Have you browsed the Women’s Interests section in your local Christian bookstore recently? You can find books on adoption, setting boundaries, building better familial relationships, managing your time, become a more effective ministry leader, disciplining your children, suffering loss, overcoming insecurity, what “Christian dating” should look like, and the topics go on and on. In fact, you will find more topical books in your local Christian bookstore than you will bibles. These books are helpful, even biblical, but why are we continuing to pick up book after book on how to live, rather than picking up the only living and active book that is filled with wisdom as well as the transforming power to bring about effective change in our lives? So while we may be avid readers of Christian materials, we cease to become serious students of the One Book that actually holds within it the power to change us from the inside out.
The bible is filled with examples of God’s answers for all of the above topics and many other issues with which women are struggling to gain victory. As we study scripture and engage with the characters who struggle to follow God in their own lives and circumstances, we begin to apply those life lessons to the modern day situations we are facing. Women are relational creatures; we crave connection. When we study examples in scripture of how God connects with His people, we become more secure in His desire to connect with us. As we understand that a large part of that relationship comes from knowing Him through the revelation of Himself through His Word, our desire changes from reading books about the bible and its principles, to reading the bible itself.
I was recently watching the Disney movie “Aladdin” with my two children. As the evil villain, Jafar, thrusts Aladdin before the cave of wonders, the smoke rises and a voice from deep within the cave announces, “Only the Diamond In The Rough may enter”! If I were to poll one hundred Christian women and ask them, “Have you ever felt or do you currently feel like a diamond in the rough?” I guarantee I would get an emphatic “Yes!” resounding from nearly all of them. Christian women today are struggling. They have access to myriads of information about what a ‘good Christian woman’ should look like, act like, raise her family like, etc. What they are looking for and not finding is someone to explain to them how to get there. They know where they want to go, who they want to be, and what or Who they want to live for. The problem is they can’t figure out how to chip away the dull, hard, cragged, rock to uncover the Beautiful One Who lives inside of them and allow Him to be the predominant aspect of their lives. The reason why: it is the Word of God that accomplishes this in us. It is the Living, Active Word of God that cuts through the rocky quagmire of our sinful nature and pierces to the heart, where that beautiful Diamond has taken up residence upon our oh, so great a salvation! The bible demonstrates to us that God’s Word is full of realpeople in real life with real struggles who served a real God. It is not a book full of good information, the bible is full of power; power to change us and give us everything we need for life (2 Peter 1:3).
So if you need some polishing and dusting off, I think you know what my advice would be!