Our Daily Dose of Awe
"Continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him (Christ)." Colossians 2:6b-7a (NIV)
I was privileged to attend the Rooted Women's Conference this weekend at Shades Mountain Baptist Church. 650 women gathered to hear author and Bible teacher Jen Wilkin teach three sessions on Bible literacy using today's verse as the conference theme. After describing the growing problem of Bible literacy among conservative evangelical Christians, Jen brought her topic a little closer to home for each of us when she surprised us with a pop quiz. Her 20 Bible Literacy questions are below. See if you can answer them for yourselves without the use of your Bible or a smart phone.
1. Who were the first 3 kings of Israel?
2. Where did Jesus live?
3. Which man left Ur and traveled to a far country he did not know?
4. What were the occupations of Cain and Abel?
5. Who said, “Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given?”
6. How many books are in the Bible? How many are in the OT? How many are in the NT?
7. How many years of famine did Joseph predict for Pharaoh and Egypt?
8. Who was Jacob’s youngest son?
9. What was Noah’s first act when he exited the ark after the flood?
10. Who were the sons of Zebedee?
11. How many people were saved in the ark?
12. Who said to whom, “Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart?”
13. What animal spoke to Balaam? Extra points for using the King James description!
14. Who commanded the sun and moon to stand still?
15. What miracle of Jesus is recorded in all four gospels?
16. What is another name for Mount Horeb?
17. What were the names of Jacob’s mother and grandmother?
18. Which men are recorded in the Bible as never dying?
19. Who made the golden calf?
20. Which apostle found a coin in the fish’s mouth?
After we reviewed our answers, Jen reminded us that the first step to fixing a problem is to admit that we have one. Not many of the 650 women attending the Rooted conference were able to correctly answer at least 16 of the 20 questions. All of the questions above are comprehension questions, meaning that they ask us, "What does the biblical text actually say?" If we fail to understand what a text says, we won't be able to correctly interpret what the text means or correctly apply it to our lives.
Following our pop quiz, Jen Wilkin then shared ten principles for developing Bible literacy. In our next Bible Bits, I'll share those principles and the answers to today's Bible Literacy questions. Many thanks to the women of Shades Mountain Baptist for a wonderful weekend of teaching, fellowship, and time in God's Word.
"Awe occurs when we're rightly oriented before God and realize that He is big and we are small. The Bible is our daily dose of awe." (Jen Wilkin)
"We become what we behold." (Jen Wilkin)
"The heart cannot love what the mind does not know." (Jen Wilkin)