What Bible reading plan should I use?

Question 11075

A Bible reading plan is a tool, and like every tool it is only as good as the job you are asking it to do. People usually ask me which Bible reading plan they should use when what they really want to know is why the last three collapsed by the middle of February.

So let me answer the practical question, but let me put a prior question underneath it, because getting that one right makes almost every Bible reading plan work better than it otherwise would.

What a Bible Reading Plan Is For

The aim is not coverage for its own sake. Nobody is awarded anything at the judgement seat for having ticked off Leviticus in a calendar year. The aim is knowing God through the words He has given, and a Bible reading plan exists to stop us from drifting into the same four comfortable chapters for the rest of our lives.

Psalm 1 describes the blessed man as one whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on it day and night. The Hebrew verb is hagah, a word used elsewhere of a lion growling over its prey and of a dove murmuring. It is not skim reading. It is a low, continuous, chewing sort of attention.

That tells you something about what a Bible reading plan should protect. If a schedule pushes you at such a pace that you never growl over anything, it is working against the very thing it was meant to serve.

Read Books, Not Fragments

The single biggest improvement most Christians could make is to stop reading a verse here and a verse there and start reading whole books in order. Every book of the Bible was written to be received in one movement, and most of them can be read aloud in less time than a football match.

Fragmented reading produces fragmented theology. It is how people end up with a Bible made of memorable sentences detached from the arguments that gave them their meaning. I have written about that danger in my answer on the danger of prooftexting.

So whatever Bible reading plan you adopt, check that it keeps books intact. A plan that gives you three verses of Isaiah, a psalm and a snippet of Acts each morning is unlikely to teach you how any of those books actually think.

The Main Approaches and Where They Suit

A whole Bible in a year schedule moves at roughly three or four chapters a day and gives you the sweep of redemptive history within twelve months. It suits someone who has never read the Bible through and needs the map. Its weakness is pace; you rarely stop long enough to see much.

A book by book approach abandons the calendar altogether. You choose a book, read it repeatedly and slowly, perhaps a chapter a day with the whole book read through at the start of each week. This is the approach I most often recommend to people who have been Christians for a while and know the outline but not the detail.

A mixed Bible reading plan pairs a portion of the Old Testament with a portion of the New, often with a psalm. It has the advantage of variety and the disadvantage of the fragmentation I have already mentioned, unless the portions are large enough to keep the argument of each book visible.

There are also thematic and chronological arrangements. Chronological plans help enormously with the prophets, who make far more sense when you know which king they were shouting at. Thematic plans are better treated as a supplement than as a staple diet.

Choosing a Bible Reading Plan You Will Keep

Here is the uncomfortable truth. The best Bible reading plan is the one you will still be following in November. Ambition is the usual saboteur. People choose a schedule sized for the person they wish they were rather than the person who will actually be awake at half past six with three children in the house.

I would rather someone read one chapter a day for thirty years than four chapters a day for six weeks. Choose something slightly easier than you think you can manage, and let the surplus energy go into thinking about what you have read rather than into getting further through it.

If you miss days, and you will, do not attempt to catch up. Catching up is what kills more schedules than laziness does. Start again from today. Grace applies to Bible reading plans as much as to anything else.

Reading With the Spirit and With Others

A Bible reading plan is not a substitute for dependence. The same Spirit who inspired the text illuminates it, and Scripture expects the reader to ask. I have said more about that in my answer on the Spirit’s role in understanding Scripture.

Practically, this means beginning with a sentence of prayer rather than plunging in. Ask God to show you Himself. Then read expecting to be addressed rather than informed, which is a different posture altogether and changes what you notice.

Reading with somebody else multiplies the benefit. A spouse, a friend, a group of three who read the same chapters and compare notes weekly will see things none of them would have seen alone, and the accountability quietly solves the consistency problem.

Tools Worth Having

A readable, accurate translation matters more than any schedule. I use and recommend the ESV, and you can read the whole text without charge at ESV.org. If you want a second window on a difficult passage, the NET Bible has translators’ notes that explain why particular decisions were made.

For word study, Blue Letter Bible gives you access to the Greek and Hebrew behind the English without requiring you to have learned either. Use it to check meaning, not to manufacture insights the context does not support.

Beyond that, a pen. Marking your Bible, underlining repeated words, writing questions in the margin, all of it slows you down in the right way. On which, see whether it is acceptable to mark your Bible.

Handling the Difficult Stretches

Every Bible reading plan eventually deposits you in the middle of Numbers or the tribal boundaries of Joshua, and that is where most people quietly stop. It helps to know in advance that these stretches are coming and to have decided how you will handle them.

My advice is to read them faster rather than to skip them, and to read them with one question in mind: what does this show me about God and about the people He is dealing with? Genealogies and boundary lists are the archives of a real nation in real territory, which is itself a point worth noticing.

If a section genuinely defeats you, use a study Bible note or a short commentary rather than abandoning the schedule. Ask for help early. Difficulty is normal and is not a sign that you are unspiritual.

What to Do When the Plan Breaks Down

Every Bible reading plan meets an obstacle eventually. Illness, a new baby, a crisis at work, a season of spiritual dryness. What matters is what you have decided in advance to do when that happens, because a decision made in the middle of the disruption is rarely a good one.

My advice is to have a smaller version ready. If the schedule collapses, drop to one psalm a day and keep the habit alive at minimum size rather than losing it altogether. Habits are far easier to shrink and regrow than to rebuild from nothing.

It also helps to remember what you are actually after. The purpose was never the chart on the fridge. If a Bible reading plan has become a source of guilt rather than a servant of fellowship with God, put it down for a fortnight, read whatever you want to read, and then pick up a different one.

One last word about company. Reading alongside your congregation, following whatever the preacher is working through on a Sunday, has an advantage no personal schedule can match. You arrive at the sermon already familiar with the text, and the week’s reading and the week’s preaching begin to reinforce one another.

So, now what?

Decide today rather than deciding to decide. If you have never read the Bible through, take a whole Bible in a year schedule and begin. If you know the outline already, choose one book, read it every day for a month, and see what happens.

Then set the bar low enough that you can clear it on a bad day, and start tomorrow morning. A Bible reading plan is a servant, not a master, and its whole purpose is to bring you back into the presence of the God who speaks. Which book will you start with?

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2, ESV