“All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
— 2 Timothy 3:16–17, CSB
For many years, I have led an amazing group of women at our church. We meet on Wednesday nights, open our Bibles, and study the Word together.
Several years ago, we had the absolute privilege of welcoming a woman into our group who had moved to our area to be near her family. Her name is Jane, but we all call her Mrs. Jane, and she very quickly became one of my spiritual mothers.
Mrs. Jane has a saying we hear from her almost every week. She doesn’t work it into the conversation just because she likes saying it. Somehow, invariably, we will come to a place in our discussion where she lifts up her Bible and says, in that beautiful deep-South drawl of hers,
“He wrote us a book. You girls remember? He wrote us a book.”
And every time she says it, I can almost feel the younger women in the room lean forward.
Mrs. Jane is eighty-six years old, and when we look at her, we see something we hope to become. Now, if she reads this, she is going to fuss at me and say, “Tina, you know I am not perfect.”
And I will agree with her. Mrs. Jane is definitely not perfect. None of us are. But she loves God’s Word, and it shows.
I think that may be why those words mean so much to me when she says them. Mrs. Jane isn’t simply reminding us that we own Bibles. She has spent enough years in the Word for us to see what happens when a woman keeps returning to it.
She has let Scripture tell her who God is.
That sounds simple, but it is not a small thing.
Every one of us has a picture of God in our minds. We may not have built it intentionally, but it is there. Some of it came from Scripture. Some came from people who taught us well. Some came from people who did not. Some of it grew out of childhood, church experiences, disappointment, unanswered prayer, fear, or simply something we heard often enough that we stopped questioning it.
And whatever picture we carry matters, because we will live in response to the God we believe Him to be.
That is where Mrs. Jane’s little sentence becomes much more than a sweet saying.
He wrote us a book.
God did not leave us to construct Him from our experiences, preferences, or assumptions. He chose to reveal Himself.
In theology, we call that revelation. But the word simply means that God has made known what we could never discover fully on our own. He is not a God we invent. He is a God who speaks.
And because He has spoken, I do not have to ask only, “What do I think God is like?”
I can ask a much better question:
What has God actually revealed about Himself?
That question has challenged me more than once, because sometimes what I have always believed and what Scripture actually says are not exactly the same.
Second Timothy 3:16 tells us that Scripture is God-breathed and that God uses it to teach us, correct us, train us, and equip us. I need all four of those things. I like the teaching part. The correcting part can be less comfortable.
There have certainly been times when I wanted God’s Word to reassure me more than I wanted it to challenge me. I wanted God to confirm what I had already decided or to fit neatly into what made sense from where I was standing.
But if God is really God, I should expect Him to be bigger than my categories. And if He has chosen to reveal Himself, then I want to know Him as He actually is—not simply as I have imagined Him to be.
That is where Scripture keeps bringing me back.
John begins his Gospel by telling us, “In the beginning was the Word.” Then, a few verses later, the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.
God did not merely send us information about Himself.
He came near.
And when we open Scripture, we are not simply looking for better principles for living. We are learning the character of the God who has made Himself known most fully in Jesus.
I think that is one reason I care so deeply about women learning to study the Bible for themselves.
Yes, context matters. Interpretation matters. Good teachers and good resources matter. We should be humble enough to learn from people who have studied more than we have. But God’s Word was not given only to scholars. It was given to His people.
That means women like us can open it on a Wednesday night around a table. We can open it early in the morning with a cup of coffee. We can open it when life is going beautifully and when we have no idea what God is doing.
And over time, something happens.
Not because the Bible changes.
Because we do.
Psalm 119 calls God’s Word a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. I have always loved that image. A lamp usually doesn’t show you the whole road. It gives you enough light to take the next step.
That has certainly been true in my life. There have been mornings when Scripture has corrected a fear I woke up carrying. Other times it has exposed a motive I would rather not have seen. Sometimes it has simply reminded me that what I feel very strongly is not necessarily what is true.
And sometimes a familiar verse has met me in a new season so personally that I wonder how I missed it before.
The verse hadn’t changed.
God hadn’t changed.
But perhaps I was finally in a place to hear it differently.
Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the Word of God is living and active. I don’t think that means we should go searching for secret meanings that change with our circumstances. I think it means that the living God continues to use His unchanging Word to work in living people.
People like Mrs. Jane. People like me. People like you.
So I keep coming back to it because I forget, because the world gets loud, because my feelings can be very convincing, and because sometimes I would rather God agree with me than correct me. In His kindness, He did not leave me to guess who He is.
Mrs. Jane is right.
He wrote us a book.
Maybe before we worry about whether we have the perfect study Bible, the perfect plan, enough time, or enough knowledge, we begin there.
God has spoken.
Let’s choose to open the amazing gift of His Word and listen!
