Grounding Ourselves in God’s Word with Tara-Leigh Cobble
On today’s episode, we’re chatting with Tara-Leigh Cobble about how important it is to plant our feet firmly on the foundation of God’s Word. This episode will encourage you to reach for the Word as your source of truth and comfort, no matter where you’re at today. Tara-Leigh Cobble has a zeal for Biblical literacy that led her to create and develop an international network of Bible studies called D-Group. Every week, over 250 men's and women's D-Groups meet weekly in homes and churches around the world to study Scripture. She also writes and hosts a daily radio show called The God Shot and a daily podcast called The Bible Recap designed to help listeners read and understand the Bible in a year. Her book "The Bible Recap", a 365-day guide to reading through the Bible, releases this fall.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Can you tell us a little about who you are and what you do?
Why do you make a habit of reading the Bible? Why is it important for us to do that?
What difference has regularly intaking the big story of the Bible made in your own life?
What advice do you have for someone who feels intimidated by the thought of reading through the Bible?
How would you encourage a woman in a busy season of life who feels like she just can't seem to make time to study the Word?
Has your Bible intake varied in different seasons of your life? How do you adapt to the demands of your schedule while still prioritizing time to study Scripture?
How do you teach and share what you're learning with those whom you are pouring into spiritually?
What should be central in our discipleship relationships?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
“When I read through the Bible for the first time, I was blown away by all of the things I had misunderstood, and all the things I had never heard about at all.”
“Lean into the questions, don’t ignore them. Lean into the things that are disruptive. The things I was seeing were things that were true about God that I had never been told about God.”
“The second time reading through the Bible was when I just fell in love with the Word of God. It was transformative.”
“Looking at Scripture as I naturally do, I look for myself. Where am I in this? What person in this story do I relate to the most? How can I be like the person who’s better? How can I do the things that pleases God? I was looking for me. That was my primary problem. I was looking for the Bible to be a story about me.”
“I realized it’s not a story about me. It’s a story that is about God. He is sharing the story about who he is so I can know him.”
“When we look for ourselves in Scripture, we mostly grow away from the Lord because we are fixing our eyes in the wrong direction.”
“Once I began to look for God, I then began to see the whole arc of the storyline.”
“Reading chronologically was key for me.”
“When you get the whole storyline, you see I want a God who’s a God of justice, long-suffering, and still is a God who keeps his Word.”
“God loves to lean in and embrace and use sinners is huge. The fact that God uses us at all. How incredible is it that God is so endeared to David despite David being such a sinner? That says so much about God.”
“Always looking for what the Scripture reveals about God changes everything.”
“We are not inherently good, we do not deserve everything from God. Every breath is his mercy. We have committed treason against the kingdom of light, everything else on top of not killing us is his abundant grace.”
“Reading through Scripture not only changed my view of God, it changed my view of me by fixing my eyes on God.”
“If you’re delighting yourself in the Lord, then what are the desires of your heart? Maybe that means God will put the right desires in your heart when you delight in him.”
“My heart is entitled and impatient and selfish, so to see God showing up in those spaces where I have been seated on the throne, is so delightful to me.”
“Looking at it as a day to day thing, instead of treating it as a checklist, like I want to read through the whole Bible, the plan moving forward is to read my Bible every day of my life. So what does that mean for today? Today that means 12 minutes. Because you can read through the whole Bible in a year in just 12 minutes a day.”
“One of the major shifts for me was when I shifted from reading at night to reading in the morning.”
“What better thing to wake my brain up with in the morning than the truth of God in his Word? That’s a better thing to wake me up than anything else.”
“This made all the difference because then I had the next 16-18 hours of the day for the Lord to remind me of the things I had read, to meditate on it, to put it into practice, for him to speak it back to me. This didn’t happen when I read it before bed.”
“One of the things that’s been so encouraging to me is to see people... who are doing a Bible reading plan with their children, with their 4 year old, their 6 year old, their 11 year old. And of course the kids don’t understand all of it, but I’m like, I don’t either!”
“You don’t have to distance yourself from your kids to get in the Word, you can get in the Word with your children.”
“Emotional honesty… We get the idea that pouring into people is all about us revealing our knowledge and wisdom, but sometimes it’s about revealing our brokenness.”
“Some of the best ways to lead are not with your victories, but with your failures.”
“There’s no real lens for us to know what is true and what is false and what counsel is good and what is bad, apart from measuring things against the Word of God. We have the Spirit who speaks to us truth, encourages us, convicts us of sin… One of the best ways to get a lens on what is truth is knowing the Word.”
“The Word has to be central.”
RESOURCES
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” - Psalm 37:4
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How can you grow this week in your love for God’s Word?
How does viewing the Bible as a story about God, rather than a story about you, impact how you read Scripture?
Who in your life can you begin to study God’s Word alongside?
What can you do to grow your view of the big storyline of the Bible?
What are you going to do or implement as a result of what you’ve learned this week?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
Affiliate links used are used where appropriate. Thank you for supporting the products that support Journeywomen!
FOR MORE OF JOURNEYWOMEN
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Follow Us: Instagram | Facebook
Support the podcast by writing a review
