Sunday Snippet: Bible Plans…

It is that mad time of year when everyone is thinking about Christmas and how to make it more meaningful. Folk are spending a lot of energy on being spiritual and trying not to be over run by our materialistic culture. Nothing wrong with that but what about the rest of the year. Christmas passes in a flash and before you know it New Year will have sprung upon us and all our Bible Reading intentions will fly out the window because we aren’t ready to begin in the 1 January…

So I thought in all the flurry of Christmas I would mention a list of resources that I have found useful to read in the past that have helped me keep on track with Bible reading from one end of a year to another.

1. A One Year Bible: The first time I read through the Bible from start to finish I read this One Year Bible and it worked out so well. Reading it all at once and sticking to it, really helped me to understand who was who and how everything fitted together. When I missed a day or even a couple of days it was fine I just carried on where I left off and took a little longer than the full year.




2. A Chronological Reading Plan: This book is fun and my eldest kid has dipped into it from time to time. It has maps, and factoids, birds eye views of the books of the Bible. This book is great for someone who likes to jump around and tick boxes. I loved it!!!
   

   

3. A Book by Book Reading Plan: I have posted about book by book reading plans before and there are plenty of them on the web. Navpress has a great selection and we have used their The Book By Book Plan and the Hands On Bible successfully with our kids before.




4. Daily Devotionals: The father person and I read this book together when we were first married. I am not normally one for “blessed little thought type devotionals” but some of these devotionals really got us talking and it was a great year of readings together.




5. A Hymn a Day: This book is a hymn a day type of devotional. It is a collection biographical hymn writer snippets along with a daily Bible reading and short devotion. It was historically interesting and I found out of all sorts of things about the Hymn writers that I hadn’t known before.




6. Prayer with a Purpose: We love praying for countries round the world and Operation World is just that: the perfect round the world trip. Packed with detailed information about each country but not only that it has a day by day plan to prayer your way around the world. Brilliant.




7. Morning and Evening: Now this is the book to read, apparently! I have heaps of friends who have read their way through this book – more than once! I have never got beyond the first two or three months of the year. I will try again because, hard as it is to read, as it is packed with gems… frankly at the end of the day this book doesn’t call me but I think I am going to give it another try.

That’s it, just a list of ideas and things to think about before Christmas and New Year are upon us and we haven’t taken a moment to think about it and plan our year ahead a little bit.