Bible Reading Plans for 2010
- JR Vassar
- Dec 31, 2009
The most important thing you can do in 2010 is cultivate a devotional life that facilitates the intimate nearness of God. You won't accidentally get close to God. So, for 2010, I wanted to encourage you to embrace a focused intentionality in your devotional life. Here are some bible reading plans that you might find helpful.
The M'Cheyne Reading System. Robert Murray M'Cheyne was a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1835-1843. He died at the age of 29 but left an amazing legacy. This is a plan he developed. The esv.org site explains this plan as "featuring four different readings for use in both family and personal devotions. Each day has two passages from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, and one from either the Psalms or the Gospels. In one year, you read the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice." You can subscribe the RSS feed and have it delivered into your google reader every day. Or you can download a printable version here. This is the plan that I am using this year.
ESV Study Bible Reading Plan. In my opinion, the best study bible available today is the ESV Study Bible. The Doctrines section in the back exceptional and the notes are very helpful. There is also a reading plan in the back of the ESV Study Bible. The esv.org site describes it as "readings every day from the Psalms and Wisdom Literature, Pentateuch and History of Israel, Chronicles and Prophets, and Gospels and Epistles." You can subscribe to the RSS feed and have it delivered to your google reader everyday.
The Book of Common Prayer. For those of us from the free church tradition, this seems a little foreign, but I have found the BCP daily office to be a great approach. Every day the BCP gives you a morning and evening Psalm, an OT reading, a Gospel reading and an NT reading. The great thing about the BCP is that Christians all over the world are reading the same Scriptures everyday together. You are reading with the Church. The BCP daily office is a two year cycle, each cycle beginning in the season of Advent. We just started Year Two. You won't read through the entire bible in those two years, but you will get a wide and diverse diet of the Scripture. For more information on the BCP visit this site and click on the Daily Office Lectionary. You can also subscribe the RSS feed and have the readings delivered to your google reader everyday.
Discipleship Journal's One Year Plan. Pastor John Piper of Desiring God Ministries has used this plan for the last 5 years and highly recommends it. It is a lot of reading each day, but it gives you 5 days each month with no readings so that you can catch up or re-read any of those passages that you find especially relevant or moving. You can find that plan and more here.
Customize Your Own Reading Plan. If you want to customize your own reading plan so that your reading is heavier in one area than the other, you can use this website and have your customized plan emailed you to every day.
Choose Individual Books. Some prefer to stick in a book and go deep with it for a season. For instance, you might want to spend a month or two in the Gospel of John focusing on the glory of Christ. It is a good idea to alternate between OT and NT and different genres.
YouVersion.com. This site is a great resource that list 20 reading plans that can be read online, delivered into your inbox, or subscribed to with a reader. The site will also let you view comments on passages that other users have left as well as allow you to leave comments or keep a private journal online with the plan that you are using. You can customize the time frame of your reading to give you extra days. They also have an iPhone App where you can track your reading as well. This is a great tool and it is free. You can get started on their website.
Which plan you choose is not important. What is important is that you have a plan and stick with it. For some other helpful guidelines for your devotional life, check our this blog post on Planning an Intentional Devotional Life for 2010.