SHOW NOTES: - Head to our Start Page for all you need to begin! - Join the RECAPtains - Check out the TBR Store - Show credits PREP EPISODES (in case you haven’t listened yet): 1. Let's Read the Bible in a Year (Chronological Plan)! 2. How I Learned to Love (Reading) the Bible 3. Why Reading the Whole Bible is Important (interview with Lee McDerment) 4. Preparing to Read the Bible 5. Avoiding Common Mistakes: What to Look for When You Read the Bible 6. Reading the Bible in Community BIBLE READING & LISTENING: Follow along on the Bible App, or to listen to the Bible, try Dwell! SOCIALS: The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | TikTok D-Group: Instagram | Facebook TLC: Instagram | Facebook D-GROUP: D-Group is brought to you by the same team that brings you The Bible Recap. TBR is where we read the Bible, and D-Group is where we study the Bible. D-Group is an international network of Bible study groups that meet weekly in homes, churches, and online. Find or start one near you today! DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact. Links to specific resources and content: This is not an endorsement of the entire website, author, organization, etc.. Their views may not represent our own.
Full Episode
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Today, I want to tell you how I got to this place, hosting this podcast and loving reading the Bible, because that wasn't always my story. And I figured if you and I are going to spend every morning having a conversation, it might be nice to hear a little bit about each other.
I grew up in a Christian home, and my first memory is my mom teaching me John 3.16, around the time I was three years old. Not long after that, my brother Jason asked me if I wanted to be a Christian, and he prayed with me to follow Christ with my life. I was probably only about four years old, so I had very little idea of what that amounted to.
but I think most of us rarely understand what's happening when we first respond to Jesus. But I was in an environment that gave me every opportunity to learn. Church three times a week, Christian school, and even my summers and weekends were spent working in the Christian bookstore my family owns.
I started writing Bible studies in high school and college, and I had a real love for the things I did know about the Bible, but I'd never really read through the Bible. During college, I started on a path toward full-time ministry, and I made lots of friends traveling the world as a musician and a writer and a speaker. One of those friends was a pastor named Lee, who lives in South Carolina.
I lived in New York City at the time, but I toured in the South regularly, and I remember one day at his church when he casually asked me if I'd ever read through the whole Bible. I replied with something like, "'I think I have. I've probably pieced it together over the years and covered the whole thing that way.'" His response to me changed the trajectory of my life in the best way possible.
He said, read it. Read the whole thing. Let your eyes fall on every word. Don't skip anything, not even the genealogies or the laws. He was so passionate about it, I was pretty stunned. He really seemed to love the Bible, not just believe it. Then he said, and I would encourage you to say very little on stage until you've read it all. Wow, that was the wake-up call I needed.
How had I been doing ministry without reading scripture first? If I hadn't read the Bible, I might be taking something out of context when I quote it. Or I might be saying something that actually contradicts the overarching story of scripture. Yikes. Lee's words put a holy fear in me. So I started the next day. I set out to read it for the first time all the way through.
And I'll be honest, it was hard. But almost anything worth doing has some level of difficulty that you can't undercut. As I pressed on, the challenge was actually less about reading it or understanding it and more about accepting what I was reading and understanding. I didn't expect that part. I was seeing things about God that I'd never seen before. He was doing things that confused me.
And I'm not just talking about Old Testament God. I'm talking about New Testament Jesus. In fact, most of my struggles happened when I got to the New Testament. That part was much more challenging for me. During that first year, I really had a hard time. I didn't like what I was seeing. There were a few passages that were especially challenging to me.
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