Jen Wilkin Quotes & Sayings

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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

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

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

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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 — Jen Wilkin

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

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

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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

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

The key to enjoying wine isn't just to guzzle a lot of expensive wine, it's to learn about wine. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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: — Jen Wilkin

The heart cannot love what the mind does not know. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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? — Jen Wilkin

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 — Jen Wilkin

You will never turn from a sin you don't hate. — Jen Wilkin

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

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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

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

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

Exegesis says, "Before you can hear it with your ears, hear it with theirs. Before you can understand it today, understand it back then. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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. — Jen Wilkin

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 — Jen Wilkin

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

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. — Jen Wilkin