Hi ~

I presented my teachings about “bitterness” starting in 2014, up to a talk in 2019 that’s available on YouTube.

I received responses about my bitterness teaching like “This blew my mind.” I remember a grateful response in all caps with multiple exclamation points.

These are the teachings that ultimately ended up in Untwisting Scriptures #1.

But what I taught about bitterness was completely different from anything I had heard from any teachers my entire life.

So that leads to the question in the Subject line.

Who did I think I was to present something so different from what was being taught by well-known and highly respected men of God?

Who did I think I was?

That brings me to a part of my journey I didn’t talk about in my earlier “Journey” email. It’s a part that started when I was 18.

I remember when I was 18, standing holding my Bible in my hands.

I said, “We believe this is a message from God to us. If this is a message from God, I need to understand what it says.”

It didn’t cross my mind to wonder if other Christians were thinking the same way. I just knew I was responsible for myself.

(This makes it sound like I was really mature. I wasn’t—I was incredibly immature, actually. I just somehow experienced some grace from God in this way.)

I specifically requested a wide-margin Bible for Christmas so I could write my notes in the margins. I dated those notes, hoping that as I grew I’d be able to chronicle my spiritual growth.

And yes, that has been the case.

As the years passed after college, and I continued to study . . .

I wasn’t studying the Bible in order to complete a class in school; I wasn’t taking any classes.

I wasn’t studying to teach it; I wasn’t teaching anybody.

Maybe you’ve found this to be true in your own life: studying that’s done simply between yourself and the Lord can be much richer than study done because you have to meet a deadline and “produce” something.

In those early days I filtered much of my Scripture reading through some old commentators. (Not the new ones—I spurned new books. I hope you don’t spurn new books, because my books are new.)

But there came a time when I thought, I can hear from the Holy Spirit too. I can learn to cross reference too. This Scripture reminds me of that one, etc. I have access to lexicons; I can find out what words mean. I know how to study context. I can study the culture of the time.

At first my goal was just to know what I was supposed to DO. (I was a good independent Baptist, after all.)

As the years passed, my desires shifted. I studied because I wanted to know God.

More years passed. Primarily through Scripture study, I really understood the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian.

I’ve mentioned before how steep my learning curve was in 2006 and 2012 when I was introduced to various aspects of abuse and trauma. I needed to learn how the brain works, how abusers manipulate, what trauma does to the body, and more. I had so much to learn.

But by that time I really did know the Scriptures—by that time I’d been studying them for almost 40 years. Asking the Lord to permeate me with them, for them to become part of myself.

For me to really know Him.

And because I knew the Scriptures and I knew the heart of God—partly through my studies, partly through my experiences with Him—I had no qualms taking on a teaching that I saw was twisted.

I had no problem saying, “I’m going to do a word and subject study through the entire Bible on the topic of bitterness and learn what God really says.”

After all, I’d been doing that kind of thing for years, just for my own understanding.

But I didn’t really do it all alone. I’ll talk more about that in the next email.

With you in longing to know the heart of God,

Rebecca

P.S. How has the Lord taught or encouraged you through your study of the Word of God? I would love to hear about it.

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