Daily Archives: December 31, 2009
Read with Me Challenge
Happy New Year!
I posted at Persevering Pens this week that I never make New Year’s Resolutions, so I’ll not call this that. This is … um … simply a growing group exercise and YOU are invited!
Kellie and I happened to be on twitter at the same time that I found a link to the annual Bible reading schedule John Piper uses. (If you’re not familiar with John Piper, go grab one of his books (or two) and meet him. He’s a man who love the Lord and seeks Him diligently.) The schedule divides all of Scripture — Old and New Testaments — into daily readings. If you follow it, you will have read the entire Bible by the end of the calendar year.
Anyway, I shared the link and Kellie and Whimzie both jumped on the bandwagon. Before I knew what had happened, we had ourselves an accountability group!
About the program:
It’s FREE. It’s ONLINE and printable.
It’s DEPENDABLE. This system has been tested. It’s tried and true. The plan was developed by Discipleship Journal. Like I said, John Piper recommends it. He has actually used it every year for the past five years and plans to use it again this year.
It’s DO-ABLE. The plan segments the entire Bible into 300 daily readings. That’s 25 per month, which leaves 3-6 extra days to “catch up” if you get behind. Or you could schedule your “free days” when you know life will be crazy. Either way, it alleviates the stress of having to read every day. BONUS: The readings are relatively short and should only take about 20 minutes each day.
It’s MANAGEABLE. Last year a friend confessed to me that, even though she has been a Christian for sixteen years, she has never read the Old Testament. She considers it boring and irrelevant. I understand her blase when it comes to Deuteronomy and Leviticus! Trust me when I say treasures abound in the Old Testament. You want to discover what is there.
This reading plan pairs the most “boring” books of the Old Testament with easy-to-understand books from the New Testament. We’ll read Leviticus with Matthew and Acts and Deuteronomy with Romans and Psalms.
The Link:
Monthly Schedule: This link offers a monthly overview of the whole plan. It is designed with check boxes so you can easily keep track of your progress.
And More!
To help keep ourselves accountable, we’ve started a tweetlist. If you’re on twitter and you decide to take the challenge with us, please subscribe! Click HERE for a direct link.
We may also have a once-a-month weigh-in to see how we’re all doing and what we’re learning … stuff like that. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, if you’re in, say so in the comments!
