How Reading the Bible Every Day Changed Tara-Leigh Cobble’s Life
By Movieguide® Contributor
Tara-Leigh Cobble, the creator of The Bible Recap, explained how spending time in God’s word every single day has changed her life.
“The first time I ever actually listened to that advice and read the whole Bible, all of it, every word, my pastor challenged me, he said, ‘You can read it in a year, [just] 12 minutes a day. Let your eyes fall on every word, even the genealogies, even the boring parts, even the boils and the sores in Leviticus…Let your eyes fall on every word.’ And he told me when I was reading to look for God, not to look for myself; look for God. What does He love? What does He hate? What motivates Him to do what He does? And it changed everything,” Cobble told Sadie Robertson Huff.
Reading the Bible every day makes such a profound impact because it allows the Holy Spirit to minister to your heart, something that, over time, can lead to a total transformation.
“It takes a while for you to start to see the fruit of [daily Bible reading]. It takes a while of you engaging in it regularly before you start to see the fruit of it, but boy, did the harvest come,” Cobble said.
“I mean, just when the fruit came in from the time that I had spent reading scripture, that thing that most shocked me about the result of it was just this unmistakable joy that I had in my circumstances regardless of what they were,” she continued. “I didn’t expect that. I expected to know more about the Bible, to have better theology, to be able to explain things more, to not feel confused when somebody dropped a reference, you know.”
“I didn’t expect how my heart would just widen and deepen with a love for God and His word,” she added. “I didn’t expect to come out on the other side loving [the Bible] because of how I dreaded it on the front end.”
This love and joy that came from a result of taking her Bible reading seriously encouraged her to start The Bible Recap as an encouragement for other believers who were struggling through their Bible reading. Her podcast brings listeners through the entire Bible in one year and explains things in the text while also encouraging them to keep going in their reading.
Cobble also uses her platform to remind her followers to look for God in the Bible rather than themselves. He gave us His word so we could learn his character and grow closer to Him, not so we would have a strict rulebook to follow.
“You’re not reading to get your to-do list. You’re not reading to find out how to be a better Christian or a better wife or girlfriend or mother. You’re not reading it to find out how to make God happy with you and show you favor. You’re reading it to get to know who God is,” Cobble explained.
“Remember, we’re not here to be entertained. Scripture isn’t here to entertain us,” she added. “Scripture is here to reveal God. So where in today’s reading did we see God’s character show up? What do we learn about Him by what He told us in His word today? So every day I’m pointing to that.”
Having been reading the Bible every day for over six years now, Cobble is amazed at the depth of the story. Though she has read some parts dozens of times, there is always something new for her to learn — a fact that makes the study all the more worthwhile.
“It might be boring, you know, the repetition in those spaces [but] a couple cools things happen as we keep reading the Bible. I’m a different person every year when I show up in the word…” she said. “So I’m bringing a different me to the Bible every year but then also the Bible never changes, God never changes but because His word is living and active, then the Holy Spirit who wrote those words of scripture and the Holy Spirit who lives in me — the same person — engages in that space and illuminates new parts of the text for me to understand.”
The Bible Recap’s reach continues to grow. “Since launching in 2019, Cobble’s podcast now has more than 300 million downloads and regularly sits at No. 1 atop the Apple Podcast charts,” WFAA reported.
Cobble is taking her ministry on the road with her first-ever The Bible Recap LIVE Tour.
“We’d love to have you join us for a fun night of teaching, prizes, games, a Q&R—plus some other fun surprises along the way!” she posted. She’ll hit Birmingham, Alabama; Charlotte, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Chicago, Illinois, this October.
After growing up in the church, “The Bible Recap” host Tara-Leigh Cobble knew her version of God, but it wasn’t until she got serious about reading scripture that she learned who God truly was.
“I did grow up in church,” Cobble told Kirk Cameron. “My family was a big church three times a week, private Christian school; my family owned a Christian bookstore. So very early on I was steeped in the word, but spoiler alert, I didn’t value it that much. So that was one of the problems that I think a lot of us who’ve grown up in the church have been challenged by is our lives being saturated in this thing that we go, ‘Okay, I know that’s true, but how does that impact me? Why should I care?’”
Despite her lukewarm faith, Cobble went into full-time ministry after college. As she began spreading the Gospel, she was challenged by a colleague who identified her shallow faith.
“A pastor friend of mine pulled me aside after an event one night and said, ‘Tara, have you read the whole Bible?’ and I said, ‘Sure, I’ve pieced it together over the years, you know, like all the church I just mentioned, selling Christian books, things like that,’” she recalled.
“And he said, ‘I think you should read the whole thing. Not front to back, read it in [the] order that it happened. Read it chronologically so you get the storyline of what’s happening,” she continued.
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