Bible Reading Plans

If you are ambitious to read more of the Bible in this coming year, there are more tools than ever before to keep you on track. Whatever your goal, here are some tools to help:

1) Read through Proverbs in a month

  • Pick a month to read through the Book of Proverbs. There are 31 chapters, so you can be done in 31 days by reading a chapter a day. Last November at CCK, Tedd Tripp shared he did this plan with his kids, and it served his family greatly.

2) Read the Bible at your own pace

  • The "Bill Kittrell Plan" is that he gets a new Bible (it doesn't have to be expensive) and reads through it, marking it up as he goes, spending as much time on a passage as he feels led to do. Use the ribbon in the Bible to keep your place and read through it, however long it takes.

3) Read through the New Testament

  • To read through the New Testament in a year, read a chapter each weekday and take off the weekends. There are 260 chapters, so 52 weeks of reading 5 chapters will get you there on time.
  • ESV.org has a free plan to help you read through the Bible in six months as well.

4) Read though the Bible in a year

There are more tools than ever to help you read through the Bible in a year. A few of the best ones are:

  • Nav Press has its popular Discipleship Journal plan that you can download for free.
  • ESV.org has 10 different Bible reading plans. Even better they have 5 different ways to keep track of your plan.
    • Their website can add appointments onto your calendar for you (Google calendar, iCal, Outlook, etc). Just enter the time you want to read, download the file, and appointments on your calendar will tell you what to read each day to keep you on track.
    • You can read the passages in the ESV for free online, which is great if you read on your laptop or iPad.
    • There is a simple view especially for mobile phones.
    • You can read daily through an RSS feed, like you would a blog. There are tools in most email programs and many website to help you with RSS feeds.
    • Or print them off for free, stick it in your Bible, and check it off each day. No reason to make it more complicated than it needs to be.
  • If you plan to read the M’Cheyne plan (which Walt and Craig highly recommend) there are a few other helpful tools. You can find this reading plan at ESV.org. First, the M’Cheyne plan has 4 readings a day. If you read the first 3, you will finish the Bible in a year. If you read all 4, you’ll read the OT once and the NT twice in one year. Second, there is a free online commentary by DA Carson (it's a book as well) called For the Love of God that walks through this plan with you. Daily you can hear from one of the best Bible scholars alive today, helping you understand in a few paragraphs what you just read.

5) Read the Bible with apps and tools for your iPad, Kindle or eReader. 

There are great apps if you want to read on the shiny new iPad or Kindle you got for Christmas... if you got one for Christmas. Craig uses the free Reading Plan iPad app by James Price. A few other ideas and apps can be found at Notebooks.com and the Psalm4 blog. And don't forget to download the ESV Bible for free in the App Store. 

Remember, the ESV Bible is free for Kindle and for the Nook. BibleCollege.org also wrote a helpful article of 25 ways to use your Kindle for Bible study. 

 

For more ideas: Go to Justin Taylor’s blog at the Gospel Coalition. He has links to many Bible reading plans, articles, and tools. It's very helpful.

Happy New Year! We hope these tools serve you if you feel ambitious to read more of the Bible in the New Year.