One of the disciplines that has helped me most in my Christian growth has been that of structured daily Bible reading. It is good for my soul for me to be regularly in the word, and in different parts of the word.
What I have learned about myself is that I need a plan if I am going to read well. Whenever I think to myself that I will just take time in a book and read it as long as I want, I somehow get distracted, go off track, or lose momentum. But I do a much better job when I have a structured plan in front of me.
So, for me, a Bible-in-a-year plan is a very helpful tool. In 2018, I read through the Discipleship Journal Book-at-a-Time plan. This plan was available for me on my iPhone’s YouVersion Bible app.
There were two things about this plan I particularly liked. One is that this plan has six days of reading per week, thus giving a day for catching up every week. While I tend to stay on track, It is nice to have a day to catch up if something happens that puts me behind. And it is nice to have the freedom, during any week, to do a different reading than the one assigned if something is on my mind.
The second thing that I liked in this reading is in the title. This plan focuses on one book at a time. Now, that actually means, for these folks, that you will do two different readings. Typically, there will be a reading from one book of the Bible, Old or New Testament, and a reading from something poetic like Psalms or Proverbs. What I like about this is that I was not reading from three or four different sections as in some other plans. At the same time, I was not simply plowing through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but instead read from an Old Testament book or two and then read a New Testament book for a few days.
Of course no reading plan is perfect. I was not super fond of the way, toward the end of the year, that the book of Isaiah became the poetic book. Reading Isaiah alongside Jeremiah and Ezekiel was not always easy to keep perfectly straight as far as timing goes.
But, with that one problem aside, I would happily recommend the Book-at-a-Time plan from Discipleship Journal. So, if you are looking for a new reading plan in 2019, you might check that plan out on line or in the YouVersion app.
What about you? What did you do for Bible reading in 2018? What is your 2019 plan?
Pastor Travis Peterson 