Daily Bible Reading
Daily Bible reading is something that intimidates a lot of men. Which when you look at a physical Bible and see the amount of pages it includes is understandable. It can also be overwhelming to commit to doing something everyday for the rest of your life. However when we fail to read God’s Word we miss out on a deep relationship with our creator.
It is impossible to have a deep relationship with someone if we don’t get to know them. The primary way for us to get to know the God of the Universe is to read the scriptures he has given to us. The Bible, while not exhaustive, shows us the clearest picture of God we will get until we get to heaven. The Bible doesn’t just help us get to know God however. It also allows us to know how we can serve him, how we should live and what God expects us to do.
2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching rebuking, for correction and for training in righteousness. So while it may not seem like everything in the Bible has a purpose we are told by the Bible that it does. Part of why we miss the importance of some verses is because we lack a knowledge of the whole Bible. Without knowing the whole story some things just won’t make sense. That is why we must know the whole story.
It is my firm belief that many men fail to read the whole Bible because it seems like a daunting boring task that we have to commit to at the beginning of the year and if we miss a day the shame starts to add up and eventually we just quit because we can’t get caught back up.
So I have 3 suggestions that I think will help you increase the amount of the Bible you read.
Don’t start in the Old Testament. Sure that seems like the obvious place to start because well chronologically it comes first. Now there are some great parts of the Old Testament when it comes to entertaining reading but there are also some parts that are just hard to read. Whereas in the New Testament you don’t have all those rules that just come one after the other. Most theologians and pastors usually point someone to the book of Mark as the place to start. I would suggest Mark or the book of John.
Read with friends. This serves a couple of purposes. First, you have people to encourage you along the way as you try to read large portions of text. Make sure though that these are the kinds of friends who are going to encourage you if you fall behind and not make you feel like a failure just adding to the problem. Second, its always easier to read something when you have people you can discuss it with. Kind of like discussing movies with your friends and quoting the best lines.
Start Small. The Bible is a long book. It would take around 70 hours to read the whole thing cover to cover. Most Americans don’t read that much in a year. So maybe instead of saying I am going to read the whole Bible this year just start with a reading plan that lasts for a week or two. Or maybe just start by reading one chapter a day. The easiest place to start the one chapter a day thing is the book of Proverbs, it has 31 chapters so it is real easy to keep track of where you are.
