Overcoming Fear and Perfectionism in Bible Reading (with Tara-Leigh Cobble)

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0:00:00 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): When you start to find God, you get more excited all the time. But let me tell you, it’s a muscle you have to strengthen. It does not come naturally. It does not come easy. In fact, it is the antithesis of natural. It is spiritual. And so that was a discipline for me. So do you have a guide? Do you have accountability? What are you looking for and finding? And then if you have any perfectionism in you, your perfectionism is going to try to get in the way of your relationship.

0:00:29 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Your perfectionism, like, I. I think it is very common for people to start and fail because their perfectionism gets in the way. Do not let your perfectionism keep you from intimacy. Your perfectionism is keeping you from good things, and it’s keeping good things from you.

0:00:50 – (Melissa Kruger): Welcome to the Deep Dish, a podcast from the Gospel Coalition where we love having deep conversations about deep truths. I’m Melissa Krueger. I’m here with my friend and co host, Courtney Doct. And today we have a special guest, Tara Leigh Cobble.

0:01:05 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Hey, guys.

0:01:06 – (Courtney Doctor): Hey. Tara Lee. We are so happy that you have joined us. And I know almost everybody listening is going to know Tara Lee and does not need. Probably does not need an introduction, but you know her mostly from her daily podcast, the Bible Recap. And the Bible Recap aims to keep people connected to reading the Bible when they’re tempted to quit for a lack of understanding. And so, Tara Lee, thank you for joining us on the Deep Dish.

0:01:32 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Thanks so much for having me. I’m so glad to be here. I love you guys and I’m excited to be on the other side of this conversation as opposed to just being a listener. I get to, you know, now represent the listeners out there.

0:01:45 – (Courtney Doctor): Oh, you’re so fun. We were having so much fun before we hit record. We were just kind of rejoicing in the ministry that the Lord has given Tara Lee. And as we have this conversation, you all are going to know why we are rejoicing. But okay, I wanna start off with just kind of a personal question that might have led you into doing what you do. But was there a time in your life when you were a believer, so you had been saved, you knew the Lord, but you weren’t reading your Bible.

0:02:11 – (Courtney Doctor): And if so, why? And what changed?

0:02:14 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): That would have been most of my Christian walk. And by reading the Bible, maybe I would do a daily devotional with a verse and then a page of someone unpacking that one verse. Or I would. I love to dwell in the psalms and proph, Proverbs and Philippians. You Know, all the books that start with P were fine by me, and the Gospels, just what I call the comfortable seats of Scripture. And so I was just kind of like, I would hit those. And then I was in church three times a week. I grew up in private Christian school, and my family owns a Christian bookstore.

0:02:49 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So I was in the aisles between all these books all the time and had a lot of secondhand knowledge of God, but I was not daily in Scripture. I had not read the whole Bible in any kind of meaningful way. I had perhaps pieced it together over time, but the bulk of my life was, at least my. Up until early adulthood, was me not reading the Bible.

0:03:12 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s fascinating. I mean. Cause you were getting it from every direction, which is so good. And I do think, you know, just for any. Any people out there listening who think maybe their kids aren’t hearing anything, or churches, you know, pastors who think people aren’t getting anything, I’m sure it’s at foundation for what would come later. You know, just having even those introductions and different, you know, different things along the way. Sitting in a Christian book store. Don’t we miss those, by the way?

0:03:39 – (Melissa Kruger): Like, I miss a good Christian bookstore.

0:03:42 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): They’re still out there. They’re still out there. You know, there are a few here and there. I love to just like when I go to a town I Christian bookstores, Jacksonville, you know, and just see what’s out there and try to go support them. Yeah, that’s a good hunt.

0:03:56 – (Melissa Kruger): I should do that more often. That’s a good thing to do. Well, all of this, though, kind of presupposes something that we all agree on, that the Bible’s actually good to read. So we’re all kind of coming in with that. But let me ask that question. I think sometimes it’s good to step back and say, why should we do this? I mean, you know, this book has been around over 2000 years. What relevance does such an old book have for our life living today? You know, I’m not. I’m not sitting around telling people, you really need to go read the Iliad and the Odyssey all the time and study it for years, you know, so why this book? What do we even think the Bible is? And why do we think it’s so

0:04:35 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): important as a person who grew up in that environment? That you’re absolutely right was so helpful for laying the foundation. I got to a point where I realized that my familiarity was keeping me from intimacy, my familiarity with God. It was kind of in the same way that maybe if you eat junk food all day, you aren’t actually hungry to eat the healthy food when dinner comes around. And so, so I had a sustenance of sorts, but it wasn’t nutrient dense.

0:05:04 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): It wasn’t creating health in me. It was just, you know, filling my belly for a little while and in some ways could be considered to be doing damage because it was keeping me from feeling the need for those other things. So when I was just doing a daily devotional and I would have my, you know, two minute read in the morning of one verse and then the unpacking, that made me feel like I’m doing it. I’m doing the Christian life, like this is it.

0:05:33 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And so I would say, having been on that side and now being on the side where I don’t put my feet on the ground in the morning until I’ve hit play on the Bible app and I have the word of God in my ears before my feet hit the floor, like, that’s a pretty big transition. And that came through years of reading scripture, often when I didn’t want to, often when I did want to. And watching God transform my heart and watching the value of the Word that is promised in the Word be made manifest in my life as a reality. So, you know, I think of Psalm 19, 7, 8, and 1 of the things it says is, the law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul.

0:06:12 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): My soul needed reviving. The testimony of the Lord is pure, making wise. The simple. I had a very simple understanding of God. I’m a very simple person. I have never been to seminary. I do not have letters after my name. Barely have any kind of college degree at all. And the Lord has used his Word to make me wise. We need wisdom. We need truth in the world today. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart. My heart needed to learn how to rejoice.

0:06:42 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And the commandment of the Lord is pure. Enlightening the eyes. I needed to be able to see clearly. I needed to be able to love the right things. I need to be able to know the truth. And if we’re seeking things that are good and true and beautiful, they are all found in Scripture. It is an ancient book, but it is a living book. It is living and active. And so it is timeless truth for all people of all cultures and races and ages and challenges.

0:07:13 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): The Gospel is for everyone.

0:07:15 – (Courtney Doctor): Amen. I love also how you said, I just want to go back and like double click on that, that you read it when you wanted to and when you didn’t want to. Right. Because there is an obedience aspect to this, that if we want to grow in knowledge and wisdom, if we want our lives to be aligned with the Lord, who He is and what he said, we have to know it. Like, we have to know it. And, and not just the parts like you said, that are these little grabby verses that, you know, make us feel good for the day or help us, you know, help us understand joy or help us. But all of it, but all of it can be really scary. Right. There’s parts of it that are like, what in the world?

0:07:56 – (Courtney Doctor): I mean, you know, like, I, I don’t understand it. If I do understand it, I don’t like it. Like, what is happening in this particular part. But what you’re advocating for and what you’ve been advocating for for a long. That we need the whole counsel of God’s Word to really understand who he is and what he’s doing in the world. It takes Genesis to Revelation. So I know I’m not alone in finding certain parts of the Bible either intimidating or scary or confusing.

0:08:26 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): You’re not? No. You’re not.

0:08:27 – (Courtney Doctor): Right? We all do. We all find that. And we could probably could count to three and I’ll say Leviticus at the same time. But there are other parts besides that, Right? Like, it’s not just Leviticus. There are multiple areas.

0:08:39 – (Melissa Kruger): Oh, you get super uncomfortable in Genesis. I mean, let me help get to Leviticus. You’re like, are we allowed to talk about this?

0:08:48 – (Courtney Doctor): Are we doing.

0:08:50 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, my five year old read this. Are we allowed to. Is this PG13?

0:08:55 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): You know, I mean, it’s wild to me that young Hebrew boys not only had to read this, but had to have the Torah memorized by the age of 12.

0:09:03 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes.

0:09:04 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Wild. Yeah.

0:09:05 – (Courtney Doctor): Right.

0:09:06 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So they were, they were not all Scripture. Yeah, for us, all those like. Oh, yep.

0:09:12 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah. So what advice do you give? How did you learn to overcome that and not just go to the books that start with a P? I love that.

0:09:19 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): That’s so funny. I truly.

0:09:22 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s so funny.

0:09:23 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I would say 75% of the old Testament I felt like I had no use for. I did not see the value in it. I did not have any. If it was Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, even though I’m single, Ruth, Esther, Genesis, those were like the six books in the Old Testament that I would even be drawn toward the rest of it, prophets, what. That’s how I felt. So what I found, first time I read through the Bible, a pastor friend of mine, he was A friend of mine who also happened to be a pastor, and he offered to answer my questions along the way.

0:09:56 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So I had a guide who had read through scripture multiple times himself and knew the path. So have either of you guys been to Israel? No, I haven’t. Okay, so here’s what I’ll tell you, Melissa, when you go get a guide, get a guide.

0:10:11 – (Courtney Doctor): Here’s why.

0:10:12 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And this is an analogy, I’m making a metaphor. But if I were to try to go to Israel by myself, I would not speak the language, know the cultural things. I would not know the highway to take around the traffic when the traffic backs up on the main highway. I would not know the things that my tour guide, Moshe, who we’ve taken now 23 trips to Israel, he will be like, hey, the parking lot to this site is really full. But if we drive past that parking lot, there’s another parking lot and then there’s a back entrance and I can just, I know the guy at the back gate and we can slide our way in. And he knows the path for him, it’s a well worn path.

0:10:53 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So get a guide who knows the well worn path and have that guide walk you through. And that guide can be an actual human. That’s fantastic. That guide could be a Bible study tool. But I will say, if you look for an actual human, there is one prerequisite, not just that they know the path well and they’ve walked the path before. Prerequisite is they have to have joy. They have to have joy. Because if you have somebody, and we all know people who have read scripture many times who are not joyful, people who are fearful and angry and arrogant, because the danger of gaining this, all this knowledge is scripture says knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. So one of the prayers, there are five prayers that I pray every day before I read the Bible. And I pray God give me wisdom, knowledge and understanding.

0:11:43 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Let any knowledge I gain prompt me to love you and others more and not puff me up. Those are two of the five prayers. And so with that, I want God to be making me into a person who is an ambassador of joy and light to the world around me. So if you wanna be discipled by someone in the ways of the Word, look for someone who can disciple you in the ways of joy.

0:12:03 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s so good. Because, you know, you think about it, if it is relational, not just informational. I mean, the thing is, we can get information anywhere. Now, that wasn’t true maybe 30 years ago, but with the advent of the Internet, you can get information from people who probably teach it better than someone in your real life anywhere. But that. What I love that you’re actually pointing to is look for the fruit of.

0:12:30 – (Melissa Kruger): So it’s more than informational for this person. It’s actually they have a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus through his Word. So it’s, you know, it’s anchored to an eternal revelation from God, you know, that that’s where they’re getting that relationship. It’s not just a made up, you know, God of our own making, but through the Word. And then the fruit of that should be love and joy and peace and patience. Like you should see that in their life. And, and that’s such a wonderful thing when we have people in our lives. Like, I just think about the fact that he took the time to do that with you and, and what a joy. And I bet we could all talk about people who took the time to really open the Word with us.

0:13:12 – (Melissa Kruger): If someone doesn’t really know anyone to reach out to, you know, or they’re too intimidated to. Are there any resources that were helpful for you along the way, like actual physical ones that they could turn to? And that, that’s tricky, you know, I mean, it is a resource, but just to help someone understand what is this book saying and who is it about? Because I think those are the two big questions. What, what is this book ultimately? What’s the ultimate story and who is it really about? Most of us go in probably with that a little backwards. You know, we think the ultimate story is me and what’s it about me.

0:13:48 – (Melissa Kruger): And that’s not really what the Bible is.

0:13:51 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): What’s my application point, you know?

0:13:53 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes, yes.

0:13:54 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): What are the promises that I can cling to? Yes.

0:13:57 – (Melissa Kruger): Is there a tool that really helped you and transformed. Oh, I look at the Bible totally different now that I look at through it the same this lens.

0:14:07 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): There are so many good tools out there. And most, many of them, most of them that I’ve used have been free. I did not have money to go out and buy. I, you know, couldn’t afford to go to seminary. I didn’t have money to buy a bunch of like. Logos is arguably one of the best tools for studying this. And I could not have afforded it. And so thank God there are all these free tools online. And anybody who’s watching or listening to this, you have access to the Internet. You have access to these tools, things like my favorite one. So Faith Life Study Bible.

0:14:42 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Faith Life Study Bible. It is free online. You have to create an Account, but it’s free. It’s now owned by Biblia Lagos. But when I was researching for the Bible Recap every day, my research did not feel complete until I had looked to see what the Faith Life Study Bible said about the text. And that’s great. Bibleproject has great videos and I love the ESV Study Bible as well. It is not free, but you can create an account online once you buy the Bible.

0:15:11 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Let’s see, what else. Blue Letter Bible. Blue Letter Bible is a great way if you want to look up what the word means in Greek or Hebrew. It’s a free Greek or Hebrew lexicon. You can look up every other place that that word is used in scripture and go see how it all ties together. And it’s just an incredible resource. So those are some great free resources that we recommend. And then of course, I’d be remiss not to say the Bible Recap because it is also free and it is also available to you. And I would love to be a guide who has pulled from all those tools to help you in that space.

0:15:41 – (Melissa Kruger): I do think. I’m not sure I should know this. I think at tgc, all of the Crossways ESV Study Bible is on our site for every book of the Bible. So amazing. And look up, you know, Isaiah. And if you go to our courses, I’m pretty sure all the intro. At least the intro to Isaiah. Maybe not all of the study.

0:16:05 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, I guess the intro and then free commentaries. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we’ll put all these in the show notes because these are all phenomenal, phenomenal resources.

0:16:14 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Sermon archives, like Desiring God, sermon archive. Look at the book. Those are just. I just keep thinking, and more. There are infinite resources out there. It’s great, right?

0:16:23 – (Melissa Kruger): So many. There’s so many.

0:16:26 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, and even just to tag piggyback on a conversation we had on another podcast recently with AI and uses of AI. You know, that’s like going to these primary sources and reading them for yourself is so important. And not just trying to get an AI summary of the, you know, the best practices, but actually going to the different resources that you’ve just recommended. But I was thinking about this guide metaphor, this guide analogy.

0:16:50 – (Courtney Doctor): And I thought. And is his name Moshe? Moshe.

0:16:53 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Moshe.

0:16:53 – (Melissa Kruger): Moshe.

0:16:54 – (Courtney Doctor): Moshe. If, you know, if you showed up and he knew the path, but he didn’t love the path. Like, he knew all the places to go, but he didn’t love showing you all the places to go. Like, and that’s what we all want, is somebody who not just Knows the word, but really loves it and clings to it, and it’s transformed them. But okay, so Bible reading plans, like, they’ve been around for forever. This idea of different ways to read through the Bible in a year, read through the Bible in five years.

0:17:22 – (Courtney Doctor): And I don’t know, Tara Lee, if you are just being completely honest with us, have you ever started one and not finished it?

0:17:28 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): My whole life. My whole life, I remember being. I’m not kidding. I remember being five years old and my church would hand out the bookmarks at the beginning of every year. And I think it was probably five when I got my first one. And I was like, we’re gonna do it. And I had learned, because I have lots of older siblings, I learned to read when I was 3, which, praise God. And so by 5, I was like, I’m gonna read the Bible this year.

0:17:52 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): That would make it through, you know, Abraham maybe. And so then I just got to the place where I just read the proverb of the day every day. And I did that for years, but I never. I would always try at the beginning of the year to do the whole Bible, and I would give up. And so when my pastor friend asked me had I ever read through the whole Bible before, I said, I’m sure I’ve pieced it together over time because I was in church, I was in private Christian school. I, you know, look, studying various things here and there in Bible studies. And I’m like, I’m sure I have accumulated all of the verses. I, you know, if they. Each verse had a checkbox, I’m sure I’ve checked the box on every verse at some point.

0:18:31 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): But as far as the discipline, and I’ll be honest, the desire to read the whole Bible, I was very deficient. Very deficient.

0:18:41 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, same. So what do you say to somebody who’s like, I have for the last 10 years, January 1st, I have, you know, told myself, I’m going to do it this year. I’m going to read through. And they make it, you know, halfway through Genesis, and it just falls apart. Like, what would you say to that person?

0:18:58 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I would ask them. I would ask them. This is going to be a nuanced question in every conversation. So there’s no general advice that’s going to help everyone. Do they have a guide? Do they have accountability? And then also so, like, an actual. If you’re using a guide that’s online, like, if you’re doing the Bible recap, it’s still great to do the Bible recap with a Friend with your sister, with your. You know it.

0:19:24 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Because I’m not gonna call you and say, I noticed you haven’t listened to the last three days. Like, I’m not accountability for you. I’m a guide for you, but I’m not accountability. So have a guide, have accountability. And then the other thing that was the game changer for me is I really treated scripture like it was about me. And that became a barrier in my relationship with God because I would abandon it sometimes because I didn’t understand it, but often because I didn’t like what it said.

0:19:54 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And I didn’t want to have to reckon with who God really was because I was looking at scripture because I thought it was about me. And so what is this person who’s trying and failing? What are they looking for when they read scripture? Every day of the Bible recap, we end with what we call the God shot. And that is. It’s not your application point. It’s not your, I need to be more patient with my kids. I really feel convicted. Like, God’s really telling me or, you know, like, anything like that.

0:20:22 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): It’s not, who are you going to go and become in the world? It is, who did I see that God is in the world? What did I learn about God and his character? So what does he love? What does he hate? What motivates him to do what he does? What does he say or do in this passage? Are there any names of God or attributes of God that show up? Those are the seven things I’m looking for every day when I read the Bible, I want to see who God is.

0:20:45 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And that is like a treasure hunt. And when you start to find God, you get more excited all the time. But let me tell you, it’s a muscle you have to strengthen. It does not come naturally. It does not come easy. In fact, it. It is the antithesis of natural. It is spiritual. And so that was a discipline for me. So do you have a guide? Do you have accountability? What are you looking for and finding? And then if you have any perfectionism in you, your perfectionism is going to try to get in the way of your relationship. Your perfectionism, like, I think it is very common for people to start and fail because their perfectionism gets in the way. Do not let your perfectionism keep you from intimacy. Your perfectionism is keeping you from good things, and it’s keeping good things from you.

0:21:30 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And so if you miss one day, don’t miss two. If you miss two days, don’t miss three. Get back up and keep Going, yeah,

0:21:39 – (Melissa Kruger): I think that’s so good. I always try to say to people, think about your life in terms of patterns, not perfection. But I think. And I’m not sure if this is typical, more for women. That’s the world I’m in.

0:21:51 – (Courtney Doctor): More.

0:21:51 – (Melissa Kruger): When I’m talking about Bible reading, it just feels like if we are not perfect at something, we give up. And so I’ll even see this with Bible teaching. And they’re learning Bible teaching. They’re like, well, did I do the right outline? And I’m like, hey, there are 20 different women in here. We can have 20 different outlines. It’s okay. Your outline shouldn’t look like mine. But there’s this perfectionistic mindset. There’s also a January mindset.

0:22:17 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, I have to start in January. Well, nope, it’s June, and you can start right now.

0:22:25 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s like exercise and healthy eating when the first day of the month is also the first day of the week. And oh, my word, if it’s the first day of the year, then I know the Lord wants me to do it for at least three days. Like, I mean, you know, that’s like, everything aligns right there. Like, that’s when I’m gonna start something. But, yeah, January 1st. That’s. I’m saving everything for January 1st.

0:22:44 – (Courtney Doctor): I know.

0:22:44 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I have a friend on my team who intentionally starts not on January 1st because she knows that she will sabotage herself if she gets off track. And that’s the other reason with the Bible recap, it’s day one, day two, day three. Not January 1, January 2, January 3. And I tell people, you know, sometimes seven days pass between day 10 and day 11, but when you pick back up, you get on, you do day 11, and then you ask.

0:23:13 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I will literally pray for people who struggle with this. I will pray God, wake them up 10 minutes before their alarm. Just wake them up and carve out time for yourself in their schedule. Prompt them to read the word. Because we don’t. We don’t. You can read the Bible in a year, in 12 minutes a day. Even if you are a slow reader, even if you can’t read, even if you have a learning disability, the Bible app will read it to you for free in the accent you want, in the version you want, at the speed you want. If you want to listen to an Australian man read you the ESV at 1.5x,

0:23:48 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): you can do it. That’s fair, right?

0:23:51 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s amazing.

0:23:51 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): You do not have a time problem. You can listen to the Bible while you’re making your coffee while you’re in the shower, while you’re in the carpool lane. You have the time. If you think time is your problem, you’re lying to yourself. You might have a desire problem. You might have a comprehension problem. I’ve had both of those. But we don’t have a time problem.

0:24:10 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I think that’s so true and just so good to say. And, you know, it really is. What do I believe is most important in my life today? So ultimately, it becomes a belief problem. I just don’t think this actually matters that much. And I also want to say, and I think any guide would tell you, hey, it’s gonna get hard at times. You’re gonna hit certain books, and you are gonna be like, what is happening?

0:24:38 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay. You know, like, you’re trucking along in Daniel in those first chapters. You’re getting Nebuchadnezzar, you’re understanding everything, and all of a sudden there’s a beast with all these things going on, and you’re like, I don’t know what’s happening.

0:24:53 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): What is this?

0:24:54 – (Melissa Kruger): And that’s okay. And I always say, just keep reading, you know, And. And. And I think it’s actually good to say, maybe you can figure that one out next year. If you don’t get it this year, you can just join.

0:25:06 – (Courtney Doctor): Sometimes that happens.

0:25:09 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Sometimes I’m learning new stuff all the time. Like right now, we’re reshooting all the episodes. Usually I’ll go in and I’ll edit, drop in little things that I’ve learned that month or whatever, and I’ll drop that in for next year’s episodes. But there’s no reason for me to redo the whole recap because it’s the same story. So how are you gonna retell the flood story different than what happened? I don’t wanna get too creative with what is there, you know?

0:25:36 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): But I’ll drop in new things that I learn. And, man, there are texts that I have wrestled with that I’ve come to a new understanding of. And I’m like, wow, I used to loathe Isaiah. Loathe Isaiah. Now I really love Isaiah. Currently, my struggle is with Ezekiel. It’s getting better, but I still really struggle with it. Yeah.

0:25:55 – (Melissa Kruger): Then they will know. Then they will know.

0:25:58 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Then they will know that I am the Lord.

0:26:00 – (Melissa Kruger): Exactly.

0:26:00 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Yeah.

0:26:01 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s what I just mean.

0:26:02 – (Courtney Doctor): You’re like, could they not know sooner? Yeah. Could you not just go ahead and let them know? Because it’s brutal.

0:26:11 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): How about now? They will know.

0:26:12 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes.

0:26:12 – (Courtney Doctor): Yes, exactly.

0:26:13 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Now they will know.

0:26:14 – (Courtney Doctor): Exactly. Yes. Yes.

0:26:16 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s really good. It’s actually so good to talk about it because we’ve all hit those parts, and I think that’s actually helpful to say to people. It’s not like we’re all skipping and frolicking through all the pages of Scripture just because we love it. We all get to places where it’s hard and we struggle or have immediate comprehension.

0:26:36 – (Courtney Doctor): Right? Like having immediate. Like, I don’t just read it every day and think, oh, my word, I completely understand all the different points that the Lord wants me to understand in this text. No, but I trust that as I’m storing it up that, you know, Scripture interprets Scripture, and it may be two years down the line and another passage I’m reading is going to actually shed light on the one that I did not understand two years prior.

0:27:00 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Here’s what I like about that, Courtney, is I resonate with what you say. That happens to me, too. But here’s why I. Not. I don’t think that’s. I think that’s. What is it they say? That’s a feature, not a bug. That is a feature, not a bug. It’s a feature that you don’t understand everything. Because I’m gonna be in this book every day for the rest of my life. And a. For me to expect that I would understand it all the first time through.

0:27:28 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): How arrogant. How arrogant. And second of all, God says his ways are unsearchable, which means it’s not that he’s unknowable, it’s that we can’t ever reach the end of Him. Which is exciting for me, because if I’m going to be in his book every day for the rest of my life, I don’t want it to get boring. I don’t want it to get dry. I want there to be something new for me to learn all the time. So not understanding it all. That’s a feature, not a bug.

0:27:52 – (Courtney Doctor): That is so good. My youngest daughter, when she was 5, she had. In Sunday school, they had studied the creation account in Genesis 1. And then they were going to study it in school, and she came to me and she said, you know, Mom, I’ve already studied this, and you will study it for the rest of your life. Like, yeah, you, at age 5, have not actually mind the depths of Genesis 1 quite yet. But. And.

0:28:21 – (Melissa Kruger): And I think that’s such. All that. Such a good point. My daughter right now is in language school. She’s learning. I don’t even know what the language she’s learning is called. That’s terrible. Okay. But she’s in language school and so she is comprehending, but every day she comprehends and understands a little bit more. And in some sense we’re trying to understand, you know, God is holy, He’s. He’s set apart. He.

0:28:44 – (Melissa Kruger): We’re never going to be native speakers, you know. You know, in some sense we’re always learning a language because he is so other than us and he’s revealing Himself to us, but he is, we are in his image, but we are not Him. So it does make sense that we are never, you know, we’re just, we’re trying to speak, but we’re not native speakers. You know, like we’re learning this dialogue with the Lord as we seek to understand who he is. And what a grace, what a grace upon grace.

0:29:15 – (Melissa Kruger): He chooses to speak to us. And so, you know, I mean, that’s just a gift that he condescends to speak words of life by his spirit through the prophets and all the people who have gone before us to give us His Word. Okay, we’re gonna take. This conversation is so rich, so good. And it’s just fun to love the Bible when we all love the same thing. It makes for such a good conversation. But we want to hear a word from our sponsors really quickly and then we’ll be right back. Thanks, Ter Lee, welcome back.

0:29:43 – (Courtney Doctor): I love one thing you said, Melissa, right as we were ending before the sponsor break, but it was about the idea that like this is God’s mercy to us. It’s actually part of his imminence. It’s part of his drawing near to us. That the Bible, I think even the nature of what it is, that it is his self initiated revelation to us, like he wants us to know Him. It just reveals so much about him and about like the type of relationship that he wants to have with us. He’s like, let me not only tell you who I am, let me show you who I am through this story of redemption that, that starts in a garden and ends in the new heavens and the new earth. And so I just, I love that, that the nature of the Bible itself actually reveals the heart of our Father, that, that he wants to be in, he wants to be known.

0:30:30 – (Courtney Doctor): He wants, and he wants us to be in relationship with Him. Well, Tara Lee, okay, when you, I don’t even know. When did you start the Bible recap? And then what were you seeing that made you realize like, hey, this is a need and, and I want to be a guide for people Through. Through the Bible.

0:30:49 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): The Bible recap launched January 1, 2019. And oh my gosh, the reason I started it right. I know, wild

0:31:01 – (Melissa Kruger): go. It feels like it’s been around forever, but providential timing.

0:31:06 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Yes. Right before 2020, before COVID like to

0:31:09 – (Courtney Doctor): get settled and going and then when everybody was home and not.

0:31:13 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Yes. Yeah. The need that I saw was a need that I was well acquainted with because as we discussed earlier, I was a person who had a lot of familiarity of scripture and had enough interaction with scripture as snack food that it kept me from having the feast. And when my friend, the pastor friend of mine, walked me through scripture and answered my questions along the way, the first time through I finished. And you would think that I would feel elated, but I did not.

0:31:43 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I was devastated because I had read it all and I believed all of it was true. All of COVID to cover. I’m like, this is who God is and I don’t like him. And that was devastating because I became a Christian when I was three and a half years old. It’s my second memory. My first memory is saying John 3:16 with my mom. My first job, stamping names on Bibles at my family’s Christian bookstore. From the age of six, every Saturday and every summer I was in full time ministry. And I have now read all of it finally.

0:32:22 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And I don’t like him. What do you do? Because do you know who else feels that way about scripture? Who’s read it all and knows it all and knows it’s true and doesn’t love God? Satan. And I’m. I feel the same way about God that Satan does. So my pastor friend said, Tara Lee, I’ve walked through scripture with you for a year. I know the things you’re looking for because of the kinds of questions you ask.

0:32:51 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I know the kind of lens you’re using when you read scripture. So I have a new challenge for you. Read it again. And this time stop looking for yourself. Start looking for God. What does he love? What does he hate? What motivates him to do what he does? All those things I told you earlier. And I was halfway through the Old Testament when I fell in love. Just absolutely smitten. And that is not where you expect that to happen.

0:33:18 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): No, you do not expect that to happen halfway through the Old Testament. And I was like, how is this the same book I just read? And I have a totally different response. It’s because I had a different lens. And if you wear glasses, you know that you see things very differently when you put those glasses on and the lens that you use matters. So when I saw this, I thought, I’ve been in church my whole life, I’m in full time ministry. I’m surrounded by people who love the Lord. And I don’t hear anybody else talking about this.

0:33:47 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Do people know this stuff? Like, do people know how to. What a difference this makes? And everything I would hear and see on social media, it was all pointing me toward this meology, not theology. It was very much like, what can God do for you? And God’s got greatness for you and aren’t you worthy and wonderful and you know, just this heresy or half truths at best. And so I led a Bible study of women that had grown at that point to about 1,200 women.

0:34:18 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And my prayer was that a quarter of those women would read the Bible with me because every year I would ask them to read through with me and they would start and they would fail, and they would start and they would fail. And that was a very common experience for me. And I thought the way I made it through was because Lee walked me through. Can I walk them through. Can I release a daily podcast? Just to these women was the initial plan.

0:34:41 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And I had no idea that others would need it. But this newfound secret about how to read scripture and look for God, I had to share it. I had to share it.

0:34:52 – (Courtney Doctor): Praise God. You did well.

0:34:54 – (Melissa Kruger): And I love that you did it. It started local. You know, you had your women you were already teaching and you were trying to create a resource for them. You know, you weren’t trying to create this podcast that would be around the world and all these different. Yeah, you didn’t probably even have that in your mind. I love it when the Lord does that because. Right. You were just digging in your own backyard and he grew a tree that’s fruit is spreading around the world.

0:35:22 – (Melissa Kruger): I mean, that’s what he does. Right. It’s just such a beautiful thing, our little labor. And then he just chooses to use it how he will. And you see that. But I love that it started. And I always just want to encourage women. Just wherever you are, you know, tell the person right beside you what you’re learning about Jesus. That’s where discipleship starts, you know, and then it spreads and you get to see a beautiful ripple effect of that.

0:35:52 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Yes. And before I created the podcast, the year before that, I walked one of the girls in my Bible study, Annabeth Chessen, I walked her through it and we went through it in a year. And she was actually the one who some of the things she said as we were doing those meeting, you know, and walking, we would go on little literal walks and walk through Scripture as well. And some of the things she said, I thought, I’ve got to do this for as many people in this Bible study as I can.

0:36:20 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So it was literally one. And then the Lord scaled it beyond what I ever would have imagined. And I probably never would have started it if I knew what it would become, because I would have been too afraid, frankly. I’m not a Bible scholar. I would be too afraid of misleading people, too afraid of there’s imposter syndrome that comes in this space a lot. And my mentor, fortunately, she said the great thing about a podcast is you can go in and edit it. You can go in and say, actually, I was wrong. And here’s the thing that I’ve learned in that process.

0:36:57 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So we, from the jump, we end every month with an episode called Reflections and Corrections, where I say, you know what? I actually, here’s how I want to reframe what I said, or, here’s what I said that was wrong, and I’ve learned differently. And I add those things in, and it is an exercise in humility. But it has been the best because I’ve learned so much through the corrections that have come in.

0:37:20 – (Courtney Doctor): It’s also so freeing. Isn’t it, like, just so freeing to be like, oh, we’re just. We’re learning together. Like, none of us are the answer people.

0:37:28 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Right.

0:37:28 – (Courtney Doctor): You know, we’re all, like, trying to learn, and just. Even if we’re learning one step ahead of somebody, then like you said, Melissa, you just tell the person next to you.

0:37:38 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, and it’s really helpful to be actually married to a biblical scholar, because I hear out of his mouth all the time. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a good question. My kids are wildly unimpressed with him, actually. They’re like, dad, what good’s your degree? I mean, can you answer any of our questions? You know, I mean, like, it’s just really funny, and it’s just the point we’re all learning. He’s like, I know a lot about, like, miniature codices and papyri.

0:38:06 – (Melissa Kruger): That doesn’t mean I know a lot about everything, you know, and so I think it’s just that humbling reality. We’re all knowing a lot about a God who is not containable. He reveals himself, but none of us have all of it. And so I just think that’s such a wonderful, actually, and humble example to set before, like, if we’re so fearful of ever getting it wrong. We’ll kind of never tell anyone anything. And I just think about, I was telling you, Tierra Lee, when we start, before we started, my daughter, you know, is one of those people who’s been doing the Bible recap, and she’s in college, she’s 19, and this is her first time.

0:38:46 – (Melissa Kruger): She was a lot like you. She grew up in this family where we talk about the Bible the whole time. But she said, you know, I’ve never actually read it through. And so I think about that. What started local with you, now my daughter is getting to walk alongside you in a lot of ways as she’s learning. So. So let me ask, ask you this, though. How long did it take you to record the whole Bible? Like, did you just do it every day?

0:39:12 – (Melissa Kruger): Or did. How long did this, how long did it take? I’m fascinated by it. And then, like, how much preparation work did that take? How did you do this?

0:39:23 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Well, the actual process of researching, writing the scripts, recording all that took about 100 hours a week for 13 months. And so when people ask, do you redo it every year? I’m like, a, why would I. The storyline hasn’t changed. B, that would kill me. Like, that is literally my body started falling apart. I had a lot of physical, terrible things happen as a result of that, and part of that could be attributed to spiritual warfare, and part of it just could be attributed to stress.

0:39:56 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): But 13 months to create the podcast. And then because I started in, I did not start far ahead. I started in December of, of 2018, and I really thought it would take me about an hour a day. Had no idea what I was signing up for. And then three weeks into the podcast, I started getting emails from publishers who wanted to turn it into a book. And so I basically was like, I’ll get back to you later. I got work to do right now.

0:40:27 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I gotta finish this podcast because people are waiting for this every day. And so.

0:40:31 – (Melissa Kruger): So you were doing it in real time. Like, I mean, when you say you started in December, it started releasing in January.

0:40:38 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): There were days that I was only maybe two, three episodes ahead.

0:40:42 – (Melissa Kruger): Oh, I feel stressed just thinking about it.

0:40:45 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Yes, it was wild. And I mean, I basically called all of my friends, except for five, and said, I’ll see you in a year. I don’t have time. And those five friends, I saw a couple of them together, and I would be like, hey, I. I not only need to see you, but I have to see you because I don’t want to lose My sanity. Like I have to have real humans, but it would just be me at my dining room table for 16 hours a day, sometimes in the same pajamas for three days, sometimes forgetting to brush my teeth.

0:41:19 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): It was a lot. And then when I finished, I had to start editing the content to be a book. So we had to edit about 60% of the content out to be the book without losing the narrative and the storyline and all the important stuff. So it ended up being about 15 months of a hundred hour weeks and it was a lot.

0:41:39 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s incredible. Well, you know, Melissa shared that her 19 year old daughter has used it, my 29 year old daughter has used it. And then I was sharing with you ahead of time that my grandsons have the kids version. And you know, it’s just, just like getting people in the Word. And it’s such a blessing to be, you know, one of the recipients of, of your labors because it is, it’s just, it is highlighting the beauty of the Word. It is highlighting the sufficiency of our God.

0:42:12 – (Courtney Doctor): And, and that’s just a beautiful thing. So yeah, praise God that, praise God

0:42:17 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): that you have been laboring.

0:42:18 – (Courtney Doctor): Thank you for that year of living in your pajamas. Yes.

0:42:22 – (Melissa Kruger): And I think it’s helpful for people to know it was hard. Like, let’s just be honest. But I wanna say to women, you do hard things all the time. Like you guys go run marathons, you know, like we do all these hard things all the time. And so parenting,

0:42:40 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): you don’t even have to run a marathon. I mean, I’m not married or have, don’t and I don’t have children. But when I see my friends who parent, I’m like, how do you do that? Yeah, that is hard, right?

0:42:51 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, that’s right.

0:42:52 – (Courtney Doctor): Or like Melissa has said before, raising chickens, that’s hard.

0:42:57 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I’m like, look at all these people

0:42:58 – (Melissa Kruger): doing this hard stuff out there. And they’re like, but I can’t read. You know, you’re like 12 minutes a day, we can do this. I just want to say this is a hard, but it is hard. And I like that you actually said it wasn’t like you just sat down and just magically knew what to say into the microphone every day. It was a lot of, a lot of study, a lot of work.

0:43:21 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And in addition to that hundred hours a week for 15 months, there was the 10 times I’d read through the Bible before that and all of my notes and study and research from that as well. So this is a, it was a lot that went into this and just so grateful that the Lord continues to use it. You know, the Bible recap, if anybody out there is listening or watching and has never done any of it, it’s eight minutes a day on average.

0:43:44 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): So if you do your 12 minutes of Bible reading and then eight minutes of me telling you what you just read and, and teaching you how to look for God in that text and giving you some cultural context and historical context, eight more minutes. So 20 minutes a day, that’s, you know, little more than 1% of your day, that will change the whole rest of your life and every relationship that you have, because every single person in your life, spouse, child, friend, enemy, coworker, neighbor, every single person in your life will benefit from you knowing God and being transformed by his spirit when you engage with the word of God.

0:44:21 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, okay, one last big question before we wrap up, but how does daily personal Bible study reading, which we are all saying, yes, be in the word by yourself every day. How does that fit with group Bible studies where maybe you do your, you do some homework and you study over the course of a week and then you meet with women in your local church or women in your neighborhood to discuss it. How do, how do those two things kind of fit together?

0:44:47 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I think they’re gonna require different tools and different amounts of time. So we have the Bible recap, which is where we read through the Bible. And then the Bible study network that I started and still lead to this day, it’s called D Group International, and we study through the Bible. So reading through the Bible and studying through the Bible, different amounts of time, different time commitments, different tools are used.

0:45:09 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): In D Group, we’re using a lot of those free tools I referenced earlier. Blue Letter Bible, Faith, Life Study Bible. We’re looking things up and digging deeper in the text. One is a zoom out approach. Zoom out, get the whole storyline of scripture. And one is a zoom in approach. And it is in the same way that any other relationship that you have, you’re gonna wanna interact with your spouse or your child daily and you’re gonna wanna have some daily context for that. But then you also wanna have a date night or a special time with your kid each week or things where you get more concentrated, rich, intimate time.

0:45:44 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And so both of those show up in a healthy relationship. So reading the Bible, studying the Bible, different things, both are beautiful and both are necessary.

0:45:54 – (Courtney Doctor): What a great description. Yeah.

0:45:55 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay, Courtney, I know we said it was the last one, but I have one more question I want to ask because this is something I think we can all struggle with, even us who care about reading the Bible every day and think it really matters. Tara Lee, have you ever struggled with legalism in Bible reading? You know, like, oh, I missed a day, maybe now I don’t have favor with God, like, he’s displeased with me. I’m in trouble.

0:46:19 – (Melissa Kruger): Almost as though we’re treating Bible reading as, you know, my token of getting favor from God. You know, like if I do it, then he has to bless me. Have you ever struggled with that kind of form of legalism, with Bible reading?

0:46:36 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Can I just praise Christ for a second? Jesus has me fully convinced that God’s approval of me rests entirely on his finished work on the cross. The cross was not a down payment on a long term installation plan that I’m responsible for. God is not waiting up in heaven to see how he’s going to feel about me if I open my Bible or not. Like, Jesus has fulfilled all the Father requires of me. And so if it were up to me to please God, I would never ever, ever, ever, ever make it.

0:47:11 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Not even even though I’ve read through the Bible now 17 times like that, that that’s not how we please God, but because of Jesus. The reality that I live in is that when the Father looks at me, he sees the righteousness of Christ. He sees Jesus works, not mine. So no one can convince me even for a second that I could add anything to Jesus finished work, like, at all. So, dear listener watcher, whatever, please do not read God’s Word in an attempt to gain his favor.

0:47:43 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): You read His Word to get to know Him. You read His Word not to please him, but to please you. Because you’re gonna find joy in this that you didn’t know is accessible. Otherwise the more I’m in His Word, the more that’s in my bones. And we are all like, naturally legalistic. We wanna earn, we wanna achieve, we wanna box to check, we wanna list to make. And yes, I do it every day, but not to please Him.

0:48:09 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I do it because he is fully pleased in me because of his finished work, because of Jesus’s finished work on the cross. And so, you know, I get to do it out of love.

0:48:19 – (Courtney Doctor): And you know what, Tara Lee? Like, that is such a beautiful and true answer. But you know that because you know him through His Word. Like, you would not have such a deep anchor for your soul if you had not spent the time seeing and knowing and experiencing who God is. And so, like, if you are like, how could I ever have that type of Assurance. How could I ever have that type of peace? Well, it’s by knowing God. And the way we know him is through His Word.

0:48:51 – (Courtney Doctor): You can’t love that.

0:48:53 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): You can’t trust a God you don’t know. And you can’t know a God you don’t spend time with.

0:48:56 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s right.

0:48:57 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): And my trust in him, my trust in the finished work of Christ, I’ll tell you, before I started spending time in the Word, I absolutely felt that way. Absolutely felt that way. And I’m aware that my actions can please or displease him, but they aren’t where his acceptance or rejection comes in. They could impact my intimacy with him, but not my standing with Him. And so by just positioning myself under the waterfall of grace every day, he has shown me who he is. And he has transformed the way I see him. So that I’m not waiting for God to smite me if I get it wrong, or waiting for God to accept me and be pleased with me if I get it right.

0:49:34 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Cause I know who Jesus is and I know what he’s done for me.

0:49:38 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s so good. Well. And what we know about him, you’re right. That’s what transforms how we live every day. So it does change your life in every way, but it doesn’t change your standing. I love that how you said that, you know, we stand righteous because of Jesus. Well, many years ago. Cause you’ve clearly been walking with the Lord for a long time. You say in your bio that your brother led you to Christ on a Saturday night while playing board games. So our fun question ending. Last little fun question for you.

0:50:09 – (Melissa Kruger): Do you have a favorite board game? Now?

0:50:11 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): I have a favorite game, but not a favorite board game. And this is a. You know that game, Fishbowl. That’s like you write. Yes.

0:50:20 – (Courtney Doctor): I love Fishbowl. Three rounds. I love Fishbowl.

0:50:23 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): You can play it anywhere. It’s free. It changes every time. Cause you have different people. It’s so fun to me. Some of my friends, depending on who’s in the group, will add a fourth round. That’s just one sound, you know? So you have to do a sound. Just one sound. That’s it.

0:50:41 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s so funny. That would be. I need that round.

0:50:45 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay. I’ve never done it that way.

0:50:46 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Yeah. And so we are thinking, when you write out the thing, you know, you’re thinking, like, what would the sound be? You gotta be prepared.

0:50:54 – (Melissa Kruger): I’m fascinated for certain people. What would their sale be? Okay.

0:50:58 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s the whole thing.

0:51:00 – (Melissa Kruger): How would you do that person.

0:51:01 – (Courtney Doctor): My mom can’t not do the charades round, no matter what round we’re in. You know, she just. She just has to, like, strike a pose or do a thing. And we’re like, this is your. This is your word round. Like, this is not your charade round. But anyway, it’s so fun. If you don’t know what fishbowl is, I don’t know. Can we put instructions in the show notes?

0:51:23 – (Melissa Kruger): We can put a link. I’m sure there’s a lot that’s on there, but that’s.

0:51:26 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s what we need. We need to all be together in real life and play fishbowl.

0:51:29 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Okay.

0:51:31 – (Melissa Kruger): Fishbowl Bible.

0:51:33 – (Tara Leigh Cobble): Fishbowl. And again, it’s free. Listen, I love free resources, clearly, right?

0:51:38 – (Courtney Doctor): You know?

0:51:38 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, we are so glad that you’ve joined us, Tara Lee. This has been such a rich conversation. I have smiled so much during this conversation in agreement that my cheeks hurt. So, friends, we hope that you’ve been encouraged by this episode as well. And thank you for listening to the Deep Dish. We love that you’re here with us. We’re so thankful that we get to do this podcast. And so if you’ve enjoyed this, please share it with a friend, pass it on to a friend, and even better yet, invite a friend to read the Bible together this year. We hope you will. And don’t wait till January.

0:52:08 – (Melissa Kruger): Go ahead and start this month. Read the Bible with a friend. Hold each other accountable and get to study the best person on the earth to know Jesus Christ himself.