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.

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