One of the best things I’ve done for myself is to commit to read through the Bible in a disciplined way. In fact, I was just wondering when I should blog about that again as the new year approaches when I saw Joni tweet her own invitation to read through the Bible in a year!
I know this is one of those things everyone knows they ‘should’ do, so I’ve just added a layer of guilt on top of everything else – and just before Christmas no less.
But if you try it, I think you might find something else – a daily help from God, a reminder of his care for you, a fresh insight into a promise, a glimpse into the purposes of God, a perspective into his character, new wonder at how amazing Jesus is, anticipation about spending eternity with him with ever increasing measures of joy!
The enemy of your faith and mine hates it when we get recharged like that, so he’ll make many attempts to make this entirely about duty rather than delight. The fight is worth it.
And if January 10th (or so) arrives and you haven’t started yet, so what! Don’t try to catch up, simply start on that day. In a year (or two) you’ll get through the whole thing. And it will have been entirely worth it.
Joni and Ken use the chronological schedule. I’ve used the M’Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan that Crossway provides for free online. There are others. I haven’t decided what I’m going to use next year yet.
Justin Taylor provided some additional examples a couple of years ago, including how to use the M’Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan to read through the Bible in two years.
Since there are four readings each day, it’s easy to modify this one so that you read through the Bible once in two years, by reading just the first two readings each day for the first year and the second two readings each day for the second year.
The amount of time isn’t that important – take four years if that will help you get started! Please, give it a try and see what God might be pleased to show you, for his glory and for your good.
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