This week’s Wednesday Reads is one that you need to go out and buy right now. Seriously, Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds needs to be in your personal library. I’ll wait while you go on over to Amazon and pick up a copy.

Did you get your copy? Great! And since you’ve already probably looked at the first part of the book and seen what’s ahead, you can clearly understand why you NEED this book! Everyone needs this book! I’ll clarify, though, for those of you who are waiting to pick it up until after you read this blog post. (I get it. I really do.)

This book is exactly what it promises it is – a book on how to study your Bible. Can I be honest with you? I think we all think that we know how to study our Bibles when what we really know is how to read a short devotional every day that is centered on just one verse (which is sometimes taken out of context), how to read a book that talks about Jesus and uses some Scripture (maybe a few verses), or (for those who are really with it) how to do a fill in the blank study alongside a video curriculum featuring a woman who has actually done the work of studying the Bible for us.

Ouch? Yes, ouch! And I’ve been there, done that, completed all the Bible studies right with you! It wasn’t until I was sitting in a hermeneutics class in seminary that I even realized there was a better way. For those of you who can go to seminary and take a hermeneutics class, by all means go for it. For everyone else, GET THIS BOOK. It’s practical in its approach, offering real help and tips when it comes to studying Scripture, and the author doesn’t give any advice without acknowledging some of the pitfalls and distractions that keep us from being diligent students of the word of God. She gets that we’re stretched thin in our lives and that we’re accustomed to reading Scripture the way we’ve always read it, deeply entrenched in some of our not so helpful habits in some cases, and she speaks to that with compassion and with challenge, encouraging readers to approach the Bible with a desire to study and handle it correctly, not just for our personal edification but for the health of the body of Christ. There’s so much garbage theology floating around out there, and when we latch onto it without having a firm foundation in Scripture, we begin to love a God of our own making, not the God of the Bible. I most appreciated the last part of the book, when the author delves into the HOW of studying your Bible, actually including a passage and showing how she notates things and how she thinks through each section, bit by bit with an eye to history, context, and how each part of Scripture fits into the whole of Scripture. So good!

Read this book. It’ll either serve as a great refresher on the how to of studying Scripture or it will completely revolutionize the way you read your Bible. What are you waiting for? Grab your copy here!