What Does it Mean to Be unBibled? | Episode 01: The unBibled Podcast

unBibled might not be a term you’ve ever heard before. It wasn’t one I had heard before, not until one day while I was trying to take a nap and felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to pray. In my prayers I asked the Lord to reveal to me who he wanted me to minister to. I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, but I very clearly felt the Lord tell me to speak to the unBibled.

I’d heard the word unbeliever. I was familiar with the term unchurched. But I had never heard unBibled. I jumped up from my bed, went straight to my office, opened the laptop on my desk and typed “unbibled” into Google. And it wasn’t there. No one was using it. But I knew what it meant. The unBibled were people like me… or the way I used to be before I got serious about reading and studying God’s Word.

I’ve believed in God my whole life.

I’ve been walking with Jesus for more than a decade.

But it wasn’t until 2019 that I became genuinely committed to knowing the Bible for myself.

I was living my life unBibled and didn’t think it was a big deal. It is.

Which is why I am so excited to be launching The unBibled Podcast… with the goal of helping encourage other believers to stop living their lives unBibled.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the unBibled Podcast

00:00
If I say the words unbeliever or unchurched, you probably instinctively know what I’m talking about. An unbeliever is someone who doesn’t believe in God, and someone who is unchurched is someone who doesn’t go to church now or wasn’t raised in the church. But what about the word unBibled? If you ever even heard that word before I hadn’t, not until the Lord called me to speak to unBibled Christian women. Why? Because I was one of them. I have always believed in God, and I’ve been following Jesus for more than a decade. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that I got serious about developing a daily, disciplined and diligent study of God’s word, that I went from living my life unbibled to living my life bibled. And that transformation has been so huge for me, and I want to encourage you to also let the Lord transform your life by becoming a student of the scriptures. And that’s what this brand new unBibled podcast is all about. It is about helping Christian women go from being unbibled to Living Bible let’s get started.

Podcast Introduction

01:17
Welcome to the unBibled podcast. I’m your host. Liz Cobo, I’m a Bible teacher and seminary student who spent most of my life unbibled. I spent years as a Christian believing in God, putting my faith in Jesus, but not knowing what the Bible actually says. If you want to know what the best selling, most reliable, relevant book of all time says, and you want to walk closer with Jesus, it’s time to stop living unbibled. 

The Inspiration for the unBibled Podcast

01:48
Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in to this very first episode of the unbibled podcast. Like the intro said, my name is Liz. I’m a Bible teacher and a seminary student. I’m working on my master’s degree in Christian apologetics at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in Southern California. Actually live in far northern California on my family’s cattle ranch, but I’m able to do school on line, which is so cool. And honestly, if you told me a decade ago that I was going to be a Bible teacher and a seminary student, I don’t think I would have believed you. Why? Probably because at that point a decade ago, even after I had given my life to Christ, still about 98% of my biblical knowledge was secondhand knowledge of God, and it wasn’t until I started to study the Bible for myself, it wasn’t until I realized that I was living the life of an un bibleed believer, that I finally made that decision to stop living that way, to stop living not knowing what the Word of God said for myself. And if you want to have an unshakable faith in God, if you want to walk closer with Jesus, it’s time for you to also stop living un Bible. If that’s how you’re living, maybe you’re not. Maybe you are in the word every single day. Maybe you are a seasoned saint who understands the value of Scripture, but more and more, less and less Christians actually know what the Bible says for themselves.

What the unBibled Podcast is About

03:34
So this podcast is actually not about how to study the Bible if you want to learn how to study the Bible, I can help you do that. I’ve got lots of resources for you. I’ve got some courses that you can take, and I can teach you how to study the Bible like a seminary student, without you actually having to go to seminary unless, of course, that’s the call that the Lord has put on your heart, and if he’s calling you to go to seminary, friend go. It’s It’s amazing. I am loving it so much already. But if you are just wanting to stop living on Bible, this podcast is going to help you to do that. We are going to look at what the Bible is all about. We’re going to look at the big picture of the Bible. We’re going to zoom in and look at some specific stories in the Bible. We’re going to look at themes of the Bible, and we are going to help you go from living an un Bible life to living bibleed. Now this is not going to happen overnight. This is not an immediate transformation. There is no silver bullet, and you can’t learn God’s Word by osmosis. You can’t put this under your pillow tonight and hope that it will sink in, but if you start to give time. Time every day to spending time with God in His Word. Intentional time doesn’t have to be quiet. If you are a mom of young kids, then you know that there’s not a lot of quiet time in your life, but you can find some intentional time to spend with God, to be in the word and to study the Scriptures. There’s no special code to crack or, quote, unquote, level of faith that you have to attain to be able to study God’s Word. It truly is for everyone, including you.

Liz’s Faith Journey

05:32
Now, I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t believe in God. I don’t even think that there has been a day where I questioned God’s existence. Many people do. Maybe that’s where you are, and I can recommend some great Christian apologetics books to you and apologetics resources that can help you to look at the actual evidence that we have for our Christian faith. Christianity is the only religion with evidence. I’ve always believed in God, and I’ve been walking with Jesus for a decade, but I have not always known what the Word of God said. I was raised Catholic, and until I went to college, I went to Mass almost every Sunday. Wherever we were in the world, we went to church on Sunday, but I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus, I really didn’t even understand what that meant, and I definitely did not know what the Bible said, and I didn’t know how to approach the Bible. I couldn’t have told you, I don’t think the difference between the Old and the New Testaments, and I couldn’t have told you what the word gospel means. 

What the Gospel Means

05:32
I know now that gospel just it means good news. It’s a Greek word that means good news, but I couldn’t have told you what that good news is. I knew that Jesus died on the cross, but I didn’t understand that it was to pay a sin debt that I couldn’t pay. To pay a sin debt that you couldn’t pay. I could not have explained to you about His death and His resurrection three days later, overcoming the power of the grave and defeating sin and death. I might have been able to cobble something together, but it would have been fraught with error and uncertainty, and if you want to reach the non believers in your life, the unbelievers, you’re not going to be able to do that with error and uncertainty. You need a strong foundation, and that foundation of your faith as a Christian is found in God’s Word, because this is God’s self revelation. There are three ways that God reveals Himself to us. He reveals Himself through nature, through the natural rule world around us, through His scripture and through self revelation to us. And in fact, that’s where the word un Bible came from. About a year ago, in the summer of 2023 I laid down one afternoon to try to take a nap. And maybe you’ve done this before, where you just feel like the Holy Spirit is not going to let you sleep because he wants you instead to be in prayer.

God Gave Me the Word, “unBibled”

08:12
So I started praying, and I started praying, Lord, would You reveal to me who it is that you want me to minister to? I knew at that point that the Lord was calling me to seminary. I knew that he was calling me in to ministry to Christian women, but I didn’t know specifically what it was that God wanted me to do. So that afternoon, I prayed, and I actually got up, I got a notebook, and I started writing things down. I call these Holy Spirit whoosh moments, where it just sort of feels like the Lord downloads something into my spirit. I’ve never heard the audible voice of God before, but I do get these, like whoosh moments. And so I started writing things down. And the second bullet point that I wrote down was unBibled Christian women. I’d never heard the word unBibled before that was completely new to me, so I got up from my bed, I went to my computer and I Googled it, and it really wasn’t a word. It wasn’t out there. Nobody was using the term unbibled.

Entrepreneurial Nerd Mode

09:18
So I immediately went into entrepreneurial nerd mode, and I grabbed the URL, and I went and grabbed the Instagram account and started sort of staking my claim on this word of unbibled. And over time, the Lord really showed me that he was using my testimony to share the power of the gospel, the power of the Scriptures and the power of knowing God’s word for yourself. 

Deconstruction Before it Was Called That

09:50
Because I had lived my life unbibled. I didn’t know what the word of God said. I didn’t know how to approach it. I had gone through. A really rough season of my life where I question God’s goodness. I didn’t question his existence, but I did question His goodness, because I lost a dear friend to cancer, and my heart was shattered and my faith wasn’t unshakable. Now I wouldn’t call it deconstruction. I know that that’s kind of a hot topic and a buzzword right now, maybe it’s a trigger word for you, but I wouldn’t necessarily call what I experienced deconstruction, but it was a lot of reconstruction. I had a very dear mentor of mine who said, what if you started over with what it was or what it is that you believe to be true about God, put aside religion, put aside tradition, and start over with just the idea that God is love. Now I couldn’t have told you where you would find that in the Bible, I think it’s in the fourth chapter of Second John. But God is love, and everything that God does for us, he does out of love. Now, it’s not lovey dovey love the kind that you know we see in TV shows or, you know, Care Bears with with little hearts, right? It is sacrificial love that he loves us with, and that’s why He sent Jesus for us. So I went through this awful season of shaky faith, right? Of not knowing what it was that I actually believed to be true about God, but when I started to rebuild on the idea that God is love, the Lord was very gracious to meet me where I was, to not leave me there and to move me towards being a Bible believing Christian.

What an “Old” Book Has to Do with Modern Life

12:03
So you might think that it’s an old book, right, that this is an ancient text that doesn’t have a lot to do with your modern life, and we’re going to talk about that in upcoming episodes. But if you are a Christian, then you should be a Bible, believing Christian, and you should be a Bible knowing Christian. That doesn’t mean you have to go to seminary the way that I am. If that’s the calling that the Lord has put on your life, then go. But it does mean that you need to know how to approach God’s word, that you need to spend intentional time every day in God’s word. Why? Because this is God’s self revelation to us, and the Bible is this huge part of our Christian faith now walking through that season being angry at God with my faith being just totally shaken again, probably not what we would term deconstruction, but you know, more very much, like a reconstruction, I realized that a lot of my faith was adopted. It was adopted faith I had taken on, the faith of my family, of my parents, and I really, you know, didn’t know that my faith should be my own. And it wasn’t until this mentor said to me, you know, to think about rebuilding with the idea that God is love, which is in the fourth chapter of First John, not Second John. I said Second John earlier, but it’s actually the fourth chapter of First John. We read all about the truth that God is love, and so I want to share that, just those verses with you right now. So in John, and this is First John, there are three books of John, and we’ll talk about that more. 

Topics the unBibled Podcast Will Cover

13:57
We’re going to talk about, you know, how the Bible came to be how the Bible is organized, but in First John, in the fourth chapter, in verse seven, we read, beloved. Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. Verse nine in this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved. If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. So again, that is from the book of. First John, chapter four. Those are verses seven through 12, and they it’s such a beautiful passage of scripture. The UN Bible podcast is for you. If you are a Christian who has struggled to spend time in your Bible, you’ve struggled to know where to get started or you’re just curious, like, what is the overarching story of the Bible? What does it mean that the Bible is God’s self revelation? What in the world does that word propitiation mean? Propitiation just means payment. But what does that word mean? And if you are someone who is going through life, hoping that no one will notice that you don’t know what your Bible says, then this podcast is for you. My prayer is that you, if you are a Christian, then you would stop living on Bibles, and if you’re not a Christian, that the Bible would help you to realize and recognize God’s immense love for you, God’s goodness and all that God wants for you, and what God wants for you is for you to give Him your heart. It might not sound like much, but it’s a lot in a world where being a Christian is becoming less and less popular. I think we we know that it is becoming harder and harder to live out our Christian faith, and it’s becoming more and more important that we actually know what the word of God says, that we know what it is that we believe, and that we are able to share it with other people in Matthew where Jesus gives that great commission, that commission that we call the Great Commission, to go out and make disciples. It’s important for us to recognize we can’t teach what we don’t know. And so if you have struggled to study the Bible, know that you are not alone, but know that you can learn to do it through the episodes of the UN Bible podcast. I want you to go from wherever it is that you are right now to knowing and understanding the Bible better, to be more confident in your faith, and I’m going to help you get there make that transformation from being un Bible to living Bibled.

Upcoming Episodes

17:25
I am so excited for the upcoming episodes of this podcast. We’re going to talk about what the Bible is and what it isn’t. We are going to filter things through the lens of the Bible. We’re going to talk about, should families be celebrating Halloween, if they are Christian, we’re going to talk about, what is eschatology? What are the End Times? What is the Great Tribulation? These are all things that I had no idea what they meant until I started studying God’s word. So I want to help you get more familiar with this incredible book, with the Scriptures, with God’s self revelation to us. I hope you’ll join me for future episodes. And if you have a topic or a question or even a specific verse or passage of the Bible that you’ve always had questions about, you can email me at hello@unbibled.com and I would love to dig in and try and help you find Biblical answers to your questions. Thanks for listening to this episode of the unBibled podcast.

Episode Ending Message

18:31
Check out the show notes for links to helpful resources mentioned in or related to this episode. To join my email list, visit Liz cobo.com if you have an unBibled question you’d like me to answer in an upcoming episode, send me an email at hello@unbibled.com and if you’d like to leave a rating or a review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, that would be such a blessing. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll see you next time you.