Jen Russum

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Happy New Year: Bible Reading Plans Galore!

Friends, 2012 is here. Are you ready!? Since urging you on Friday to think about how you will grow in your study of God’s Word and your worship in the new year, I thought I would share with you some of the best Bible reading plans I’ve found recently. It’s not too late to start one for 2012!
I just sent this email to two of my best friends last week, but I thought I would share it with y’all as well…

Hello friends!
This is what I’ve found as far as new Bible reading plans for the coming year. I am super excited about all of them as I’ve been craving something new and challenging with Scripture reading. I think Micah and I are going to do one together {well, read it simultaneously and discuss it once or twice a week, not actually read it together… that would be nearly impossible}.
Okay, here we go…
Two Year Bible Reading Plan – This is nice because you read the whole Bible, but it’s spread out over two years instead of crammed into one, which can be overwhelming. There are also “catch up days” built into the schedule in case you get behind because your toddler gets sick or whatnot. 🙂
For the Love of God – This is the one I think we are going to do. You read through the whole Bible in a year following the M’Cheyne reading plan {I just found out about M’Cheyne recently but apparently he was a Scottish pastor in the mid 1800s who came up with a Bible reading plan for his congregation that has since become the most-used plan in history.} Basically it’s 3-4 chapters a day from different places in the Bible. Then D.A. Carson wrote two devotional books to go along with the plan that have been transferred to the Love of God Blog. You do your reading for the M’Cheyne plan each day and then you read a short devotional on the blog that pulls the different texts together and shows how the Gospel works together in all of them.
Slackers and Shirkers – This is a super easy Bible reading plan. Basically, it just breaks up the year into days of the week, and then under each day there is check box with a few passages of Scripture next to it. You read for the first Sunday, check it off, and when the next Sunday rolls around, you do the next reading and check it off. Then it does the same for each day of the week. And each day of the week is a specific genre, so Sundays might be the Pentateuch and Mondays might be the Epistles and so on. Here a pastor explains why he likes it.
Checklist – This plan basically allows you go at your own pace. You can make up any reading plan you want, and this checklist has every book of the Bible listed with its number of chapters. You just cross them out as you go. My only fear with this is that it’s too open-ended and might be hard to stay on track. But then again, the freedom is nice and it will make it easy to honor the Bible instead of idolizing the schedule!
ESV Study Bible – Not sure if you have an ESV Study Bible, but here are a bunch of reading plans to go with that. When I read through the Bible in 2010, I also read all the ESV study notes with it and I have never learned so much from God’s Word in my life!
YouVersion – Do you have YouVersion on your iPhone? This list has all the different reading plans {some with devotionals} that you can do on YouVersion, and you read the Bible right on your phone!
Okay, I hope this helps! I got all these ideas from The Gospel Coalition and Mark Driscoll’s blog. Clearly, there are tons of other option out there, but these are the ones I saw that I liked the best. Please let me know what you choose! And feel free to pass this on if you hear of anyone else looking for a reading plan! Praying that God blesses you through His Word this year! Love you so much! XOXO — Jen

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