Chapter 1: What is the purpose of The Bible Recap podcast?
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. If you've ever closed your Bible and thought, what did I just read? The Bible recap is for you. And the good news is you're not alone. Lots of people struggle in their relationship with scripture. Most people who struggle try to stick to the Psalms and Proverbs because at least those make sense to them.
Or maybe they flip around in their Bible and try to find something relatable, but then they hit something confusing or off-putting and they can't seem to make sense of how it all fits together. Maybe they decide to start a Bible reading plan, usually at the beginning of a year when they're working on New Year's resolutions.
They launch out with ambition and zeal on January 1, but they begin to lose interest in a few weeks, and by mid-February, they've fallen off the wagon altogether. This was me too. It was like, okay, I've read through Genesis eight times, but nothing beyond that. Can you relate? Are you on track to being a Genesis scholar right along with me?
Chapter 2: Why do many people struggle with reading the Bible?
Or maybe you've never even ventured into the Old Testament at all because you're only comfortable with Scripture after Jesus seems to show up on the scene. Maybe you didn't know he's actually throughout the Old Testament as well, that it's actually all about him. Some people are so perplexed by Scripture that they just leave their Bible on the shelf and use a daily devotional instead.
They figure, obviously I'm not capable of hearing from God firsthand, so I'll just hear from him secondhand. Don't get me wrong, some devotionals are great. I love some of the stuff by Spurgeon and Chambers, but a lot of the things we're consuming today are self-focused or fluffy, bordering on self-help. It's basically Tony Robbins in a prayer shawl, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Maybe you've tried it all and you wonder if you'll ever love reading the actual Bible or if you'll always just feel intimidated by it. Are you tired of losing steam after six weeks? Or maybe you've never tried to read through the Bible because you aren't quite sure if God is even real or which religion is right if he is real.
But at least you're curious and proactive enough to try to take a step toward getting some information. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. And I'm glad you're here. You're not alone either. This is a place where you can ask your questions without fear of being shamed. Regardless of where you're coming from, the Bible Recap is here to help. So let me tell you who we are and how we'll help.
I'm using the royal we because it's mostly just me, Tara Lee Cobble. You can call me Tara Lee or even TLC since those are my initials. And I'll be here walking you through this every day. Here's how it works.
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Chapter 3: How can you stay engaged with your Bible reading plan?
Imagine yourself sitting down each morning with a friend who's read through the Bible several times. Also, imagine this friend is invisible and lives in your phone. That's me. You'll spend about 12 minutes each day reading that day's Bible verses. Then you'll open up your podcast app and we'll have an eight-minute conversation about what we both just read.
I'll point out the things that I've learned about that particular passage on that particular day, but also through years of reading it. It's that simple. That's what we'll do together. If I've done the math right, this trip you and I take through the Bible together will be my 10th time doing this particular reading plan.
And in our next prep episode, I'll tell you more about how I learned to love reading the Bible because I didn't always. It took me a long time. So be sure you subscribe to this podcast today because I have a feeling a lot of you are going to be able to relate to my story.
Since this isn't my first Genesis to Revelation rodeo, I'll be able to speak from the vantage point of the whole meta-narrative so you can begin to see how it all fits together and understand why things happen the way they do.
Not that there won't be mystery involved, God can be super mysterious when he wants to, but overall, I think this tool will be really helpful to you in not just reading scripture, but loving reading it because you'll finally understand it. In case you can't tell, I'm not exactly an academic.
I did not go to seminary, and I'll only occasionally mention what the original Hebrew might mean, and even then, chances are I'm going to mispronounce it. Overall, my approach in these recaps will be less like a scholarly Bible commentary and more like an overview and highlight reel rolled into one.
What that means is, I'm less inclined to use big theological terms and more inclined to point to the character of God as it's revealed in that day's reading. I want to help you learn how to find and see and know God and his character more than anything else. I don't care if you never know what year the temple was built and destroyed and rebuilt and redestroyed.
Those are great details to be aware of, but they will never serve you like the personal knowledge of God. They will never bring you joy or sustain you in trials. They will never draw you in to spend more time with God out of sheer joy and delight. So each day, I'll be summarizing the overarching storyline so we can keep pace with the metanarrative,
At the end of each episode, I'll point out something we saw about who God is. We call that section the God shot, which is basically our way of saying this is the picture of God and his character that we saw in today's reading. Yours will probably be different than ours because there is so much to see about God in each passage. By the way, this is not our application point or our to-do list.
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