5 Tips To Thrive With Your Bible Reading Plan
Many of us made the colossal resolution to read the entire Bible this year. From Genesis through Revelation. This is a great New Years Resolution. This is a mountain we all need to climb. I believe that everyone should read through the entire Bible every three to five years. When we have reached the peak of this mountain, we will be able to see the birds-eye view of God’s Word. I also believe that it's when we do the deep dives into a single book or passage that we really hear the voice of the Lord. For nine months of 2021, I personally did a deep study of the Book of Romans. I even created a few podcast episodes from it. But 2022 is my year to climb the mountain and get a good review of the entire Bible.
We are a month into 2022. If you are like me, you may have already fallen a little behind in your Bible reading. After all, life happens. My oldest son's school closed for several days due to a COVID outbreak. This meant my son was at home during my normal Bible reading time. So my Bible time became family breakfast time over those few days which caused me to fall behind. For me, this brought up two questions, “How do I get caught up?” and “How do I succeed with my Bible Reading Plan?” That is… without cheating by skipping days or pressing the “catch me up” button.
We are about a month into 2022, many people abandon their Bible reading plans. I'd be willing to bet it's because they get overwhelmed with the amount of reading. To thrive with our Bible reading plans, we need to think ahead. Here are five tips to thrive this year with our Bible reading plan.
Tip 1: Set A Routine
Many people quit their Bible reading plans because they don’t have a daily routine. I used to be this way. I would set out to study my bible at some point during the day. Life would happen, and due to not having a set routine, I'd end up just not doing it at all because I would forget. Thankfully, I have developed a good routine that really works for me. Monday through Friday I wake up, my wife and I get our son off to school, and I fix myself a cup of coffee. Then from 9 to 10 I pray and read my Bible. This is my typical morning routine.
“Um Adam, I work a full-time job, have a family, and my day is full. I don’t have the kind of schedule that you do.” Trust me, I get it. Before becoming a missionary, I was a bi-vocational (at times tri-vocational) pastor and had a secular job. It was awfully difficult to find time to read my Bible. Even at some of the ministries I’ve worked for full-time, I didn’t have the freedom to have the routine I have now. So what did I do? Before having kids, I’d have my Bible time in the evening. After kids, I’d try to read the Bible at breakfast, but that didn’t really work. There was a time when I'd read at work during my break times or at lunch. The problem there was that I was constantly being interrupted. The thing that I found worked the absolute best is also the thing most people hate doing. I started to wake up early every morning. When I was working for a video production ministry, I would wake up at 5 am, fix myself a BIG cup of coffee, and read my Bible. I'd do this until the rest of the family woke up or I had to leave for the office. This is the best thing I’ve found to do during busy seasons of life. When we get back to Spain and begin our new season of ministry, I'll have to find a new Bible study routine again that works for whatever that situation looks like.
Tip 2: Build in breaks
One thing that causes a breakdown in Bible reading for many people, is not giving themselves a break. I have been found to have had this issue too. Reading the Bible all the way through in a year is a daunting task. Like climbing Mount Everest. When it becomes a drudging monotonous task, we tend to get bored with it and quit. Bible reading should be beneficial to us. But when we get bored with it and we start speed reading through it, it becomes less beneficial. One way to offset this is to add in scheduled days off. For me, I take the weekends off. This is because on Saturdays I’m usually traveling to preach somewhere on Sundays. When I'm not traveling, it’s family time or it’s time to run errands. Because of this, I tend to stick with a five-day reading plan. Monday through Friday mornings are my time to spend reading and studying the Bible. So if I miss a day or two through the week, I can make up for it over the weekend. If your current Bible reading plan is a daily one, it’s early enough in the year to start a new one that gives you days off. There are several of them on the YouVersion Bible App. You can also download the 2022 FIVE52 Bible Reading Program I made for myself (Click Here).
Adam, are you saying you don’t spend time with God on the weekends?” That is not what I’m saying at all. Just because I take breaks from my Bible Reading Plan on the weekends does not mean I skip my time with God. My time with God looks a little different on weekends. I still pray. Instead of doing my Bible reading plan, I may listen to a sermon via a podcast, or take a verse that stood out to me over the week to meditate on.
Tip 3: Be Flexible
This one is the most difficult for me. My day revolves around my routine. Throw my routine off, and my day will feel thrown off as well. My wife will attest that I'm grumpier and more easily agitated on those days. We need to all realize that life happens, we get sick, emergencies pop up, our kids are yelling, or we simply are having a tough reading day. When this happens we need to be flexible. Sometimes I have a 9 am meeting and have to move my bible study time. So I am flexible. When that happens, I may split my daily reading into two or three chunks to read throughout that one day. Sometimes, I’m traveling, whether flying or driving, and I can’t read because my bible is packed in my suitcase, so I need to be flexible. This is where tip number four comes in handy. This is also where one of my mantras comes in. “If you are too busy to spend time with God and read His Word, then you are busier than God intends for you to be.” But on those days where our hands are tied or life happens, we simply need to be flexible. This is something I am still working on.
Tip 4: Listen
When life happens, and we need to be flexible, it helps to listen to the Bible. Especially for slow readers like me. Sometimes I have bad reading days where I’m distracted or simply can't focus. Other times life happens and my hands are tied. When those days happen, staying on track with my Bible reading plan is difficult. I have the Logos Bible software that includes several audio bibles, so on those difficult reading days, I open up the app, and listen to the Bible. It just so happened that I had a difficult reading week when I was trying to get caught back up on the reading plan. Listening to the Bible while following along in my Bible really helped.
You may be thinking, “But I don’t have Logos or some expensive Bible software.” That’s okay, there are free audio bibles. I’d recommend using the YouVersion Bible App (website, iOS, Android). They have several free audio bibles for you to listen to.
Tip 5: Start Where You Stopped
But what do we do when we fall behind? Just because we fall behind doesn’t mean we’ve fallen in the pit of despair and failed. No, not at all. That’s why climbers use ropes! They may fall, but the rope catches them. When we fall we need to grab the rope, make adjustments, and start where we left off. Let's say we’ve fallen behind three days, that's about ten chapters. First, we need to look ahead at the next few days of reading and make adjustments so we can get caught back up. Then we need to start where we left off. Sometimes this means using our reading breaks to get caught up. When I missed several days, I fell behind on ten chapters, Genesis 26-31, Psalm 11, and Mark 10-12. So I looked at all the reading for the remainder of the week and divided it out over the next three days. This added two chapters per day for the next three days. In the grand adventure of climbing "Mount Bible," that isn’t much and very doable.
Bonus Tip: Don’t beat yourself up!
A lot of people, like me, tend to be really hard on themselves when they miss a day of Bible reading. I used to be extremely strict on myself to sit down at my desk to study scripture every day. Then life would happen, and I’d get mad when I wasn’t able to have my study time. Inevitably, I’d fall behind on what I felt like I needed to accomplish when it came to studying the Bible. This led to frustration, being hard on myself which translated into being hard on my family. NOT GOOD! I would feel like a failure and would get a little depressed. Then I remembered something… the point of reading the Bible isn't about me. It's about learning more about God, growing closer to Him, and allowing His word to change us. Reading the Bible is all about God. The important thing is that we do our best and try to spend time with God. After all, He is our loving Father in Heaven. He understands that life happens, and He doesn’t get mad at us when we fall behind on our Bible reading plans. We need to stop beating ourselves up when we fall behind and know that God still loves us.
So there you have it…6 ways to thrive this year with your Bible reading plans. We need to plan by setting a routine, building in breaks, being flexible, listening, and when we fall behind to start where we left off. Oh, remember, don’t be so hard on yourself.
I hope you find this post helpful. Let us know in the comments if you find this post helpful, and if you have other tips for thriving with your Bible reading plans.
