Tag: Bible Reading

Have you considered reading through the Bible in 2015? If so, I hope you have thought of a plan to do so. I have found that a reading plan and guide keeps me focused. Fortunately, there are plenty of plans available from which to choose.

ESV Study Bible has several plans online which can be synced to your phone, emailed, or printed out.

Professor Grant Homer’s Bible Reading System has you reading 10 chapters a day from 10 different places. There is a Facebook group for this plan as well.

Reading the Bible in Canonical Order is one in which you read all the books of the Bible in canonical order in one year. Each day’s reading is about 3-4 chapters in length, with the exception of the Psalms.

The 4 Step Plan is 1)Choose a book of the Bible; 2)Read it in it’s entirety; 3)Repeat step #2 twenty times; 4)Repeat this process for all books of the Bible. I particularly find this plan appealing.

Read The New Testament in Greek in a year is a quite challenging plan as well and will be for those somewhat skilled in the Greek language.

There are also Bible apps that have Bible reading plans built into them. Bible.com is a great place to check to get the Bible on your phone, computer, or any other electronic reading device.

Though there are many plans to help you in reading the Bible this coming year, the key is in you choosing one and sticking with it. Blessings as you do so!

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When we think about reading the Bible, do we ever imagine that there might be a danger of reading it wrongly? Consider the words of Eugene Peterson in his book Eat This Book…

Reading the Bible, if we do not do it rightly, can get us into a lot of trouble. The Christian community is as concerned with how we read the Bible as that we read it. It is not sufficient to place a Bible in a person’s hands with the command, “Read it.” That is quite as foolish as putting a set of car keys in an adolescent’s hands, giving him a Honda, and saying, “Drive it.” And just as dangerous. The danger is that in having our hands on a piece of technology, we will use it ignorantly, endangering our lives and the lives of those around us; or that intoxicated with the power that technology gives us, we will use it ruthlessly and violently.

For Peterson, a way to read Scripture that “guards against depersonalizing the text into an affair of questions and answers, definitions and dogmas; a way of reading that prevents us from turning Scripture on its head and using it to justify ourselves,” is the lectio divina. 

The lectio divina comprises four elements:

• Lectio – we read the text. This reading of the text involves listening to the text. “Just because we have read it,” writes Peterson, “doesn’t mean we have heard it.” And we must be careful not to “assume too much” of the text but to “listen to the counsel of our Christian brothers and sisters who tell us, ‘Read. Read only what is here, but also be sure that you read it the way that it is here.'” This involves developing good hermeneutics. This reading does not bypass the grammatical-historical method of interpretation.
• Meditatio – we meditate the text. “Mediation,” writes Peterson, “moves from looking at the words of the text to entering the world of the text.” It is not about making things up, but instead weds us “to a historic faith…that trains us to read Scripture as a connected, coherent whole, not a collection of inspired bits and pieces.”
• Oratio – we pray the text. Peterson declares that “Scriptures, read and prayed, are our primary and normative access to God as he reveals himself to us. Prayer detached from Scripture, from listening to God, disconnected from God’s words to us, short-circuits the relational language that is prayer.”
• Contemplatio – we live the text. “Contemplation,” says Peterson, “means living what we read, not wasting any of it or hoarding any of it, but using it up in living. It is life formed by God’s revealing word, God’s word read and heard, meditated and prayed.”

For Peterson, the lectio divina is the method of reading which guards against us turning the Scriptures into an academic book or a book such as Aesop’s Fables. He wants us to enter the text and allow the grand story of Scripture to rewrite our own personal stories. This, for Peterson, is reading the Bible rightly!

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A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon a Bible reading plan that I have found both challenging and rewarding. It is Professor Horner’s Bible-Reading System.

Here is how Professor Horner explains the system:

Each day you will read one chapter from each of ten lists. That’s right — ten chapters per day!!! Use ten bookmarks or sticky notes with the individual lists on them to keep track of your locations. Or use the set of bookmarks provided on the last page of this document.

On day one, you read Matthew 1, Genesis 1, Romans 1, and so forth. On day 2, read Matthew 2, Genesis 2, etc. On day 29, you will have just finished Matthew, so go to Mark 1 on the Gospel list; you’ll also be almost to the end of 2nd Corinthians and Proverbs, you’ll be reading Psalm 29 and Genesis 29, and so forth. When you reach the last chapter of the last book in a list – start over again. Rotate all the way through all the Scriptures constantly.

Since the lists vary in length, the readings begin interweaving in constantly changing ways. You will NEVER read the same set of ten chapters together again!

Every year you’ll read through…

-all the Gospels four times,
-the Pentateuch twice,
-Paul’s letters 4-5 times each,
-the OT wisdom literature six times,
-all the Psalms at least twice,
-all the Proverbs as well as Acts a dozen times,
-and all the way through the OT History and Prophetic books about 1 1⁄2 times.

Since the interweaving is constantly changing, you will experience the Bible commenting on itself in constantly changing ways — the Reformer’s principle of ‘scriptura interpretans scripturam’ — ‘scripture interpreting scripture’ IN ACTION!

After you’ve read any particular book once or twice, your speed in that book usually doubles or triples because you’re familiar with it and can move quickly and confidently — because you are no longer merely decoding the text but thinking it through in the context of all of the scripture!

Even an ‘average’ reader, if focusing on moving through the text, rather than trying to figure everything out, can usually do this in about an hour a day – 5-6 minutes per chapter. Many people report moving confidently through the ten chapters in 35-40 minutes. If it is taking you longer, then you are ‘reading wrong’ – stay relaxed, focus, and just keep it moving. Moderate but consistent speed is the key. 

After just a few days the reading gets much easier; in a month it will be a habit, and in six months you’ll wonder how you ever survived before on such a slim diet of the WORD. And then — you’ll tell others to start the system!

I began in 1983 as a new Christian and have now read (most of ) the Bible hundreds and hundreds of times. You also need to get ONE Bible, keep it, and do all your reading in it, so you learn where everything is. I’ve had the same Bible since 1983 and I know it intimately. If you keep switching Bibles, you ‘lose’ this intimacy with the text. Find a translation and format you like and stick with it. THIS IS CRUCIAL.

Your Bible is the only thing on Earth that, as you wear it out, will actually work better and better.

Click here for Facebook page or here for a pdf of the plan.

 

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