No matter whatever else you resolve to do in 2014, resolve to read the Bible.
Yes, all of it. It will take you about 12 minutes a day. Which means that in an hour of reading every day you could read it through four times.
Read the 66 books from beginning to end or chronologically or in the historical order that they were written or from a sampling each day from the New and Old Testaments … “how” you read it matter less than “that” you read it.
Don’t think you have the time? Consider this:
It takes just 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the Bible through aloud “at pulpit rate.” It takes about 52 hours and 20 minutes to read the Old Testament, and 18 hours and 20 minutes to read the New Testament.
The longest book, Psalms, will take you 4 hours and 28 minutes. But the gospel of Luke will take you a mere 2 hours and 43 minutes.
Give it a test, try reading a number of verses, at pulpit rate, aloud, to yourself. Time yourself and count the words you have read. Then do the math: the Bible contains 622,771 words in the Old Testament, and 184,590 in the New Testament, for a total of 807, 361 words.
Warning: reading the Bible will change you. It will change your perspective, it will change your mind, it will change your heart, it will change your priorities, it will change your speech patterns, it will change your passions, it will change your relationships.
Promise: you will be blessed. How? God will meet you, God will speak to you as His Word transforms and renews your mind, bringing your thoughts into ever-greater conformity with His thoughts and your will with His will.
Need a reading plan?
Read online: http://www.ewordtoday.com/year/ or http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com/
Read in 90 days: http://biblein90days.org/
Print a plan: http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf
Didn’t find one there that satisfies you? Alex Chan has rounded up 23 different plans to satisfy “everyone!”
We really are “without excuse” when it comes to keeping this particular resolution. So, friend, take and read.
3 Comments. Leave new
Be sure to see Bible Gateway’s Bible reading plans at http://www.biblegateway.com/reading-plans/
Thanks to Carmen for the reminder to me that it’s been too long since I did this, and to Jonathan for the reference to Bible Gateway, which is an outstanding resource.
For a long time, I’ve been aware that Presbyterians don’t read the Bible anymore. Oh, of course some of them still do; but most of the adult Sunday School classes I’ve seen for years now are of subject matters that don’t remotely require you to bring a Bible to the classroom. So people don’t bring them. I’ve also been to too many classes in which the members of the class blindly defer to the knowledge (and more importantly, the interpretations and opinions) of the pastors, rather than relying on their own Biblical learning. That’s because most of those class members have very little Biblical learning with which to judge what the pastors are telling them. This is in great contrast to when I was growing up, and my role models were elders who knew the Scriptures (and the catechisms as well). It’s a shame that tradition of knowledge for the layman has been lost.
Not only should we READ the Bible every day, but we need to BELIEVE what it tells us, for it is God’s absolute, inerrant, and infallible Word, and then we have to OBEY what it tells us to do. As Presbyterians, we have an obligation to remain faithful to His Word in every way we can.