Tara-Leigh Cobble: The most important thing I learned about how to read the Bible was to read it and look for God. This really changed my day to day life in ways that I didn’t expect.

Creating New Habits Toward a Better Life: Tara-Leigh Cobble & Dr. Jackie Greene – Episode #358

Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Creating new habits is hard. Oftentimes, we don’t even notice when we’re stuck in how we’ve always done it, and don’t realize how this can sometimes hold us back from something bigger. But when we’re willing to take a chance by seeking God’s heart in the day to day, He can help us break out of old habits that haven’t been serving us, into a new way of living. 

Tara-Leigh Cobble is the host of The Bible Recap Podcast. She shares with us how reading the Bible was a routine habit, until she started to approach it with the mindset of looking for God—and when she did, it became transformative. Dr. Jackie Greene is the co-pastor of Forward City Church with her husband, recording artist Travis Greene. In the early years of her marriage, Jackie struggled with her identity and often compared herself to others, but once she tried to stop negotiating with God about the things she didn’t like, she started to live in the power of her individuality. 

Tara-Leigh: Hi, I’m Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I live in Dallas, Texas. I am a Bible teacher. I like to help people read, understand, and love God’s Word more. So I do that through books and podcasts and our YouTube channel and trips to Israel and just any way that I can help people read and understand and love God’s Word more, that’s what I love to do. 

My family owns a Christian bookstore, and so my first job was selling Bibles and imprinting names on the covers of the Bible. But when I was in full time ministry, in the earlier years of my ministry, a pastor friend of mine asked me if I’d ever read the whole Bible. I remember saying, “I think I’ve pieced it together over time,” and I definitely tried to do the one year Bible reading plan, and would taper off every year shortly after Genesis. 

So I felt like I was a bit of a Genesis scholar, and I’d read Genesis so many times, but not much else. And when he challenged me to do that, I remember my first thought was, I don’t want to read the whole thing. I’ve tried. I don’t understand it. It’s boring. There’s so much that doesn’t seem like it applies to me. And that triggered the thought, If you’re in full time ministry and you don’t want to read the whole Bible, there might be something that’s off. 

So I leaned into the challenge, and he had offered to answer my questions along the way, which was super helpful. So every week I would come to him with just this list of questions, things I needed him to explain to me. By the end of the year, when I’d read the whole Bible and I had this fuller understanding of the story of who God is, that began to be transformative for me. And I say “began” because there was a whole lot that I was still missing, because that first trip through Scripture—when I had read through it chronologically—I had seen the story of God, and I didn’t like God. 

I realized that this whole book is true. I believed it was true, cover to cover. I just didn’t like who God revealed Himself to be. This is a real problem for me, because I was in full time ministry and I don’t like the God I’m serving or telling other people they should love. I realized I can’t do that. I can’t just move through life as a hypocrite like that. I can’t keep this job. 

Looking for God in Scripture, Not Ourselves

And so I told that pastor friend the struggle that I was in, and because he had walked with me for that year through Scripture, he had seen the lens that I was reading Scripture through. He knew what my problem was, and he was able to diagnose that pretty succinctly. And so he said, “Tara-Leigh, I have another challenge for you, and that challenge is I want you to read it again and this time look for God. Stop looking for yourself.” 

I was treating Scripture like a mirror. I wanted God to tell me what I could do so that I could be a good Christian and earn His approval or figure out what promises I could use to back Him into a corner to get what I wanted from Him. When I read the Word the first time through, I realized that’s not who He is. That’s not how this works. He’s not this transactional God, and that really frustrated me because I wanted the Bible to be about me.

“I wanted God to tell me what I could do so that I could be a good Christian and earn His approval or figure out what promises I could use to back Him into a corner to get what I wanted from Him…He’s not this transactional God, and that really frustrated me because I wanted the Bible to be about me.” – Tara-Leigh Cobble

So when my friend who’s the pastor challenged me to read through and look for God, that was a whole different lens. And I was halfway through the Old Testament and I was smitten. I was in love with this God that I was beholding. You don’t expect that to happen in the Old Testament, to be honest. That’s not where I thought that was going to happen. And it was the same book, but with a different lens. It just absolutely transformed not only the way I read Scripture, but the way I lived my life, the way I engaged in my relationship with God, the way I engaged with the world around me…everything was different.

Prior to reading Scripture with that lens, I might have said things like, “Okay, you need to be more patient, Tara-Leigh, try to be more patient,” or, “You need to be kinder to that person, try to be kinder to that person,” and I would sort of give myself this to-do list. And what happened when I started to treat Scripture as a lens to look for God was as I beheld the living God, the spirit of God that lives inside of me began to ignite in me the fruit that comes from Him dwelling in me, the fruit of the Spirit. So love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, those things He began to manifest in me. 

And so instead of trying to beat myself into submission and try to conform myself to the image of God, it was Him conforming me to His image. Suddenly, I would be in traffic and I wouldn’t be angry at the person who just cut me off, I would actually slow down to let them over. And I was like, Who is this? I do not recognize this person. It was just so transformative in a way that was evidence of Him at work in me, instead of me trying to force myself to be something.

“Instead of trying to beat myself into submission and trying to conform myself to the image of God, it was Him conforming me to His image.” – Tara-Leigh Cobble

Fixing Our Eyes on God to Conquer Fear

Scripture talks a lot about fear and how to handle fear. It talks about two different types of fear: the fear of the Lord, and the fear that’s the kind of terror of things. And so one of those fears casts out the other fears, the fear of the Lord consists primarily of delight and awe. And when we study the fear of the Lord in Scripture, that’s what rises to the surface is this delight and this love that draws us to something. And then there is the fact that that love and delight and affection for the Lord—when we fix our eyes on Him, it casts out all our other fears. 

But I hadn’t yet come to the place where I had a better understanding of the distinction between fear and anxiety. So I kind of lumped those two together. And what happened to me a few years ago was I started having what I was calling panic attacks. I’ve since come to find out that they were PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], but I was calling them panic attacks. My body felt out of control. And I could recite all the truths about the Lord. I knew all those things to be true. I clung to those. But they didn’t stop my heart from racing. They didn’t stop me from hyperventilating. So there was something happening in my body that was different and that I had never experienced, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. 

There are times when I’m in a situation where my body doesn’t feel safe, and it’s usually adjacent to another time when I haven’t felt safe. And so my body’s trying to alert me to the fact that I’m not safe. And this is a really kind thing that God has done to wire into our bodies this ability to stay alive. And yet, one of the most beautiful things that my counselor said to me was, “Tara-Leigh, God built you to be really resilient. You’re really resilient, and that’s why it’s been your whole life until you’ve felt these attacks, these PTSD attacks, because He’s made you to be so resilient. But God doesn’t just want you to be resilient, He wants you to be healed. And so it’s not just for you to power through these things. It’s for you to find the healing that He has available to you.”

“God doesn’t just want you to be resilient, He wants you to be healed. And so it’s not just for you to power through these things. It’s for you to find the healing that He has available to you.” – Tara-Leigh Cobble

And so through different therapy modalities, counseling, and conversation with other believers who tie in the goodness of God’s Word, the activity of His Spirit in my life, and then the way that He has built our bodies by engaging all those aspects: spiritual, physical, mental, emotional—we are holistic beings. By trying to find healing in those ways, I have found a more holistic healing. 

I’m not just a person who has to power through anxiety, but I’m a person who God is kind of rehabbing my heart and my body in these ways that I’m able to respond and I’m able to respond differently now, and I’m moving through just being resilient and moving into being healed.

Intentional Singleness

I did a three year period of intentional singleness where I just closed the door on that. I kind of just decided at that point, I feel like I’m wrestling against God, not wrestling with Him, but wrestling against Him. And so I’m just going to kind of concede, I’m going to resign myself to what it feels like God is doing in my life.

And let me tell you, I got a lot done in that time because I wasn’t distracted. It was incredible. And that’s when I created The Bible Recap. The initial build of The Bible Recap was 100 hours a week for fifteen months. I saw five people in that fifteen month period. I did not have time to pursue a relationship, and so it was a great way to invest in my singleness and invest in the kingdom with my singleness. And I’m grateful for how the Lord used that. 

And then, after three years—this pastor has had a lot of influence in my life, his name is Lee McDermott, he’s the guy who told me to read the Bible for the first time. He’s the one who helped walk me through a lot of my early understanding of anxiety and panic attacks. He and his wife had me over for dinner one night and he said, “I have to ask you a question.” I said, “Okay.” He said, “Do you still have intentionally single on your Instagram bio?” I said, “Mm-hmm.” And he said, “I need you to take that down, because I think you want marriage and I think you’re not talking to God about that. And so I think you’re not talking to your loving Father about something that you deeply desire. And I just hate that for you. I don’t want there to be a breach in your intimacy with the Lord like that.”

And I’m getting emotional even just retelling that story. To feel so loved and seen by my pastor, to feel so cared for—and I know that was the kindness of the Lord to just reach into that space and say, “I see you and I want you to talk to me about your heart.” It reminds me a lot of Jesus telling the parable of the persistent widow who just comes to the judge and says, “Give me justice against my adversary,” and God telling us to repeatedly come to Him. And so I ended that season of intentional singleness. I am now in a season of just accidental singleness, where I’m still single and still talking to the Lord about my desires, still asking Him for what I want, and who knows what He will do.

“To feel so loved and seen by my pastor, to feel so cared for—I know that was the kindness of the Lord to just reach into that space and say, ‘I see you and I want you to talk to me about your heart.’” – Tara-Leigh Cobble

Narrator: To learn more about Tara and her podcast, The Bible Recap, visit her website, www.taraleighcobble.com, and be sure to check out her new coffee table book, Israel, at your favorite retailer.

Stay tuned to Dr. Jackie Greene’s story after a brief message.

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When You’re Struggling, Jesus Listens

If your days feel overwhelming, or life has you anxious and stressed, you can find peace and hope with Jesus Listens. Written by bestselling author Sarah Young, Jesus Listens contains 365 heartfelt prayers based on Scripture.

Whether it serves as your only prayer for the day or simply to jump start your own prayers, Jesus Listens empowers you to connect daily with God. It’s such a blessing to know that Jesus hears every one of our prayers. Gift Jesus Listens to anyone struggling to feel God’s peace, or use it to establish your own consistent prayer practice. Let Sarah’s words and her bible verse references enrich your life and your relationship with God. To learn more about Jesus Listens and download a free sample, please visit www.jesuscalling.com/jesuslistens.

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Our next guest is author and pastor Dr. Jackie Greene. Dr. Jackie is the co-pastor of Forward City Church with her husband and Grammy-nominated recording artist Travis Greene. After years of questioning who she was and why God made her that way, she learned the truth of embracing herself as a daughter of God, uniquely created by His hand. She now encourages the attendees of her Permission Conferences to celebrate their individuality and find the keys that God has already given them to unlock what is inside them toward living their best life. 

Dr. Jackie Greene: My name is Jackie Greene. I am a passionate daughter of Jesus. I am a mother of three, a wife of an incredible husband, Travis. I just love to serve the Lord in any way I can, and empowering women is something that I have come to have great passion for because of many of the things I’ve lived through. I truly believe that ministry is birthed out of the things that we have lived through on our own.

Knowing Who God Calls Us to Be From the Beginning

I grew up as a child in Atlanta, Georgia. I spent my early years there. I had a very God-centered family starting out. And so all things were home, church, and back home. And I spent a lot of time in a church called Settlement Word, where they were very specific about ensuring that children very young understood the call of God on their life. And I think it had a profound impact on me believing that I could be and do all that God had called me to do from the beginning. 

I met my husband, Travis Greene, at Georgia Southern University. We both attended that school for college, and he graduated the year I came into Georgia Southern.

I believe that many people think ministry starts once you receive the title of pastor or you have a church. From the moment Travis and I met at Georgia Southern, ministry began. And even at what I would call our first date, we ended up going to the prominent Waffle House, and we led a girl to Christ there, and she started going to church with me. And I would say that each of us as individuals had a huge focus on ensuring that we lived our lives to do what God had called us to do, which was to represent Him in everything that we did, whether that was a classroom or a stage. I think that for Forward City Church, which we get to co-pastor together, is just a byproduct of something we have always lived, which is to live our life to please God and to exemplify Him in every way.

A Glimmer of Light in a Dark Time

I was in a very dire time when I was birthing my very first son, David Chase. My water broke halfway through my pregnancy and I was put in the hospital for sixty-one days on bed rest. I almost lost my son. 

The doctors said there was no way my son could make it. They literally asked us to take the baby out, to go home, try again, as if this was like a marathon race that we could just sign up for again—not the life of a child that I had felt in me kick and move every single day. 

Of those sixty-one days that I was in the hospital, I read Jesus Calling every single day. And it was those little words that I could hang onto that I felt like had been handwritten specifically for where I was at that time. That gave me a little hope. It was my glimmer of light. It was my little sunshine every day that made me keep pushing and believing that the God that got me pregnant could sustain my pregnancy and not just sustain it, but allow me to have a healthy baby boy with no remnants of prematurity that He had promised. And I get to live to tell the testimony of how God sustained my son’s life. And even after giving birth to him at twenty-eight weeks, he is alive today, eight years old with no remnants of prematurity. But I don’t know that I would have been able to keep hope or keep pushing without the Jesus Calling movement of connecting with the Father daily through that devotional.

Accepting Who God Made You to Be

I think that when we think about our lives as women or men, many of us talk about all the things that we’ve lived through or how we’ve gone through so many things. What I do believe is oftentimes when we say, like, “I lived through… I’ve gone through,” we don’t recognize that many times, we haven’t gotten to the other side. So I don’t really feel like we’re always through it. Sometimes I feel like the things that we have experienced in our life, we allow it to become a stumbling block or the excuse for why we never go forward to live on the other side of that pain. 

That was my story and this is why I think I championed women so much, to recognize that although you’ve gone through something or you’ve experienced something, rather than it being the reason you stop, it could be the reason you start. 

I think many times we look to the excuse of people around us not cheering us on, or not saying that we’re worthy or that we’re valuable, that we can do the thing that we feel we’ve been created to do—and rather than sometimes allowing that to be fuel to go back to the Father to get affirmation, we will allow that to be the stumbling block for why we don’t start.

What I have found is generally, people on Earth show up late to the thing that God already knows about us. And so for me it took a lot of having to push out there to find my own voice and find the affirmation of the Lord to be the thing that I was looking for, rather than waiting for people to affirm a thing that maybe oftentimes I wasn’t even showing yet.

“What I have found is generally, people on Earth show up late to the thing that God already knows about us. And so for me, it took a lot of having to push out there to find my own voice and find the affirmation of the Lord to be the thing that I was looking for, rather than waiting for people to affirm a thing that maybe oftentimes I wasn’t even showing yet.” – Dr. Jackie Greene

I wanted people to be okay with who I was called to be many times more than I wanted to please God. And knowing that people change like the weather and their opinion about us changes often, I think after I came to realize that and I recognized that what I had been looking for outwardly, I could find inwardly in my relationship with the Lord. It started to help me progress beyond looking for that, beyond the voices of people having to say it, and allowing God to say it for myself.

“I recognized that what I had been looking for outwardly, I could find inwardly in my relationship with the Lord. It started to help me progress beyond looking for that, beyond the voices of people having to say it, and allowing God to say it for myself.” – Dr. Jackie Greene

I think for me, permission started when I finally stopped negotiating with God about my creation, when I stopped laughing softer because I felt like that would be more accepted, and I began to express myself fully. It’s a really good example of me giving myself permission. It was rather than waiting on people to say, “Oh, it’s okay to laugh out loud,” I just did it. 

For me, the pain of my father leaving and different things of that nature, it became the fuel for me, and it is the passion for me wanting to give other women that feel voiceless or feel hesitant that push to say, “No, baby, you can go. You can still do it. You can become. You don’t have to let this be a limitation, but it can be the thing that you step on to step up into the fullest version of who God has made you to be.” And so I’m very, very passionate about seeing women live in that fullness, because I think we leave a lot on the table, not recognizing that we already have—on the inside of us—so many hidden treasures. All we have to do is be bold enough or even brave enough to dig for them.

“I think we leave a lot on the table, not recognizing that we already have—on the inside of us—so many hidden treasures. All we have to do is be bold enough or even brave enough to dig for them.” – Dr. Jackie Greene

I went from a girl who knew that I had been made with uniqueness—I had been made with a lot of potential. I had been given a grace from God that was special, and going from the place of knowing it to owning it. And I think that the gap between knowing something and owning something is submission and surrender. I finally let go of trying to be this perfect version I had come up with all on my own, and I owned the full essence of who God had said from the very beginning by things like prayer and things like obeying the Father and things like faith, and I began to put in practice the things that He told me I could do because He said it not necessarily because I felt like I could do it in my own strength, but because of the strength that He had given me, I began to own the fullness of who He made me to be.

The Ongoing Pursuit of God Defines Us

I do feel like the pursuit of God daily changes everything about you. What I believe as it pertains to our own authenticity or knowing our own individuality is apart from living in relationship with the Father, who we’ve been made in image and likeness to replicate, you don’t even fully know yourself. I was calling myself this version simply because I hadn’t looked in the mirror. The mirror is God. It is who He is and what attributes He had. And so many times what I was calling my truth or my individuality was just what culture had told me. I was allowing culture to be my mirror rather than God to be my mirror. And as I began to actually look at Him and see that I wasn’t reflecting power or freedom or fearlessness, I came to recognize that, Oh, this really isn’t who I am. And so I came to know myself the more I came to know the Lord. 

“I was allowing culture to be my mirror rather than God to be my mirror. And as I began to actually look at Him and see that I wasn’t reflecting power or freedom or fearlessness, I came to recognize that, Oh, this really isn’t who I am. And so I came to know myself the more I came to know the Lord.” – Dr. Jackie Greene

Jesus Listens, February 12th:

Glorious God, 

The Bible tells me You created me in Your own image. Please help me not to doubt my  significance. You formed me with an amazing brain that can  communicate with You, think rationally, create things, make decisions, and much more. Among all that You have created, only human beings are made in Your image. This is a wonderful privilege and responsibility—making every moment of my life meaningful. 

In Your awesome Name, Jesus, 

Amen

Narrator: To learn more about Jackie, check out her new book, Permission to Live Free, at your favorite retailer, and follow her on social media to stay up to date!

If you’d like to hear more stories about how God is in the details, check out our interview with Tamera Mowry-Housley.

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Next week: Lynn Cowell & Michelle Nietert

Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from Lynn Cowell and Michelle Nietert, co-authors of the book Managing Your Emojis. They share the concept that emotions, even sad or negative ones, are given to us by God, and we can learn to manage them in a healthy way.

Michelle: I believe that it’s vital for Christian kids that they learn to protect and manage their mental health by involving God in the process. The world offers you a self-concept based on performance, what you do, appearance, how you look, and popularity, who likes you. And God has offered a different solution. He has offered a solution that involves the fact that He created you and that you’re made in His image. He offers a solution that you’re valuable.