Recommend – New Year Resolution
Is it possible to read the Bible in a year?
Christmas has come and gone and we are about to enter the New Year. Typically, this is a time when people make their New Year’s Resolutions. Lose weight, save money are very typical resolutions that people make. Unfortunately, most resolutions people make are broken shortly after the first month into the new year. I wanted to make a suggestion that I think is easy to keep and for us Christians, a great aid in our walk. It doesn’t take that much time out of our day.
Bible Reading Plan
I have mentioned on different posts on my blog that it is unfortunate that most people do not read their bible daily. There are many excuses ranging from not understanding the bible to not having enough time. I have provided resources that will help people understand what they are reading on my side bar. On the right hand side of my side bar towards the bottom is a link to Biblical Training. They are an incredible resource for the new Christian to the Christian who has known the Lord for a longer period of time. I don’t like the word “advanced Christian” for none of is more advanced than another but some of us have walked longer with Him than others and our “knowledge” base may be more “advanced” than others. This resource will help a Christian who may have difficulty understanding the bible.
I have a harder time understanding when a Christian says they don’t have time. That has never made much sense to me especially when those people that do not have time find time to watch their favorite television shows or read the newspaper or other activities. Sure there may be days when it is so hectic with children’s homework and other activities that take up our daily lives but there must be at least a mere half an hour one can give to the One who we just finished honoring His birth and ultimately who laid His life down so that we may live. Half hour a day is so very little to give to Him, it really is inconsequential.
That being said, I would like to offer some incredible resources that may help people get started.
Resources
The first one is a really awesome bible reading site. It is called eWord Today. Click here to be taken to the site. On this site, you will have many options. You can choose your translation of choice. The only bible that I do NOT recommend is The Message. For those Christians that are new to Bible reading, there are easier translations that are good for reading but not as a word for word translation/study bible. I would suggest the Holman Christian Standard Bible, New International Version or the New Living Translation. These really are easy to read. Please bear in mind that these are not study bibles and should not be used as such as they are a ‘thought for thought’ translation and not a literal ‘word for word’ translation.
Once you have decided on a translation, you have five options for your yearly reading.
- Beginning: This will take you from Genesis to Revelation, chapter by chapter.
- Chronological: Read the Bible as its events occurred in real-time.
- Historical: Read the books of the Bible as they were written historically, according to the estimated date of their writing.
- New/Old: Read through the New Testament first, then read through the Old Testament.
- Old/New: Each day includes a passage from both the Old Testament and New Testament.
Once you have chosen a translation and a plan, you simply click on the day and your translation will open with your daily reading. Just save it in your favorites and when you open it up each day, it remembers the last book you read. It does all the work for you except the reading part. 
In less than 20-30 minutes a day, you will have read the whole bible from cover to cover. Think about it, only 20-30 minutes (probably less) and you will have read the entire entire bible in a year. It takes me longer to drink my coffee in the morning
For those that are more ambitious, I have come up with my own plan. With this plan, I spend no more than 45 minutes a day and will have read through the entire bible in a little less than three months. It is a mere 15 chapters a day. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible (929 In The Old Testament and 260 In the New Testament). If you read 15 chapters a day, you will have read through the entire bible in 79 days. That leaves room for skipped days due to unforeseen circumstances that come up. I am doing this plan and I can say that it is much less difficult than I thought it would be. I committed myself to doing this at least once and I am finding it really easy. I do a little in the morning when I have time and finish up before my evening is over. It takes less than 45 minutes (I’m guessing but it’s probably less but I have not timed myself) a day to read 15 chapters. I’m not reading it for deep study but just reading it at my normal reading pace. Sometimes I will stop to look something up but most of the time, I just read through. I am absorbing much as I do this.
Jesus was whipped beyond recognition and then willingly spent six agonizing hours on the cross so that we may live. I can’t imagine that there really is any reason why we, the children of God, can’t spare 20 – 45 minutes a day to read the Word. That’s less than an hour-long television show. He is, after all, the Word made flesh.
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Hey buddy,
I compiled this a few years ago and would like to share it with you and your readers.
The Top Ten Reasons to Read the Bible in 2010!
No. 10: We’ll think about God’s word and work throughout each day (Ps. 77:12).
No. 9: We can teach our children (Ps. 78:5; Deut. 6:6-7).
No. 8: We will have an answer when someone asks us why we believe (1 Peter 3:15).
No. 7: We will learn for ourselves how God wants us to live (Ps. 86:11).
No. 6: We can say “Yes” when Jesus asks, “Have you not read…” (Matt. 12:3).
No. 5: We’ll see connections (Ps. 22:18 & Luke 23:34; Deut 23:25 & Luke 6:1).
No. 4: We will have the necessary knowledge of the Gospel (Rom. 10:13-17).
No. 3: We will be made wise (Ps. 19:7).
No. 2: We will be instructed and encouraged (Rom. 15:4).
And the Number One reason to read the entire Bible is…….
No. 1: We will be fed by God’s word (Ps. 81:10; Matt. 4:4).
Thanks for putting together such an important post. How I can I get this to all the people in our church??!!! Love the automatically integrated “real time” reading plan.
Hi Tami,
I love that real time reading plan as well. I do use it and it’s great.
Maybe you could start a reading program at your church? You could use some of the ideas that I came up with or change it to suit your church’s needs. Maybe you could cut and past my post into your word processor and make any changes (or come up with something completely new) and print out a bunch and leave at the front table when people walk in — kind of like a flyer.
Okay, Blog Master T., here is the whole thing
“You Say You Want A Resolution”
Okay, so the title is hokie, but I wrote this several years ago for a church newsletter and it was subsequently reprinted in other church news letters around this time of the year. At the time I thought it quite kichi.
Most of us who have email check it fairly frequently. In fact, there’s a joke that in part says you know you’re a computer geek if when you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and stop to check your email. However often we check when we see something in our inbox from someone we know we eagerly open it without hesitation. An email represents the same thing a letter delivered by the postman used to: a message from a friend.
If the Bible is anything it is God’s letter to us. Like Abraham, we are friends of God (James 2:23). Scripture contains everything God wants us to know about Him, about us, and His plans of redemption for us.
With the New Year coming up I could think of no better time to talk about reading the Bible cover to cover in a single year. Many of us make resolutions of varying degrees of importance and break them just as quickly. If we’re smart, we won’t tell anyone that this year we will lose weight, get a new job or read Moby Dick. That way we avoid those awkward end of the year conversations about needing bigger clothes, why no one wants to hire us, and why we don’t get it when someone mentions Queequeg.
Reading about five pages a day, some Bibles will differ (simply take the number of pages divided by 365), one can read it cover to cover in a single year. The advantages to reading this way are numerous. Five pages does not take long to read but lets us absorb easily what we read. It also helps when we are mired in the latter half of Exodus or in the midst of Leviticus, where most of us give up, because five pages just isn’t that long, and we will see a richness in these books that we might otherwise miss. And we can reflect during the day on our reading.
Worried about keeping up because you might miss a day? Most Bibles have some pages taken up with introductions to the different books. If we don’t account for them in our division then we have some built-in leeway. Also, there are likely to be days when we become so engrossed in God’s word we read more than “a day’s worth”. This will help us eliminate the excuse at the end of the day on January 1, “Well, I didn’t read today. I’ll start next year.”
Still need a little inspiration? Let’s look at:
The Top Ten Reasons to Read the Bible in 2010!
No. 10: We’ll think about God’s word and work throughout each day (Ps. 77:12).
No. 9: We can teach our children (Ps. 78:5; Deut. 6:6-7).
No. 8: We will have an answer when someone asks us why we believe (1 Peter 3:15).
No. 7: We will learn for ourselves how God wants us to live (Ps. 86:11).
No. 6: We can say “Yes” when Jesus asks, “Have you not read…” (Matt. 12:3).
No. 5: We’ll see connections (Ps. 22:18 & Luke 23:34; Deut 23:25 & Luke 6:1).
No. 4: We will have the necessary knowledge of the Gospel (Rom. 10:13-17).
No. 3: We will be made wise (Ps. 19:7).
No. 2: We will be instructed and encouraged (Rom. 15:4).
And the Number One reason to read the entire Bible is…….
No. 1: We will be fed by God’s word (Ps. 81:10; Matt. 4:4).
If you’ve never done it, or maybe you have and it’s been a while, why not make 2010 the year you read God’s letter to you from start to finish? You can even miss the first day and still do it!
__________________________________________________________________________________
You may also want to check out my friend’s blog on the subject:
http://fruitoftheword.com/2009/12/26/recommend-new-year-resolution/
In addition to the suggestions in her article she provides some additional tools.
Have a great, blessed, and productive New Year.
Hi RH — Blog Master T speaking
Hey, you should have come up with something instead of “master” — but something that started with a “L” so I could use the initials BLT
And this is exactly what I was looking for. I remember this — it’s a great post!
Tishrei,
This is interesting and, hopefully, a starter for people….. I like to stop and smell the roses along the way….. If I rush through something, I seem to miss the enjoyment of the moment….. That’s just a difference in people…..
It’s just because God wants to draw near to us, His dear children, that I don’t want to rush past Him, as if I didn’t have time for Him….. God has special things He wants His children to learn throughout His word to us….. Because I don’t want to miss out on what God has to say to me personally, I read God’s word according to what He has to say, whether it be a short or long passage…..
Some passages need more personal application, so that we should let God speak to us in areas where we need to learn and trust God more….. Other passages are longer stories, where we need to see that story as a whole, in order to understand what God is pointing out to us.
People do need to realize God’s love in giving and preserving His word for us….. Reading His word is accepting His love and guidance.
Margaret
Hi Margaret — for sure, stop and smell the roses and if reading through the bible is all we did, we would miss out on the personal application or hearing God speak to us. I AGREE with you. However, this is what I found in my case. Until I really started reading through the bible from cover to cover, — just reading it — I did not get the whole of God’s word. In order to get the personal applications or hear God speak to us, we have to know the whole of His word. My read through the bible that I do is not the slow reading, studying and mediating that I do. That’s something different and approached completely different.
Tishei,
Jennifer and I were just discussing this yesterday As she is re-reading Acts she keeps finding things she hadn’t noticed before.
For those who haven’t read the Bible cover to cover they are often, like reading anything else, trying to get the overall content of what they are reading.
An English professor of mine insisted we read our assigned readings at least twice, preferably three times. The first time we read we are distracted because we want to know what happened; we want to get to the end. The second time we begin to see what’s really happening. The third we see how the author is making it happen and what he or she is really telling us.
Several years ago, after my newsletter article first appeared, a woman told me she was going to read the Bible cover to cover so that later she could delve into specific books of the Bible for more in depth study.
I think it depends on where people ae. For me, I’m a chunk reader – I enjoy reading things in big pieces. If I’m doing a study then I’ll look at not a single book but a single passage, and my past reading through along with the margin notes I’ve made and memory help with that study.
In Christ,
Kent
Hi,
Your English professor was correct though I had never thought about it. I can say that many times (whatever I am reading), if I go through it a second time, I pick up things I missed the first time. With the bible, having read the whole bible many, many times from cover to cover, I have an understanding of the whole word of God. That makes it much easier for me to spend time on a few verses or a chapter because I can understand it in relation to the whole of God’s word.
Margaret was correct — reading the bible from cover to cover does not replace the slow reading of a chapter or a few verses and contemplating and mediating on His word.
My own reading scheme.
I break up the OT into reading blocks:
Genesis thru Ruth
1 Samuel thru Esther
Proverbs, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiates, Song of Songs (Not neceesarily in that order)
The Major Prophets
The Minor Prophets
That seems rather straight forward, in order mostly. But I’ve developed a more unique approach to the NT.
Luke & Paul:
Read Luke-Acts, and the letters of Paul (in the order in which they were written)
Mark & Peter
Matthew, James, Jude and Hebrews
The Books of John:
Gospel, Letters, Revelation
That’s a good way. For me, it’s just easier to read 15 chapters a day or use the site I linked to and just let them figure it out for me.