Jen Wilkin Quotes

The heart cannot love what the mind does not know.

If we want to feel deeply about God, we must learn to think deeply about God.

We will not wake up ten years from now and find we have passively taken on the character of God.

You will never turn from a sin you don’t hate.

The Bible does tell us who we are and what we should do, but it does so through the lens of who God is. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand.

We must make a study of our God: what he loves, what he hates, how he speaks and acts. We cannot imitate a God whose features and habits we have never learned. We must make a study of him if we want to become like him. We must seek his face.

I believe that a woman who loses interest in her Bible has not been equipped to love it as she should. The God of the bible is too lovely to abandon for lesser pursuits.

We can't fully appreciate the sweetness of the New Testament without the savory of the Old Testament.

We humans must confess, 'I am because he is.' Only God can say, 'I AM WHO I AM'.

finding greater pleasure in God will not result from pursuing more experiences of him, but from knowing him better. It will result from making a study of the Godhead.

If I am fully known and not rejected by God, how much more ought I to extend grace to my neighbor, whom I know only in part?

How do you move a mountain? One spoonful of dirt at a time. Chinese proverb

A vision of God high and lifted up reveals to me my sin and increases my love for him. Grief and love lead to genuine repentance, and I begin to be conformed to the image of the One I behold.

Sanctification is the process of learning increasing dependence, not autonomy.

It is not coincidental that a lack of discernment and a neglected Bible are so often found in company.

For the believer wanting to know God’s will for her life, the first question to pose is not “What should I do?” but “Who should I be?

Psalm 139 is not a psalm about me, fearfully and wonderfully made. It is a psalm about my Maker, fearful and wonderful. It is a psalm to inspire awe.

Knowing who God is matters to us. It changes not only the way we think about him, but the way we think about ourselves. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand.

Every good endeavor should be done with purpose. Without a clear sense of purpose, our efforts to do a good thing well can flounder. But with a clear purpose, we are far more likely to persevere.

Find freedom in knowing that your human creativity is an echo intended to inspire worship of your Creator. And then, create freely to your heart's delight.

Just as my assurance of salvation rests in the fact that God cannot change, my hope of sanctification rests in the fact that I can

If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self.

Women teachers, let's shift the focus from 'you are a daughter of the King' to 'behold your King'.

For years I viewed my interaction with the Bible as a debit account: I had a need, so I went to the Bible to withdraw an answer. But we do much better to view our interaction with the Bible as a savings account: I stretch my understanding daily, I deposit what I glean, and I patiently wait for it to accumulate in value, knowing that one day I will need to draw on it.

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 messages to take root, and the modern church has proven fertile ground for those messages. Because we do not know our Bibles, we crumble at the most basic challenges to our worldview. Disillusionment and apathy eat away at our ranks. Women, in particular, are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers.1

No longer can we parse our fellow humans into the categories of ‘lovable’ and ‘unlovable.’ If love is an act of the will — not motivated by need, not measuring worth, not requiring reciprocity — then there is no such category as ‘unlovable.

It is not new truths we need; we need old truths recently forgotten.

Everything we say or do will either illuminate or obscure the character of God. Sanctification is the process of joyfully growing luminous.

Exegesis says, “Before you can hear it with your ears, hear it with theirs. Before you can understand it today, understand it back then.

In a sense, God has a closet filled with infinite secrets about himself, but it contains only priceless treasures, no skeletons.

Image-bearing means becoming fully human, not becoming divine. It means reflecting as a limited being the perfections of a limitless God.

Though Edison’s “Let there be light” may have ushered us into sleeplessness, the divine Creator who uttered “Let there be light” also benevolently and pointedly declares “Let there be rest.

Our patterns of work and rest reveal what we believe to be true about God and ourselves. God alone requires no limits on his activity. To rest is to acknowledge that we humans are limited by design. We are created for rest just as surely as we are created for labor. An inability or unwillingness to cease from our labors is a confession of unbelief, an admission that we view ourselves as creator and sustainer of our own universes (pp. 64-65).

If we want our lives to align with God’s will, we will need to ask a better question than “What should I do?” . . . God is always more concerned with the decision-maker than he is with the decision itself.

The Bible does not want to be neatly packaged into three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day increments. It does not want to be reduced to truisms and action points. It wants to introduce dissonance into your thinking, to stretch your understanding. It wants to reveal a mosaic of the majesty of God one passage at a time, one day at a time, across a lifetime.

Busyness believes that the time God has given is not adequate. We must redeem the present by leaving time to observe the practice of stillness and the precept of Sabbath, taking on the trusting posture of one who sits at the feet of her Lord.

When we fear God rightly, we recognize him for who he truly is: a God of no limits, and therefore, utterly unlike anyone or anything we know.

We must love God with our minds, allowing our intellect to inform our emotions, rather than the other way around.

It is God who speaks life into us. God is the One who resurrects the spiritually dead to life.

God is our origin. Knowing where you came from makes all the difference in seeing where it is you need to go.

Why am I here? To be a megaphone for God's glory.

There is no true knowledge of self apart from the knowledge of God.

Because he is infinitely good, the things that we do not know about God are only good things.

The fact that you are currently inhaling and exhaling at this very moment means that you are a recipient of mercy.

Are we called to be like Noah? Yes. Are we called to be like the Good Samaritan? Yes. But not simply because they are positive examples to inspire us to righteousness. These stories point us to Christ.

The second thing I got backwards in my approach to the Bible was the belief that my heart should guide my study. The heart, as it is spoken of in Scripture, is the seat of the will and emotions. It is our “feeler” and our “decision-maker.” Letting my heart guide my study meant that I looked for the Bible to make me feel a certain way when I read it. I wanted it to give me peace, comfort, or hope. I wanted it to make me feel closer to God.

Herein lies our forgetfulness. Rather than seeing the sin of lawlessness as the barrier to relationship with God, we have steadily grown to regard the law itself as the barrier. We have come to believe that rules prevent relationship.

We seek to be holy as God is holy as a joyful act of gratitude. We never seek holiness as a means to earn God’s favor or to avoid his displeasure. We have his favor, and his pleasure rests upon us. The motive of sanctification is joy. Joy is both our motive and our reward.

Here is a remarkable truth: God is able to bring eternal results from our time-bound efforts. This is what Jesus intimates when he tells us to store up treasure in heaven rather than on earth. When we invest our time in what has eternal significance, we store up treasure in heaven. This side of heaven, the only investments with eternal significance are people. “Living this day well” means prioritizing relationships over material gain. We cannot take our stuff with us when we die, but, Lord willing, we may feed the hungry and clothe the needy in such a way that an eternal result is rendered. We may speak words that, by the favor of the Lord, transform into the very words of life. This is the calling of the missionary, the magnate, and the mother of small children: spend your time to impact people for eternity.

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 spoon-feed us answers to every decision in life.

When women grow increasingly lax in their pursuit of Bible literacy, everyone in their circle of influence is affected. Rather than acting as salt and light, we become bland contributions to the environment we inhabit and shape, indistinguishable from those who have never been changed by the gospel. Home, church, community, and country desperately need the influence of women who know why they believe what they believe, grounded in the Word of God. They desperately need the influence of women who love deeply and actively the God proclaimed in the Bible.

Your love for others is the overflow of your love for God. Your love for God will increase as you learn to know him better. But never lost sight that your influence will be noticed in how you use your heart, not your head. Bible literacy that does not transform is a chasing after the wind. Christians will be known by our love, not our knowledge. We will not be known by just any kind of love - we will be known for the kind of love the Father has shown to us and we in turn show to others.

Forgiving lavishly does not mean that we continue to place ourselves in harm's way. The Bible takes great pains to address the dangers of keeping company with those who perpetually harm others. Those who learn nothing from their past mistakes are termed fools. While we may forgive the fool for hurting us, we do not give the fool unlimited opportunity to hurt us again. To do so would be to act foolishly ourselves. When Jesus extends mercy in the Gospels, he always does so with an implicit or explicit, "Go and sin no more." When our offender persists in sinning against us, we are wise to put boundaries in place. Doing so is itself an act of mercy toward the offender. By limiting his opportunity to sin against us, we spare him further guilt before God. Mercy never requires submission to abuse, whether spiritual, verbal, emotional, or physical.

The God of the Bible is too lovely to abandon for lesser pursuits.

While legalism builds self-righteousness, lawfulness builds righteousness. Obedience to the law is the means of sanctification for the believer.

Study everything that makes God wonderful and mimic to your heart’s delight, as the joyful expression of your reciprocal love for him.

But our insecurities, fears, and doubts can never be banished by the knowledge of who we are. They can only be banished by the knowledge of “I AM.

The key to enjoying wine isn’t just to guzzle a lot of expensive wine, it’s to learn about wine.

...sound Bible study transforms the heart by training the mind and it places God at the center of the story.

We repeat what we most want remembered, what is most important, and what is most easily forgotten.

I have always liked the story in the Gospels in which Jesus awakens from a nap during a storm and tells nature to calm the heck down.

The Bible is a book that boldly and clearly reveals who God is on every page.

We know there's more. We have a longing for eternity, and that longing is itself a longing for God who exists outside of time.

All human creativity is the vaguest whisper of the creativity of God.

The Word is living and active. It will conform you by dividing you. And in the dividing, miracle of miracles, it will render you whole.

We become what we behold.

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.

Build slowly if you must, but by all means, build. In pursuing an orderly process [of Bible study], you follow a pattern established by God himself. The God of the Bible is a God of order.

Someone asked me recently, after learning I was a Bible teacher, if I was a God-worshipper or a Bible-worshipper. ... My answer was simple: I want to be conformed to the image of God. How can I become conformed to an image that I never behold? I am not a Bible-worshipper, but I cannot truly be a God-worshipper without loving the Bible deeply and reverently. Otherwise, I worship an unknown god.

Over what do I have control? A few very important things. My thoughts, which I can take captive by the power of the Holy Spirit. And if I can control my thoughts, it follows that I can control my attitude—toward my body, my stuff, my relationships, and my circumstances. If my thoughts and attitude are in control, my words will be as well, and my actions. The redeemed obediently submit thought, word, and deed to their heavenly Ruler, trusting uncertainty to him who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11). They step away from the throne, acknowledging that they are utterly unqualified to fill 

There is a vastness between what I am and what I ought to be, but it is a vastness able to be spanned by the mercy and grace of him whose face it is most needful for me to behold. In beholding God we become like him. So

Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called ishah [woman] because she came from ish [man].” Don’t miss what Adam is saying. After the animal parade of one not-like-him after another, at last he sees Eve and rejoices that she is wonderfully, uniquely like-him. “Same of my same, same of my same. She shall be called like me because she came from me.

Until that time of faith becoming sight, we strive to look like Christ. If there is to be whittling, let it be the whittling away of our sins of commission. If there is to be carving, let it be the carving out of our sins of omission. The Ten Words show us how to live on earth as in heaven, conforming to the image of Christ as representatives of Yahweh. They are engraving tools. The more we obey them, the more we reflect his character, visibly, to a world that very much needs us to.

Come to the table in view of God’s mercy. Come once. Come again. How many times is the table of his body and blood spread before you? Forgive that many times. Forgive, and keep forgiving. He presented his body as a sacrifice. Now present yours, as your reasonable act of worship (Rom. 12:1). Mercy triumphs over justice. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they have received mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for the mercy they have received is without end.

The squaw on the hippo? In his mind's eye, Darbishire pictured the wife of a red indian chief, resplendent in feathered head-dress, riding proudly on the tribal hippopotamus. But how could she be equal to the squaws on the other two sides of the animal? equal in weight? . . . In height? . . . in importance? He stared at the diagram wondering whether it was meant to represent a three sided hippopotamus, but it wasn't easy to imagine what such an animal would look like in real life, Determined to please Mr Wilkins, he tried again. perhaps the theorem meant she was equal in weight. Supposing you had a very fat squaw, weighing, say, fifteen stone; and two thinner squaws weighing, say, eight stone and seven stone respectively . . . What then? the scholar's eyes shone with inspiration. He'd got it! seven and eight made fifteen! So the squaw on one side of the hipppotamus would be equal in weight to the sum of the squaws on the other two sides. That meant that the animal would be properly balanced and wouldn't topple over.

In understanding the Scriptures: “Then [Jesus] said to [the disciples], ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:44–45) In transforming us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2–3)

the One whom we most need to behold has made himself known. He has traced with a fine hand the lines and contours of his face. He has done so in his Word. We must search for that face, though babies continue to cry, bills continue to grow, bad news continues to arrive unannounced, though friendships wax and wane, though both ease and difficulty weaken our grip on godliness, though a thousand other faces crowd close for our affection, and a thousand other voices clamor for our attention. By fixing our gaze on that face, we trade mere human glory for holiness:

While we may forgive the fool for hurting us, we do not give the fool unlimited opportunity to hurt us again. To do so would be to act foolishly ourselves. When Jesus extends mercy in the Gospels, he always does so with an implicit or explicit “Go and sin no more.” When our offender persists in sinning against us, we are wise to put boundaries in place. Doing so is itself an act of mercy toward the offender. By limiting his opportunity to sin against us, we spare him further guilt before God. Mercy never requires submission to abuse, whether spiritual, verbal, emotional, or physical.

We fervently need God to stay the same—our great hope of salvation lies in his remaining exactly as who he says he is, doing exactly what he has said he will do. As long as his infinite sameness endures, he will not change his mind about setting his love on us. We cannot commit a future sin that will change his verdict, because his verdict was passed with every sin past, present, and future fixed in view. Whom God pronounces righteous will always be righteous. Nothing we could do can remove from us the seal of his promised redemption. Nothing can separate us from the unfailing, unchanging love of this great God, the Rock of our salvation upon which the house of our faith is built.

He gives us daily bread, and often more than just that, though we are given to the habit of complaining for what we lack rather than contentment with what we possess. He gives us the joy of family and friends, though we are more prone to rage against him for the hard relationships than to thank him for the sweet ones. He grants us, on the whole, more days of joy than of sorrow, though our darkened hearts are more apt to curse him for the hard times than to bless him for the happy ones. Though he had every right to bar his goodness behind the flaming sword of the cherubim at Eden’s eastern exit, instead he allowed his goodness to follow Adam and Eve all the days of their life, even after their expulsion. And so he does for every son of Adam and daughter of Eve to this day.

But sound Bible study is rooted in a celebration of delayed gratification. Gaining Bible literacy requires allowing our study to have a cumulative effect—across weeks, months, years—so that the interrelation of one part of Scripture to another reveals itself slowly and gracefully, like a dust cloth slipping inch by inch from the face of a masterpiece. The Bible does not want to be neatly packaged into three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day increments. It does not want to be reduced to truisms and action points. It wants to introduce dissonance into your thinking, to stretch your understanding. It wants to reveal a mosaic of the majesty of God one passage at a time, one day at a time, across a lifetime. By all means, bring eagerness to your study time. Yes, bring hunger. But certainly bring patience—come ready to study for the long term.

Scarcity has a way of revealing our true understanding of the Golden Rule. Here’s the bare truth: when there is one piece of pie, I don’t want to deny myself and bless someone else with it, and I don’t want to divide it equitably. I want the whole piece. And that’s precisely why I should give the whole piece to someone else—because in doing so, I fulfill the Golden Rule. Yes, at bare minimum I want to be treated fairly by others. But what I really want is to be treated preferentially. My love of preferential treatment displays itself in a thousand ways. I want the best concert seats, the best parking spot, the upgrade to first class, the most comfortable seat in the living room, the biggest serving of pie, the last serving of pie, all the pie all the time. Giving someone else the preferential treatment that I want requires humility. But God gives grace to the humble. Any time we dine on humble pie, we can be certain it will be accompanied by an oversized dollop of grace.

From cradle to grave, learning is essential to being human. Not only that, it is a human right. The United Nations views education as “a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights.” When we want to deny someone the full practice of their humanity, withholding learning from them is often a measure we employ. Women, the poor, even entire ethnic populations have been kept uneducated for the purpose of control or marginalization. To be human is to learn. To deny human learning is to set ourselves up as God, albeit a malevolent version of him.

The truth of God’s limitless power would be absolutely terrifying were it not paired with the truth of his limitless goodness. He is no evil dictator. He who holds all power is benevolent to his core. This is why we can trust that he is able to work all things for our good.

Jerry Bridges notes, “True salvation brings with it a desire to be made holy.”6

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. Because we do not know our bibles, we crumble at the most basic challenges to our worldview.

As theologian Alistair Begg says, “The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.

The message of the gospel is not salvation as escape, but salvation as restoration.

He makes Himself known. He reveals Himself to us. We cannot know God unless He gives Himself to us in revelation. Because of the effects of sin, we are born without knowledge of God, rendering us spiritually deaf and blind. It is not through our own efforts, but only through His mercy that we can know Him. And in His great mercy, He gives

Theology begins and ends with prayer. The task of theology is best done on our knees, asking God, by the power of the Spirit, to awaken our hearts and minds to the person and work of Christ in the Scriptures.

Our whole lives as Christ-followers are to be given over to the identification and celebration of the limits God has ordained for us. He lovingly teaches them to us through his Word, through trials, through discipline. He humbles us through these means to remind us that we are not him, nor is anyone or anything else we know.

Image-bearing means becoming fully human, not becoming divine. It means reflecting as a limited being the perfections of a limitless God.

If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self (...) The hope of the gospel in our sanctification is not simply that we would make better choices, but that we would become better people.

God's will for our lives is that we conform to the image of Christ, whose incarnation shows us humanity perfectly conformed to the image of God.

How should the knowledge that God is ______ change the way I live?

Only God is infinite, incomprehensible, self-existent, eternal, immutable, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and sovereign. When we strive to become like him in any of these traits, we set ourselves up as his rival. Human beings created to bear the image of God aspire instead to become like God (...) Like our father Adam and our mother Eve, we long for that which is only intended for God, rejecting our God-given limits and craving the limitlessness we foolishly believe we are capable of wielding and entitled to possess.

When we devote heart, soul, mind, and strength to loving him, we perceive ourselves rightly - no room for pride or self-exaltation - which prepares us to love our neighbour freely. Rightly perceiving ourselves to be unworthy recipients of the agape of God, we become willing to love our neighbour in spite of himself because God first loved us in spite of ourselves. We do not wait to feel love; rather, we will ourselves to act in love whether we feel it or not. Agape transcends our feelings.

The tenth commandment forbids coveting because doing so denies the goodness of God. Jesus speaks against hoarding because doing so denies the goodness of God. Coveting implies a lack in God's present provision and hoarding anticipates a lack in God's good provision in the future. Neither mind-set will translate into generosity. Generosity flourishes only when we do not fear loss.

That deliverance entailed not just leaving behind the land of Egypt, but leaving behind the ways of Egypt. Each of the ten plagues was more than just a dramatic sign to Pharaoh that he must release the Hebrews. Each was a symbolic defeat of an Egyptian deity. Osiris, whose bloodstream was believed to be the Nile, bleeds out before his worshipers when Yahweh turns the Nile to blood. In reverence to Heqet, the frog-goddess of birth, Egyptians regarded frogs as sacred and not to be killed. Yahweh slays them by the thousands. Egyptian gods governing fertility, crops, livestock, and health are all shown to be impotent before the mighty outstretched arm of Israel’s God. In the ninth plague of darkness, Yahweh demonstrates his rule over the sun god Ra, whom Pharaoh was believed to embody. And in the final plague, the death of the firstborn, God shows himself supreme over the entire Egyptian pantheon by demonstrating his power over life and death.

No hagan nada por egoísmo o vanidad; más bien, con humildad consideren a los demás como superiores a ustedes mismos

Is Jesus adding to the law by broadening our attention from murder to anger and contempt? By no means. He is pointing out the seedling that grows into the thorny vine that chokes out life. He is appealing to us to fastidiously weed the garden of our personal holiness. He is teaching that if every person dealt with anger quickly and rightly, there would be no need for the sixth word at all (p. 94).

Stealing prays, "My kingdom come, my will be done." It turns to my neighbor and demands, "Give me this day my daily bread.

Perhaps the most sinister aspect of covetousness is the way that it keeps our eyes fixed on the horizontal plane. When we reject the tenth word, we say, in effect, "I will cast down my eyes unto the dirt. From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the world.

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 selfish. I may even try harder not to be selfish. But until I see my selfishness through the lens of the utter unselfishness of God, I have not properly understood its sinfulness. The Bible is a book about God. As Moses would learn during the Exodus, who he was bore no impact on the outcome of his situation. Who God was made all the difference.

God…has given time-bound humans a longing for timelessness.

When we trust him as fully present everywhere, we are finally free to be fully present wherever he has placed us—face-to-face with those we love, seeking the face of God.

This side of heaven, the only investments with eternal significance are people.

But the God of Israel possess a holiness so blinding that no one can look on him and live, a moral purity so devastating that not even the sinless angelic beings who inhabit his immediate presence can bear to look upon him, instead shielding their gaze with their wings: and day and night they never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!

Growing in holiness means growing into being loving, just, good, merciful, gracious, faithful, truthful, patient, and wise. It means learning to think, speak, and act like Christ every hour of every day that God grants us to walk this earth as the redeemed.

For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. (Rom. 8:20–22)

Turned loose from the myth of human omniscience, we find we are free to mind our own business. The business of every believer is to strive to understand what God has revealed. What he has revealed is sufficient for salvation, needful for godliness, and supremely worth of meditation. It is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. it becomes the filter through which we learn to choose wisely what additional knowledge is good for our souls. And in choosing well, we employ our minds in loving God as they ought.

The Bible is not magical[...] nor is its primary function to answer our questions[...] 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 spoon-feed us answers to every decision in life.

God, who is himself uncreated, creates everything. Gathering no materials, pinning no swatches to mood boards, consulting no color wheels, God speaks, and the universe leaps into being.

What freedom is found in recognizing that only God creates! No longer must we labor under the delusion of our own self-importance. We need not find our value in people or possessions - it rests in our origin.

Our whole lives as Christ-followers are to be given over to the identification and celebration of the limits God has ordained for us.

We are line-crossers, boundary-breakers, fence-jumpers, carrying inside us a warped belief that our heavenly parent wants to withhold from us something that is needful or pleasurable. Even as we enjoy his good gifts, we feel a hyperawareness of the boundaries he has set, and we question their validity. Though he gives us nineteen gifts and warns us away from one danger, we suspect that what is withheld is not dangerous but desirable.

We must be those who build on the rock-solid foundation of mind-engaging process, rather than on the shifting sands of 'what this verse means to me' subjectivity.

It matters that women teach women, and that they do so with excellence.

Shaping someone's understanding of the things of God is a huge responsiblity, and it is not to be taken lightly.

Our primary problem as Christian women is not that we lack self-worth, not that we lack a sense of significance. It’s that we lack awe.

No other attribute is joined to the name of God with greater frequency than holiness.

The Scriptures find the justice of God a virtue to be extolled, not a blemish to be concealed.

The antidote for covetousness is always gratitude: We can combat a sinful love of the past by counting the gifts we have been given in the present.

The problem with using our desires as the litmus test for holiness is that sin feels more normal than righteousness.

We can’t fully appreciate the sweetness of the New Testament without the savory of the Old Testament. We need historical narrative, poetry, wisdom literature, law, prophecy, and parables all showing us the character of God from different angles. And we need to see the gospel story from Genesis to Revelation. A well-rounded approach to Bible study challenges us to learn the full counsel of God’s Word. It helps us to build a collective understanding of how the Bible as a whole speaks of God.

As Moses would learn during the Exodus, who he was bore no impact on the outcome of his situation.

Time-wasting, or a desire to lose our sense of the passage of time, is evidence that we want to be like God in an unhealthy way. We subconsciously covet his eternality. We tell ourselves that there's plenty of time and we can spend it without thought. -Social Sanity in and Insta World

God’s will for our lives is that we conform to the image of Christ, whose incarnation shows us humanity perfectly conformed to the image of God.

Those who do not cast themselves upon the perfect sacrifice of Christ will spend their lives attempting to make atonement by offering their own good works to a God of their own imagining. They will seek to justify themselves by whatever means they can. They will live lives of striving and futility.

How long will you strive with your Maker?

The Bible recounts the story of a king whose claim to a throne is recognized from the beginning, but whose majesty and authority are only fully apprehended in its closing pages, when we see him crowned and ruling at last. His faithful utterance from the throne is this: Behold, I am making all things new" (Rev 21:5).

God of the past, present, and future, bending time to his perfect will, unfettered by its constraints. The past holds for him no missed opportunity. The present holds for him no anxiety. The future holds for him no uncertainty. He was, and is, and is to come.

We look at the timing of events in our lives and think that perhaps, in at least a few instances, our timeless God has temporarily checked out.

The Scriptures speak of a God who does not change. Like the tallest mountain peak on the horizon, from generation to generation, God stands unchanging, immutable, anchoring the landscape of human existence as all else around him ebbs and flows, blossoms and withers, waxes and wanes. The Rock of our salvation endures

For I the LORD do not change” (Mal. 3:6). The author of Hebrews exults, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). James celebrates the goodness of the God “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). He is immutable, not just unchanging, but incapable of change of any kind. The

The God who was is the God who is. The God who is is the God who is to come. The God who is to come is the God who was.

Only one person does not change, and that is God.

Just as my assurance of salvation rests in the fact that God cannot change, my hope of sanctification rests in the fact that I can.

When we apply the terms always or never to other people, we speak an untruth.

The raging of the nations can be navigated only by keeping a fixed point in view: the Lord God, seated on his throne.

We live differently when we regard the future as a place we will go “if the Lord wills.” God does not owe me the seventy or eighty years of which Moses speaks in Psalm 90. Every year he gives is a gift, gracious and undeserved. Thanks be to God, not just for the years he has preserved me but for the years he has ordained for me, perfect in number and known only to him.

There is this idea called “the ministry of presence,” and God is perfect at it. “It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deut. 31:8). When tragedy comes, whether we battle sin or sorrow, we never face these foes alone. His spirit, which hems us in behind and before, also indwells us. He is all around us, and he is in us. How secure are we? His

Nosso registro de nascimento anuncia que somos limitados. Nossas limitações foram planejadas. Gastarmos o restante de nossas vidas negando ou aceitando essa verdade faz toda a diferença na forma como amamos a Deus e os outros.

Only God is self-sufficient. Our God is a God of no needs. What the Energizer Bunny purports to be, what the perpetual motion wheel aspires to be, God is in fact: a self-contained source of perpetual and perfect sustenance.

Creating and sustaining all things, he is himself created and sustained by none.

No need for love or companionship prompted the Godhead to speak us into being. He created us gladly and he loves us infinitely, but he does not need us.

Fasting reminds us quickly of our need, of our utter lack of self-sufficiency. It’s an express lane to relearning our limits.

We turn from the God-worship that should have resulted from seeing our need to the self-worship of believing we, like God, are self-sufficient. God, in his infinite wisdom, created us to need him. And he also created us to need each other.

We live in a time when the Bible is largely regarded as a book for our own edification, through which the Holy Spirit will simply reveal truth to those willing to give it a few minutes’ attention a day. The intellectual muscles that our faith ancestors once used for digging have grown atrophied in the modern mind.

What a mercy that God sees the end from the beginning. He engraves good boundaries for us even before we know we need them.

Rather than acting as salt and light, we become bland contributions to the environments we inhabit and shape, indistinguishable from those who have never been changed by the gospel.

Any study of the Bible that seeks to establish our identity without first proclaiming God’s identity will render partial and limited help.

Jesus warned, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). To live a life that consists in the abundance of possessions is inconsistent with abundant life.

Idolatry takes hold of you and me when we depend on a human relationship, a circumstance, or a possession to never leave nor forsake us, to always remain. Idolatry takes hold of us when we believe that a difficult relationship or circumstance will never change, will always be hopeless, wounding, or sorrowful. But here is truth to topple idols: Every circumstance you encounter will change except the circumstance of your forgiveness. Every possession you own will pass away except the pearl of your salvation. Every relationship you enter into will waver except your adoption by your heavenly Father.

The raging of the nations can be navigated only by keeping a fixed point in view: the Lord God, seated on his throne. That fixed point has been my meditation this week for the sake of writing this book, and the effect it has had on my composure in the face of change and upheaval has taken me by surprise.

Our study of the Bible is only beneficial insofar as it increases our love for the God it proclaims!

Fourth, we can learn how to interpret the Bible ourselves—something that doesn’t require a seminary degree to do. Some good books are Jen Wilkin’s Women of the Word and Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

Jen Wilkin is a Bible study leader, blogger, and author of Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds.

Worshipful reverence and awe, not cowering dread, define a right fear of the Lord.

Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made; Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.1

Our complete freedom from sin is certain, but it is not sudden.

But I carried a secret not uncommon to people with my background: I didn’t know my Bible. Sure, I knew parts of it—I remembered stories from vacation Bible school and I could quote verses from all over the New Testament and Psalms—but I didn’t know how the parts that I knew fit with each other, much less how they fit with the parts I didn’t know yet. Looming in my peripheral vision was a mountain of biblical ignorance that was just beginning to cause me concern. Though I treasured what I knew, I was growing troubled by what I did not know.

the Five P’s of Sound Study: Study with Purpose Study with Perspective Study with Patience Study with Process Study with Prayer

The message of the Bible transcends its original audience, but it cannot be severed from its original audience. As Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart note, “A text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or his or her readers.”4

We cannot create hope where there is hopelessness or love where there is lovelessness. We cannot create repentance where there is unrepentance, but we can cry out to the God who can.

We, as believers in Christ, sealed with the Holy Spirit, can know we will persevere.

This story in Genesis 1 is my story, and it's your story. Because we were once darkness, and he spoke, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.

God knows us as individuals with names and faces.

The well-known proverb “Train up a child in the way that he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it” does not promise that Christian parenting will produce Christian children. Rather, it states the general, wise principle that a godly parent must train her children in the way of godliness.

But here is good news: the One Whom we most need to behold has made Himself known. He has traced with a find hand the line and contours of His face. He has dons so in His Word. We must search for that face... By fixing our gaze on that face, we trade mere human glory for holiness: "Beholding the glory of the Lord [we are] transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." 2 Cor. 3: 18

This explains why Romans 12:2 says we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We come to understand who God is, and we are changed—our affections detach from lesser things and attach to him. 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.

The heart cannot love what the mind does not know. Yes, it is sinful to acquire knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but acquiring knowledge about One we love, for the sake of loving him more deeply, will always be for our transformation.

Ultimately, every act of faithfulness toward others is an act of faithfulness toward God himself. Though others make make commitments they have little intention of keeping, the children of God strive to prove that their word is their bond. They do so not to win the trust or approval of others, but because they long to be like Christ.

In memory of RC Sproul, who taught profound truth in plain speech, and who dignified everyday disciples as capable theologians.

Rather than celebrate and revere his omnipotence, we seek ultimate power in our own spheres of influence. Rather than rest in the immutability of God, we point to our own calcified sin patterns and declare ourselves unchanging and unchangeable. Like

Rather than celebrate and revere his omnipotence, we seek ultimate power in our own spheres of influence. Rather than rest in the immutability of God, we point to our own calcified sin patterns and declare ourselves unchanging and unchangeable. Like our father Adam and our mother Eve, we long for that which is intended only for God, rejecting our God-given limits and craving the limitlessness we foolishly believe we are capable of wielding and entitled to possess. Even as the redeemed, we crave the forbidden fruit of rivalry.

But to love self and others as limitlessly as possible, we must learn to die daily to our propensity to measure and compare our limits.

Could it be that this process of growing in the fear of the Lord is a simple matter of relearning how to count? By learning to worship God in his immeasurability, by learning to take the measure of ourselves, our sin, our circumstances, and others accurately, we might at last come to say with David, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

Our limits teach us the fear of the Lord. They are reminders that keep us from falsely believing that we can be like God. When I reach the limit of my strength, I worship the One whose strength never flags. When I reach the limit of my reason, I worship the One whose reason is beyond searching out.

God is incomprehensible. This does not mean that he is unknowable, but that he is unable to be fully known. It is the joyful duty, the delightful task of his children to spend their lives, both this one and the next, discovering who he is.

God is not only an expert on God. He is also an expert on me.

God speaks, and the universe leaps into being. From nothing he creates something. Unlike humans who create by rearranging what exists, God creates simply by the power of his word, and where there was once nothing, something miraculously appears.

We humans must confess, “I am because he is.” Only God can say, “I AM WHO I AM.” God:

He created because it is his very nature to create. He is not a creation-optional God.

Second, because God made everything, God owns everything. If everything created owes its existence to God, then nothing created truly belongs to another created thing. God does not own the cattle on a thousand hills because he purchased them. He owns them because he made them. Ownership implies rights and responsibilities. Because God owns everything, he is responsible for its care and has the right to do with it what he wishes. Because

Worshiping the creation rather than the Creator does not cause us to protect life or steward creation. It causes us to devalue life and consume creation.

Whatever our sphere of influence, we convince ourselves that we deserve credit for creating that which we are called to steward.

By all means, speak and act in a manner that points those around you toward the beauty of the gospel, but know that only God can create righteousness in the heart of another person. Find freedom in knowing that your human creativity is an echo intended to inspire worship of your Creator.

God is near whether we feel him to be or not. How mindful we are of this truth will directly affect the way we live.

But we can know this: no one gets away with anything. Nothing is hidden from his sight. There is no such thing as a secret sin.

We don’t like the idea of Adam as our representative. We tell ourselves we ought not to be held responsible for his mistake. But if God is indeed sovereign and good, then His choice of Adam for this role is the best choice. He was a justly chosen representative, despite the outcome. We can know that, had we been in that garden, the outcome would have been the same. Otherwise, we have indeed been dealt with unjustly in the matter of representation.

A well-rounded approach to Bible study addresses a topic as it arises in Scripture, rather than attaching Scripture to a topic. It asks the student to labor at the process of discovery.

If our reading of the Bible focuses our eyes on anyone other than God, we have gotten backwards the transformation process. (ch. 1)

Un día el Salvador regresará en un caballo blanco, llevando el nombre de Fiel y Verdadero (Ap 19:11). Aunque esperamos ese día en medio de las dificultades, del trabajo duro y de la tentación, esperamos con la certeza de que mil años son como un día para Dios. En el momento indicado, los cielos se abrirán. Por lo tanto: “Mantengamos firme la esperanza que profesamos, porque fiel es el que hizo la promesa” (Heb 10:23).

Because he does not change, we can rely on the unchanging truth of Scripture.

Just as my assurance of salvation rests in the fact that God cannot change, my hope of sanctification rests in the fact that I can.

Rather than casting all your anxieties on the Internet, which cares for no man, cast them on God, for he cares for you (1 Pet. 5:7). Rather than obsessing over the future, learn contentment in your God-ordained innocence of what is to come. Rather than meddling, focus on your own concerns.

But aggressions against the reputation of God are uttered in his name on a smaller scale on a regular basis. Has wise counsel questioned your plans? Just tell them that “God told you” this was the direction to take. Not interested in taking on a ministry opportunity? Just say you need to pray about it, and then a few days later say you sensed the Lord calling you in another direction. Need to add punch to your political view? Be sure to attach the word biblical to it in a way that implies all other positions are not. The sin of misattribution is the perfect smokescreen, presenting as piety and humility while masking pride and hypocrisy.

Often, we pray for wisdom when, in fact, we are seeking knowledge. Tell me what to do, Lord. Tell me which commitment to accept, what words to say, where to live, and who to work for. We may even remind God that in James 1:5 he told us we would receive wisdom if we asked. But we are not asking for understanding; we are asking for information. And in doing so, we betray our unwillingness to move from immaturity to maturity as a disciple.