Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Reading Through the Bible

One of the greatest experiences of my life was reading through the entire Bible. I've only accomplished this once, sadly, but it was such a wonderful experience. I have had ambitions to do it numerous times since, but, of course, like so many others, I have been held up right around the end of Exodus or the beginning of Leviticus.

Well, I am not one for New Year's resolutions, but I do feel that God is inviting me to "taste and see" His goodness again this year. And so, I am accepting His invitation to explore the depths of His love in the Bible.

And now I am trying to come up with a plan. When I did it before, I followed the Amazing Facts plan where you read through four different sections (two in the OT, and two in the NT) at one time. I enjoyed this, but I almost feel like it was "cheating," as if I wasn't getting a true experience of reading through the Bible.

So I've been looking around the Internet for another plan, and I came across this wonderful site that has many different options. It is Bibleyear.com and they have many different ways that you can read through the Bible. The first way, of course, is simply reading straight through the Bible. Another way is to read through it chronologically (where the events are placed in chronilogical order), and yet another historically (where the books are placed in chronological sequence from when they were written). These two options are a bit subjective, of course, because no one knows when the events or books were really written, but I might try them.

Whichever way is attempted, I would encourage you to pick your Bible up and give it a try as well! As I said, it is very rewarding.

Will you join me?

7 comments:

R. Aastrup said...

Several years ago Dale Slongwhite (or was it Sandy Doran?) gave a sermon about different ways to read through the Bible. She liked the chronological way, perhaps because she is a story teller. I told my father about it (he collects Bibles) and he gave me "The Narrated Bible in chronological order." It sits beside my easy chair, as yet unread. I think this is the year to do it!

Corey said...

Let me know which method you choose and I will follow the same one. That way I will have motivation to stick with it (not that it's a chore!) because we could discuss the passages.

Shawn Brace said...

Thanks for sharing, Ms. A! Maybe you can read it this year!

Corey, I think I am going to do the historical one, located here. The neat thing about the program is, you can go to that site and click on the day's reading and it will cross it off for you. So every time you come back, you can see how you've progressed.

So, this is the one I'll be doing. Glad that you and I can do it together. We'll have some good discussions.

mhb said...

A good resource, thanks--I have bookmarked it.

Melanie Brace said...

I've already started listening to the Bible read on my IPOD each morning as I drive to work. I've started in Matthew. I'm doing the New Testament first. I guess this is the cheating way to do it.

Don and Sue said...

I just started "Walking Through the Bible with HMS Richards" early in December. I'm also recording my thoughts each day (if I have anything significant that day) on a tape recorder. I'm not sure why I'm doing that, I've never done anything like that before. I also think this is something I can stick with, and that's been a problem for me in the past. It jumps from topic to topic, I THINK.

R. Aastrup said...

My parents are using the interlinear Bible for their study (with Greek and Hebrew)and my sister Martha is using a book that goes through the Bible in a year...kind of a devotional for women focus.

I have HMS Richards' book here by my reading chair, too. Our parents gave that book to the three of us for Christmas one year...

And...I have started my Narrated version...and am reading The Message along with it. Very interesting! I keep thinking of Danny from The Chosen and how he studied things, reading parallel versions of a text to get the most out of it. Seems like we are all doing a variation of that...

I like Don's idea of recording his thoughts as he goes along...