieve something that someone said 40 years ago that we forgot to say again, and I want to say it again.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: So he's been a huge help.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then one more would just be yeah, this is my Louis Burkhoff systematic theology.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: And Burkhoff may not be the one that you want.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my friend JT loves Bob Inc.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: and talks about him constantly, but for me, Burkhoff is my first love.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I love that.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: My husband is a big fan of Boyce, and so I have a lot of voice on my bookshelves, and I don't turn to him first, but I need to create more of a habit of that.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, no, that's amazing.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for those recommendations.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to leave those listening with one takeaway, maybe they feel overwhelmed by theology or burk off.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe they feel overwhelmed by cracking open their Bible and afraid they're gonna take stuff out of context.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're um just feeling like they're not enough in their Bible studies, they're not doing enough, they don't know enough.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: What would be one kind of last send-off you would leave with my audience?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I would remind you of the Great Commission.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the Great Commission is where Jesus says in Matthew 28 that we are to go and make disciples, uh, teaching them to observe all that he commanded.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that a lot of times when we think about what it means to be a disciple, we think of many things, but maybe not the most basic thing.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: We think a disciple is someone who is the hands and feet of Jesus, and that's absolutely true.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: Or we think a disciple is someone who worships with their hands in the air and you know, full-hearted worship, and that is also part of being a disciple.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but the word disciple at its root, you can hear is the same, it's related to that word discipline.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: And a disciple is fundamentally a learner, it's one who learns.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, did you hear me just reference the the life of the mind as it relates to our faith?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: But not only that, but if there's anything that you have ever done that required discipline, you know that the result of having done that thing with discipline meant that there was something worth gaining at the other end of it.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: So uh my son Matt, he plays the piano, plays the piano beautifully.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the first time that he sat down to practice, he was not good at it and he felt dumb and he felt overwhelmed.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he came back and he sat down and he practiced again.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then he came back and he sat down and he practiced again.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: And ten years later, he could play the piano beautifully.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but imagine if I had dropped him off for piano lessons once a week for ten years, and his piano teacher, unbeknownst to me, had said, Hey, you know what?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of teaching you how to play the piano, I'm just gonna play a lot of beautiful music for you so that you can grow in your appreciation for it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then ten years in, he sits down to play and he can't actually play the instrument.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it would be a worthwhile thing if he had gained an appreciation for classical music, but that's not being a disciple, that's being a connoisseur.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: And being a disciple is having good tools and being able to do the work yourself so that you are being shaped and formed by the work.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: His appreciation for the music he plays is very different because he's a practitioner than if he were simply a consumer.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I think in the church today we have given in to a consumeristic way of thinking about growing.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so we think that we're supposed to sit and receive from someone uh rather than do the digging ourselves.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: So my prayer would be that if you are concerned with being someone who passes on a good deposit of the faith from one generation to the next, that you would understand yourself as a learner, as one who must learn with discipline and that the work is worth it, that what will be formed in you and what it will mean for the next generation is absolutely essential to great commission faithfulness for the church of this century.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was amazing.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Jen, I know we are all so grateful that you blessed us with your presence and your wisdom.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where can we find you for more nuggets of wisdom like this?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can go to jenwilken.net to see kind of like where I'm gonna be or what I'm talking about lately.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: But um, our podcast, Knowing Faith, uh, with AT and Kyle and I uh are putting out stuff there all the time.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably the place to get the most fresh content if you're looking for it.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you again so much for being here.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.