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. As we get ready to launch into Genesis, I thought it might be helpful to walk you through some really practical steps for how to read the Bible. I'll give you a bit of a sneak peek into my process in case any of the things I do might be helpful for you.
But that's not to say that what works for me is what will work for you. I want you to find what works best for you. And it may be trial and error for a while. Be patient with yourself. When you start something new, it rarely goes perfectly right out of the gate. Give yourself a chance to adjust and adapt. First, let's talk about time. When are you going to read the Bible? Set a time for it.
Put it in your calendar so you treat it with respect. For most of my life, I read my Bible at the end of the day because I'm a night owl and it's when I feel most alert. I also would tell myself a convenient lie that it's better for me to read at night because unlike in the morning, I have nowhere to be in the middle of the night so I can stay up as long as I want reading the Bible.
That sounds nice, but that never happened. I just rushed through it, half-focused, while my mind went back to whatever had happened that day. Then I'd go right back to checking social media and replying to emails. And no matter how much I learned during my time in the Word that night, I never remembered it the next day. It would serve me for about 20 minutes until I fell asleep.
It wasn't impacting my thoughts or the way I lived. And I can't speak for anybody else who prefers to read their Bible at night, but personally, I never ever meditated on God's Word in my dreams, if only I were that holy. So I decided to move my Bible reading to the first part of my day just for a week to see if it made a difference.
It wasn't an easy shift since I'd made a pretty solid habit of doing it at night, but I kept at it. I started to see how fruitful it was. And since I'm a results-driven person, that was enough to make me want to build my schedule around that change. So find the time that works best for you. If it's been no time, then any time will be better. There's no shame in the nighttime quiet time game.
But if there is any way at all that your time can be within the first hour or so of waking up, all the better. And I also feel like I need to say this. Some of the people I know who don't read their Bible are some of the most compassionate people I know.
They feel like they can't make time for God because there are so many pressing needs around them, and they want to enter in and help the people in all those spaces. So they give themselves away all the time. And while that's a beautiful way to live, it's also mostly foolish. You will hit a wall. You will come to the end of yourself. You cannot pour out of something that is empty.
You can't serve others well if you don't recognize your own frailty and need for God first. Get filled before you pour out. You were meant to serve people out of an overflow, not out of a vacuum. So please, for your own spiritual and emotional and relational health, come to Scripture and get your own needs for God met first.
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