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

Today, I want to tell you how I got to this place, hosting this podcast and loving reading the Bible, because that wasn't always my story.

And I figured if you and I are going to spend every morning having a conversation, it might be nice to hear a little bit about each other. I grew up in a Christian home, and my first memory is my mom teaching me John 316, around the time I was three years old. Not long after that, my brother Jason asked me if I wanted to be a Christian, and he prayed with me to follow Christ with my life.

I was probably only about four years old, so I had very little idea of what that amounted to,

but I think most of us rarely understand what's happening when we first respond to Jesus.

But I was in an environment that gave me every opportunity to learn.

Church three times a week, Christian school, and even my summers and weekends were spent working

in the Christian bookstore my family owns. I started writing Bible studies in high school and college

and I had a real love for the things I did know about the Bible, but I'd never really read through

the Bible. During college, I started on a path toward full-time ministry and I made lots of friends

traveling the world as a musician and a writer and a speaker.

One of those friends was a pastor named Lee who lives in South Carolina. I lived in New York City at the time, but I toured in the South regularly, and I remember one day at his church when he

casually asked me if I'd ever read through the whole Bible. I replied with something like,

I think I have. I've probably pieced it together over the years and

covered the whole thing that way. His response to me changed the trajectory of my life in the best

way possible. He said, read it, read the whole thing. Let your eyes fall on every word. Don't skip

anything, not even the genealogies or the laws. He was so passionate about it. I was pretty stunned.

He really seemed to love the Bible, not just believe it. Then he said, and I would encourage you to say

very little on stage until you've read it all. Wow, that was the wake-up call I needed. How had I

been doing ministry without reading scripture first? If I hadn't read

the Bible, I might be taking something out of context when I quote it, or I might be saying something

that actually contradicts the overarching story of scripture. Yikes. Lee's words put a holy fear in me.

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