Bible Reading Plans

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” Psalm 119:9

“In truth you cannot read too much in Scriptures; and what you read you cannot read too carefully, and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well... the devil... the world...and our flesh are raging and raving against us. Therefore, dear sirs and brothers, pastors and preachers, pray, read, study, be diligent... This evil, shameful time is not the season for being lazy, for sleeping and snoring" Martin Luther

It’s not too late to get started on the most important thing you can do this year, or any year. Read the Bible. Words breathed from God. (2 Timothy 3:16) What could be more important? It may be a little intimidating but it is well worth the effort.

There is no need to be legalistic about it. You don’t have to read through the Bible in an entire year. Just read some portion of it everyday. It may take you two or five or ten years to get through the whole thing. God will honor your reading whether you “stick to the plan” or not.

In my life it hasn’t been a lack of motivation, time or plan that has kept me from the Word but a lack of discipline, or to put it another way:

“Here then is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.” R.C. Sproul

James MacDonald says here that it really isn’t as big a task as we think:

“What food is to our bodies, Scripture is to our souls…So open it, and begin to read. You should say, “Dude, it has hundreds of pages. Where should I start?” I hear that so often that I decided to check the Bibles I own. They average around 1,400 pages. So think of the Bible as two big books or four to five regular-sized books. Studies indicate that the Bible takes about 70 hours to read out loud…If you read it for 12 minutes per day, or one and a half hours per week, you would have no problem finishing the Bible in a year, and you’d be so incredibly blessed you would want to start all over again the next year. Reading the Bible is really not as intimidating as most people make it.”

I am currently reading Dug Down Deep by Josh Harris. He makes note at one point of A.J. Jacobs, an agnostic, in writing The Year of Living Biblically, buying a Bible and then reading through the entire Bible in four weeks. Surely, if someone who doesn’t even know if the Bible is true can read it through then so can we. There are no excuses. Get with it! I hope this compilation will provide some thoughts, ideas and motivation to help you read through that which is truly precious. (Psalm 19:10)

A list of plans - Last year, Justin Taylor compiled a great list of different Bible reading plans and he updated the list this year. He notes in another post that all of these plans can be accessed via the web, podcast, e-mail, mobile, print, RSS or iCal.

A lifelong system - Here is a system from a Master’s College professor that emphasizes a lifelong learning of the Word. For those just beginning a regular reading of the Bible he makes a great point of moving through the text and not trying to figure everything out. At first, you should be reading for “gross anatomy” rather than “microbiology”. Try to get the “big picture” rather than trying to understand all the details and theology the first few times through.

A plan - Denny Burk, from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, offers his plan.

Another list of plans - Zondervan has some suggested plans ranging from the 90 day plan to the 3 year plan, as well as ideas for new Christians such as 30 days with Jesus. (Zondervan publishes the NIV and, previously, the TNIV. Please don’t take this link as an endorsement of the TNIV as it is not. The TNIV is an unacceptable translation. The NIV is acceptable for the most part but that is a discussion for another post.)

Another plan - Here is a “Read through the Bible Program for Shirkers and Slackers” from Andy Perry who says:

“At the same time, plans like those named above frequently cause discouragement as our New Year’s Bible reading resolutions give way to the unexpected X-factors of life which seem to encroach with a vengeance after a few weeks or months. I don’t know about you, but I can’t seem to find a command in the Bible giving special importance to reading all 66 books of the Bible in a year’s time.”

Yet another list of plans - With options for customization, mobile reading, online reading and over 20 different plans, this site is a smorgasbord of options.

A sermon - I can’t find the plan on-line but the church we are visiting recently rolled out a reading plan for their congregation. Here is the sermon in which it was introduced.

Motivation - Bob Kauflin offers his ideas on reading plans here and shares his insight in reading through the Bible last year. His thoughts on why read are especially helpful:

1. If God made sure his words were recorded for us, why wouldn’t I want to read all of them numerous times?

2. Reading large portions of Scripture regularly slows me down so I can think about life from an eternal perspective. I was in tears today as I finished Revelation, realizing the purpose for which I was created and the sure future that lies ahead.

3. In my daily life, I am constantly bombarded with images, philosophies, thoughts, reasonings, and attractions from the world, my flesh, and the devil. I need large quantities of God’s thoughts, empowered by his Spirit, to resist them.

4. I trust my own thoughts too much.

5. Each time I read through the Bible, I’m humbled as I realize how little I actually know and understand God’s Word.

6. Reading a lot of the Bible helps me more easily see how it all fits together.

More motivation - Need more motivation? J.C. Ryle was a great teacher who is very straightforward in his thoughts:

“There is no royal road to a knowledge of the Bible. There must be patient, daily, systematic reading of the Book, or the Book will not be known.”

“Read the Bible daily. Make it part of every day’s business to read and meditate on some portion of God’s Word. Gather your manna fresh every morning. Choose your own seasons and hours. Do not scramble over and hurry your reading. Give your Bible the best, and not the worst, part of your time. But whatever plan you pursue, let it be a rule of your life to visit the throne of grace and the Bible every day.”

“Let us arm ourselves with a thorough knowledge of the Word of God. Let us read our Bibles more diligently than ever, and become familiar with every part of them. Let the Word dwell in us richly. Let us beware of anything which would make us give less time and less heart to the perusal of its sacred pages. The Bible is the sword of the Spirit – let it never be laid aside. The Bible is the true lantern for a dark and cloudy time – let us beware of traveling without its light.”

Even more motivation - And never forget that the Bible we hold in our hands is covered by the blood of martyrs for the faith:

“Tyndale (1494-1536) was a linguistic genius whose expertise in seven languages dazzled the scholarly world of this day. Educated at Oxford University and eventually ordained as a priest, he rather quickly came to see translating the Bible into English as his vocation in life.

Because the vernacular Bible was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, Tyndale did his work of translation while living on the Continent. He finished his translation of the New Testament in 1525, and copies reached England the following year, smuggled in bales of cloth and sacks of flour. Catholic bishops conducted public burnings of the books. Tyndale began work on the Old Testament but was lured out of hiding by a Catholic sympathizer. He was declared a heretic and met his end near Brussels by strangling and burning at the state in 1535.

For people who have multiple English Bibles on their shelves, it is important to be reminded that the vernacular Bible was begotten in blood. What we take for granted originally seemed impossible.” Quote from Leland Ryken’s book, Understanding English Bible Translation: The Case for an Essentially Literal Approach.

My plan - Finally, come back tomorrow for my personal plan for reading through the Bible, as well as what we, as a family, will be doing this year.

There you go, plenty of options for you. The Bible is so accessible to us today. Online, audio, visual, print, podcast, radio, or TV. Yet we remain so Biblically illiterate. May we all grow to know Him better as we commit to His Word.

A prayer - “O Father in heaven, I pray…that we would love your word. We must have our hearts attuned to what is truly precious, and the Scripture says your word is like "gold, much fine gold...and honey, like drippings from the honeycomb" (Psalm 19:10).

I pray that you would tune our hearts so that we might taste what is really sweet and treasure what is really valuable. And with that new tasting and treasuring, would you incline us and discipline us to take up the Bible and to read it, and meditate on it, and memorize it? Incline us to drink in its living water and to eat its heavenly bread, so that we are made strong in the inner man by knowing God at a level that we have yet known.

So Lord, work in our hearts to incline us to your word; and open it to us and grant us to embrace it. May we extend the benefits, beauty, and preciousness of this word to those around us who have very little contact with the Scriptures, the church, and the Christ that we love so much. Make us a blessing to the world, I pray, because of our encounter with you in your word.

In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.” John Piper