A Great Goal for the New Year
A Great Goal for the New Year
“Some books are to be tasted,” wrote the sixteenth century philosopher Francis Bacon, “others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” The Bible belongs in the chewed and digested category because it is the word of God.
At the first of a new year many people set a goal to read through the Bible, or at least to read it more consistently. Here are some tips to help you achieve that goal.
Aim for the right goal. Most people say they want to know the Bible better, but that’s not the right goal for reading the Bible. It’s a great by-product, but it isn’t the right goal. Rather, read the Bible to know God better. Bible reading isn’t about mastering information; it’s about getting to know our Creator, Provider, Protector, Lord, and Savior.
Look for the big picture. Refuse to get bogged down in all the details. The main idea is that God is seeking to restore a wayward people to himself.
Read books, not verses. Don’t jump around from one passage to the next. Instead, read through entire books because that’s the way God gave them to us. When you go to the movies you don’t try to watch every movie that’s showing. Instead, you pick one and watch it all the way through. You should adopt the same approach to reading the Bible.
Consider a five-day instead of a seven-day approach. It’s so easy to miss a day and get behind. Soon you miss another day. By the time you miss three or four days in a month you begin to feel hopelessly behind and it becomes too easy to give up. With a five-day approach, you have two days every week to catch up. That’s eight days each month! Sure, you have to read a little more each day, but you have two extra days each week to catch up. If you want to use a five-day Bible reading plan you can find one at (http://www.bibleclassmaterial.com/BibleReadingSchedule2017forBCM.pdf). Another alternative is to create your own. Since there are 52 weeks in a year and you will be reading five days each week, multiply 52 by five and that will give you 260. Your goal will be to read the Bible 260 days in the year. Next, simply divide the number of pages in your Bible by 260 and that will give you the number of pages you will need to read each time you read in order to get all the way through in a year. For example, the Bible I typically use has 1,249 pages of Bible text. By dividing 1,249 by 260 I get 4.8, which I will round up to five. I will need to read five pages each of the five days I read. Twenty-five pages per week. Not bad. Doable.
Exercise disciplined persistence. We can always find other things to do with our time, but nothing is more important than spending time with God in his word. “We do those things which are rewarding to us, writes Susan Wise Bauer, “and immediate gratification always seems more rewarding than slow progress toward a long-term goal. Resist other satisfactions or duties that encroach on your reading time.”
I wish you well as you seek this year to know God better through the Scriptures.