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About The Equipping Bible™ and Its Designer, Sunny
A Little About Me
I am a passionate Christian. I love to learn and think and talk about God.
My primary spiritual gift (and love language) is encouragement, with some 'word of knowledge' and 'exhortation' thrown in.
According to
Gallup's Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0®, my top 5 strengths are:
- Strategic — Make goals/plans/contingencies; find and evaluate options/consequences; diagnose/solve/avoid
problems.
- Ideation — Flexible, innovative, efficient; find patterns and mistakes; clear explanations; solutions on
the fly; brainstorm.
- Learner — Master new systems/skills; shift between projects; unafraid of the unknown/challenging; always
improving.
- Input — Investigate, catalog, categorize, organize, systematize, integrate, document, access, disseminate
info/resources.
- Intellection — Break down complex concepts; create explanatory models; clear communication, excellent
vocabulary.
Essentially, I am driven to learn, understand, organize, and share information — It's just part of who I am, who God
created me to be.
In the Myers-Briggs personality scheme I am an INTP, described as incredibly logical and inquisitive. INTPs are
notorious for their skepticism and rejection of authority for authority's sake. Due to these traits, many INTPs
become scientists and many are atheists.
I, too, have a scientific bent (I double-majored in Astrophysics and Math) but I've never felt any conflict between my
science and my faith. I find that lots of things in life seem contradictory at first glance but there's often a clear
explanation if you'll just take the time to investigate.
A Little About How The Equipping Bible™ Came to Be
The Equipping Bible™ sprang nearly fully-formed from the merging of several different
Bible projects I was working on:
- I had weekly Bible studies with some Jehovah's Witnesses for about six months. I have never spent so much time in
my Bible! Searching the Bible and using RBC's
Discovery Series booklets
for doctrinal support, using
The Baker Topical Guide to the Bible to find particular verses and an
online interlinear Bible to investigate Greek grammar, praying for patience and a gentle spirit as I asked them tough
questions — God blessed me through that experience and I pray He blessed them too.
- I started marking doctrinal verses in my copy of the Jehovah's Witnesses' version of the Bible (The New World
Translation). I developed a color code that eventually became
The Equipping Bible™ Doctrine Category color code. I found that some verses
touched on multiple doctrine categories (and so needed to be marked in multiple colors), which led to the idea of restricting
doctrine markings to the margin.
- I started reading up on witnessing to compare our tools/techniques to those from the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons
(who also came calling). Two books I really liked were
Witnessing Without Fear by Bill Bright and
Just Walk Across the Room by Bill Hybels.
- In order to respond to the Jehovah's Witnesses' ideas about the afterlife, I started studying the book of Revelation and
other end-times prophecy. A great resource I found was
The Rose Guide to End-Time Prophecy. One thing I really liked was how it presented a variety of
possible timelines, each with the supporting verses, and left the ultimate interpretation to the reader (as guided by the
Holy Spirit). This felt less dogmatic and more educational, respecting the reader. I'd like to emulate this
approach in The Equipping Bible™ Doctrine Articles.
- I went to an Intelligent Design conference. In addition to enjoying the lectures, I bought a couple of books on
apologetics:
On Guard by Craig and
A Ready Defense by McDowell. Around that time I also bought
The Apologetics Study Bible.
- I started organizing my favorite things into my old SoSaysSunny Amazon Store (service now discontinued),
sorting the Christian stuff into sections: Why Believe? What to Believe? How to Live it?
How to Share it? How to Defend it? What about Science? Other Religions? Read the Bible?
and More. These questions inspired the categories for The Equipping Bible™
Divisions.
So, from an organizing / informing personality,
a bunch of Bible pursuits,
and a pile of Christian resources ...
Voila! The Equipping Bible™ concept was born.
Now, obviously, no study Bible can contain all the information in all those books. The concept is to gather the best
tools from the best books to help every Christian utilize the best tool ever created: the Bible. Then we point
them to some Recommended Resources for further study.
Let's be clear: I'm not a subject-matter expert in any of this. I've just found myself at the intersection of
a real need and my personal passion for organizing information. I don't think this is a coincidence. I feel a
real burden to apply my God-given talents to help others and especially to further the Kingdom.
The Equipping Bible™ is my calling and I will continue to develop these materials;
I'd just prefer them to be bound together with Scripture as a unified tool in the hands of Christians everywhere.
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