Bible Reading Plans
“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it” Lk 11:28
Here is a good post on Bible Reading Plans. My favorite reading plan has been the Calendar of Daily Readings by Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Included in the link). If you follow the full plan you will read through the entire Bible once and through Psalms and the New Testament Twice. This reading involves reading in four different places of Scripture at the same time. There are several benefits of reading in different places in Scripture: 1) You will see how the Scripture fits together in the broader sense, 2) You will be exposed to different genre, 3) You may struggle through one passage while finding yourself moved by another, 4) You will be less apt to grow weary of a particular genre, since you will be in others at the same time. If this Reading Plan seems a bit too much for you, it is easilyadjustable for a two year reading plan, simply read the two family sections one year and then the two private sections the next year.
The danger of Bible Reading Plans is that the reader can tend to say at a superficial level in their study of Scripture. I recommend that whatever plan you choose, always identify one book that you are currently reading to study more deeply and spend more time on. Example: if you are reading M’Cheyne in four different places in Scripture, take one of the readings and take more time to study and reflect on it. But the beneift to Bible Reading Plans is that they keep the broad plan of Scripture before you consistently. If you follow reading plans through your life time, the Scripture will become more and more familiar to you. If you continue to go deeper in one of the books of the Bible that you are reading, over time you will have deeply studied through the entire Bible. All of these reading plans are available on-line with the ESV, so you can do it all online if you would like.
Fathers, stay ahead of your family in the readings and teach them the book that you are studying more deeply for your Family Worship time. What a wonderful way to start the New Year off right.
“Do not expect to master the Bible in a day, or a month, or a year. Rather expect often to be puzzled by its contents. It is not all equally clear. Great men of God often feel like absolute novices when they read the Word. The apostle Peter said that there were some things hard to understand in the epistles of Paul (2 Pet 3:16). I am glad he wrote those words because I have felt that often. So do not expect always to get an emotional charge or a feeling of quiet peace when you read the Bible. By the grace of God you may expect that to be a frequent experience, but often you will get no emotional response at all. Let the Word break over your heart and mind again and again as the years go by, and imperceptibly there will come great changes in your attitude and outlook and conduct. You will probably be the last to recgonize these. Often you will feel very, very small, because increasingly the God of the Bible will become to you wonderfully great. So go on reading it until you can read no longer, and then you will not need the Bible any more, because your eyes close for the last time in death, and never again read the Word of God in Scripture you will open them to the Word of God in the flesh, that same Jesus of the Bible whom you have known for so long, standing before you to take you forever to His eternal home.” Geoffrey Thomas, Reading the Bible