Thoughts on 139

P(s)alm Leaf 
Haha

This week I listened to a women’s talk on Psalm 139 in addition to my regular study of James. In the past, Psalm 139 has been used in sermons during women’s conferences and talks to validate women and give them a self-esteem boost and a pep talk. You’ve probably heard someone in your life say “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” They were quoting Psalm 139:14 which says in its entirety, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” This verse is not about us. It's about God.

Now I admit, I have hated this Psalm in the past (is it legal to say that you hated a part of the Bible??). Anyway, I have hated this Psalm because it has always been used at these frilly women’s conferences and I have tried my hardest to rebel against those (we can unpack that later and I now know that there is nothing wrong with frilly women’s conferences. If you want your women’s conference to have a lot of frills then please have your frills).

Back to the talk that I watched this week. The speaker’s name was Jen Wilkin and one of her points in her talk was about how we read the Bible. She stated that usually when we go to the Bible now we read with the intent of finding something out about ourselves. How to do better, be a better Christian, pray better, serve others better. We never read with the intent of learning about the characteristics of God and learning about who he is. We read for ourselves.

I know that this is so true for myself. I definitely sit down at my Bible every morning and say "Lord fix me" in more or fewer words. So I decided to sort of challenge myself this upcoming week. I want to sit down and read the Bible not to see what I can get out of it to be better but to see what I can learn about God. I might go through a chapter a day and write what I see about who God is in each chapter (I haven't figured out the execution but I've got a few days). I've done this method before and it really helps you to see how minuscule you are in the grand scheme of things. 

I'm excited for this! I can't wait to see what things I can find out about God that were always there!