Project 4:4 UPDATED

Last year my church family at Pleasant Valley Church of Christ  took on the project of reading through the Bible in a year.  We used The Daily Bible edited by F LaGard Smith as our guide.  Smith put the Bible into chronological order and divided it into 365 daily readings.  This was not my first time to read through the Bible.  I have done it two or three times before.  But my reading habits were different this time.  In the past I would read for around thirty minutes a day, excluding Sundays and Wednesdays since I would be in church those days.  I would also skip any day that I had other things to do and it was not convenient for me to read.  At thirty minutes a setting four or five days a week, I would still easily finish the Bible in under a year even though I took several days off.

I found two big differences in reading it last year.  The first is that I much preferred the chronological order to the traditional Biblical ordering.  People often say that Leviticus is the hard part of  reading through the Bible.  But for me it is Chronicles.  After reading about all of those terrible kings in the Kings, it pains me to have to read through them again in the Chronicles.  I have at times had  to stop reading after the Kings and go to the New Testament to get some Jesus.  In this reading, I only had to read  the history of Israel once.  The prophets too were mixed in with the kings, so they were more understandable when put in historical context.  I also liked the way that the laws, proverbs, and psalms were sorted by topic.  I highly recommend reading the Bible this way.

The second and more important difference in last year’s reading was the daily aspect of it.  For me reading the Bible changed from being something that I wanted to do into something that I needed to do.  Setting aside a time every day to let God speak to me, helped me to put the priorities of my life in the proper order.  For the first time ever, I was planning my day around when I read the Bible instead of just fitting it in if I had time.  I usually get too easily consumed by my petty addictions.  So I really needed that daily reminder that God’s word is more important than what is on my dvr, ps3, or the internet.  (I feel like I am doing a poor job putting these thoughts into words.  That both the reason why I resisted starting a blog and the reason why I need to spend more time writing.)

I was able to read the Bible 359 out of 365 days.  Three of those six days that I missed were from Labor Day weekend, when I had twelve people living in my house.  But through all of my other vacations and holidays I was able to stick to my reading plan.  Those are the days that in the past I would always skip reading in favor of family fun.  Hopefully moving forward, I will be able to keep that discipline that I have honed this past year.  Though I did fall off the wagon the first three days of this year.  So I would like to encourage anyone who is reading this to daily spend time with God’s word.  You will be blessed by it.

UPDATE: Well it turns out that the third paragraph was confusing to people, so I will try again.  For me reading the Bible changed from being something that I wanted to do into something that I needed to do.  In the past I desired to read the Bible like I want to workout more and write blogs with more regularity.  The desire was there but not the commitment.  Now I realize that I need to read the Bible the way that I need to eat and to breathe.