Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Welcome to January's Bonus episode. We're going to try to do an episode like this at the end of each month

offering some reflections and corrections, some R's and some C's. Let's start with the R's, looking back at Genesis, Job, and the first

few chapters of Exodus we've covered so far. The Bible is one unified story. It's the

story of a family and it all starts in Genesis.

God the Father is literally known best to us by being a father.

He defined love by sending a son to die on a cross and he makes his paternal design

apparent by choosing a family through which he would bring

change to the world. Genesis and Job and Exodus demonstrate this sovereignty and the goodness of

the Lord. This is the way he writes our stories too. 2 Corinthians 517 tells us he speaks a new identity over us just like he did with Abraham and Sarah and Jacob Israel.

These books have set up so many amazing things for us. A biblical view of life and

marriage, God's good design for work, what humility looks like, the

under-appreciated beauty of just sitting in the struggle with someone instead of trying to play God and solve it for them.

Plus a laundry list of how to ruin your family dynamic if you're interested in that.

Some of you may have never tried to read through the Bible before or maybe you've tried and failed,

but you've made it so far. I'm so proud of you. You are doing something eternal,

which means it's definitely worth 15 to 20 minutes of your morning. But that also means the enemy of your soul is going

to wage war against it. So keep at it. Don't let the enemy or the flesh deter you from

the mission we're on together. Pray for an increased desire to keep reading the Bible with us.

Pray against distraction and ask God for help.

As we keep reading, I bet God's intricacies and specificity will surprise you.

I know it surprised me and caused me to wonder a lot

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