The parameters were originally set as a means of testing the viability of such a reading plan for a Sunday School class for one quarter on a Survey of the Old Testament.
I quickly realized there was no way that that would fly (if we ever do a class like that, it will be at least two quarters of the year, not one), but having extra time in the final quarter of 2017 (or so I thought at the time), I decided to take the time to do the reading anyway for my own benefit.
It was not exactly the easiest Bible reading plan I've ever attempted. Depending on the week, I averaged somewhere around 10-15 chapters of reading per day. Amazingly, I managed to keep up with it and finished it on time to the day of my schedule (despite missing a few days along the way).
Since this kind of reading plan is a bit unusual, I thought I would write out a few thoughts that going through this 12-week plan brought to my mind.
- 1. Counter-intuitively, reading longer amounts of Scripture made me more likely to read carefully
Reading a longer section didn't make me less likely to rush - and there were definitely some days where I was guilty of this still - but I found that because it would take at least thirty minutes to read through a section like this I was more likely to stop, remind myself to slow down and read carefully, and then continue the reading.
The end result is that I found myself actually at times reading more carefully than I do normally on many occasions, despite reading quite a bit more than what is typical for me.
- 2. Having a clear schedule and a tight goal made reading a priority for me
But since I do read the Bible every day as part of my normal weekly study, it can be easy to miss days or use that as an excuse to put off separate devotional reading since my schedule from day to day tends to be somewhat irregular.
However, having this kind of goal and schedule set down for the first time in quite a while, I found that it helped me make the reading a priority - much more so than it is normally - even if that meant I ended up finishing all or most of it in bed at night.
As I noticed that, it made me wonder if I've been doing myself a disservice in recent years by not using a schedule or reading plan.
I can't say for sure how much other people have in common with me on that point, but I would suggest that if you find it difficult to 'find time' to read, the answer may be simply to make it a priority.
A lot of times, I think we can worry about whether we're reading the Bible just to fill an arbitrary quota rather than out of love for God and a desire to pursue him.
Honestly, though, I think that misses the point. We don't love God or delight in Christ at random times (okay, sometimes we do, but that isn't the lesson to get here), we love and delight in him because we give him our time regularly as we pursue him, just as we do anything else we love or delight in.
How do we feel love for God? By pursuing him. How do we pursue him? Through listening for his voice. How do we listen for his voice? By dumping all the pop-Christianity books whose authors claim God speaks to them and instead reading the only actual book that contains God's voice: The Bible.
I didn't fall in love with my wife by saying, "You know, I'm not sure I feel in love with Emily today - I think I'll wait till I feel like it to spend time with her." That would be utterly insane, but that is how we can tend to treat our relationship with God.
We don't pursue God necessarily because we always feel love for him, nor do we do so exclusively because we think we're supposed to; rather, we pursue God for the purpose that we may grow in love for him because he is the only One in this life who is truly worthy of being pursued and delighted in.
I don't pretend to know what anyone else's schedule looks like, but I would suspect that most look quite a bit different than mine. Find what works for you, but make sure that however it happens time in the Scripture is a priority for you. Ultimately, we find time for whatever it is we most value.
- 3. Reading large amounts of Scripture can be just as beneficial as reading small amounts
I'm not saying that those things are bad (many of them are very good), but unfortunately they have inadvertantly or otherwise led many believers into a way of reading the Bible that stunts our ability to read the Bible with any kind of depth.
The Bible is a book like most books: of words, written with mostly normal rules of grammar, syntax, etc. And yet, too often, we read the whole Bible like we read Proverbs: as a book of mostly unrelated verses that we can tear out of their context without damaged.
It is true that there is a spiritual dimension to reading the Bible, but that misses the point that the Bible is still largely understood the way we understand any other form of verbal communication.
The meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture. You cannot divorce what the Bible meant when it was written from what it means to you. The former must necessarily precede the latter or else the Bible has no meaning at all.
What am I getting at? Namely this: While there is much benefit to be gained from poring over a single verse in the Bible, the best way to study the Bible is through the natural thought/paragraph separations in each book.
Studying one verse is to zero in on one fragment of those thought sections. We can see more detail this way, but it can also be easy to lose sight of how it fits into the whole - and that is where the danger lies.
A verse cut from it's context and interpreted without consider the whole of Scripture more often than not leads to one of many false understandings of the Bible, such as moralism, legalism, anti-nomianism, etc. to varying degrees.
Conversely, while the problem of studying a very small section of Scripture has the benefit of giving more detail but the consequence of potentially losing sight of the whole into which it fits, pulling back and viewing a larger section - e.g. a chapter or a book of the Bible - has different benefits and potential pitfalls.
Reading a chapter, or especially a whole book, over a short amount of time, gives a very different - and often missed - perspective on that passage. It helps us to see how all the little details fit into the whole.
To understand the Bible, we must understand the message of the Bible as a whole. Likewise, to understand any of the books in the Bible, we must first understand why they are in the Bible. Secondly, in order to understand fully what we see in that individual book of the Bible, we need to grasp what the content of that individual book is.
While we often do Bible studies of small sections of Scripture, I think there is much benefit to be gained from reading entire books in one sitting (or as few as possible) before studying it more closely.
This is a benefit that, in my experience, is too often missed because we're so focused on the glory of the leaf or the tree that we miss the glory of the forest.
These are a few of the thoughts that came to my mind as I worked my way through the last twelve weeks of reading. Lord willing, I intend to read through the New Testament in six weeks, starting in January after taking two weeks off.
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