Just a couple more days...!!!

I've been looking at the reading for January in preparation and am getting excited. Just a couple more days before we begin. Colossians 1 on January 1.

Happy New Year, everyone!

January, 2011 Schedule

Ok, here it is. The moment you've all been waiting for. The January 2011, reading schedule!

What have you done in the past?

I think I was ten years old. My dad came in my room one night and told me, "I think you should start reading the Bible. Read one chapter a night. I think it'd be good for you." It was a short conversation, but that's how I started my daily devotions. One chapter at night before I went to bed. I easily did that consistently for 8 years—what else did I have to do before I went to bed at night?

Since then, I've done a variety of different plans and schedules for my devotions. Some were successful, some not. I'm curious to learn what you all have done in your devotional time in the past? Have you tried to follow a plan? Have you been successful? What have you most benefitted from in your devotional times in the past? What (if anything) has led you to fall off consistently doing your devotions? If you have one, what's your devotional story?

The Plan

As I said in the last post, our goal here will not be to read a certain amount of Scripture, but to read the Bible consistently and to let it get into our lives. That said, we will have the opportunity this year to read almost half of the entire Bible. These are the books we plan on diving into (in no particular order):

• Psalms
• Mark
• Colossians
• Genesis
• Hebrews
• Exodus
• Proverbs
• Galatians
• Jonah
• Matthew
• Song of Songs
• Daniel
• Philippians
• Isaiah
• Ecclesiastes
• Ephesians
• Revelation

This is not necessarily the order of reading we will follow. And, I am not going to publish the entire year-long plan right now. One thing that can be intimidating about reading the Bible is looking at how much you have to read at the start of the year and thinking there is no way you'll make it. So, to prevent that, I will simply publish the plan one month at a time. I have attempted to structure the plan so that we are completing at least one book/month (to help us all feel a sense of progress and accomplishment). But again, my hope is that we will all grow in applying the Word, not simply in the amount we can read.

One thing that will hopefully help us, is every Friday we will take a day off for prayer and reflection. That will allow us the chance to catch up on the reading if we need it and again not make us feel as if this is a burden.

A few days before the New Year, I will publish our January reading schedule. Can't wait to get in the Word with you all!

The Purpose of This Blog

There are a million different Bible reading plans out there, and sometimes it can be confusing which one we ought to follow. And then when we finally pick the one we want to follow, it is inevitably a challenge to trudge through some of the more difficult parts of Scripture (think Leviticus). I don't know about you, but it has happened to me many times that  I start a Bible reading plan in January and have fallen off the wagon (big time) by March; sometimes late February.

The purpose of this blog is simple: to get as many people at Christ Church reading the Bible as consistently as possible. Of course, we will all miss a day or two, here or there: late nights and rough mornings are a devotional plan's worst enemies. But my hope is that—by reading Scripture in community—we will be able to encourage each other, to share with each other what God is teaching us through His Word, and that we will all learn better how to read and apply Scripture to our lives.

I will give out our reading plan in an upcoming post. At first, we will be modest in our goals, reading only one chapter a day and switching between Psalms and another book every other day. Then, about halfway through the year, we will begin reading 2 chapters per day. The purpose of this approach is to begin the year by simply trying to make Bible reading habitual. Then, Lord willing, once it's habitual, we will be able to increase the amount of reading. Most of the time, our reading will consist of no more than 5 minutes a day.

But, our goal is not to get through a certain amount of Scripture over the course of the year. The goal will be to grow in our understanding of God's Word AND apply that Word to our lives as much and as consistently as possible.

Each day, I will give the morning's reading, give a few thoughts on its meaning (especially how it connects to Christ and his gospel), and then describe one way I see the Holy Spirit applying that truth to my life. My hope is that this will start a conversation about the way God's Word gets into our lives and that the Word will then bear fruit in each of us and in our church.

If you have ideas, thoughts, questions or suggestions, I am all ears! I can't wait to dive into God's Word with you all!