My Bible Reading Plan for 2011

"Bible, Notebook, & Pen" by chunghow33

About this time every year I select a Bible reading plan for the following year. In 2010 I've used the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan (pdf). It features selections from four book of the Bible each day and gets you through the whole Bible in one year. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It gives good balance between wisdom literature, other Old Testament books, gospels, and other New Testament books. Another great point about the plan is that it only offers selections for 25 days each month--great for catch-up or review.

The one quibble I have with the plan is that some books take so long to read through, that you can lose sight of the big picture. Several of the books take a month to read, the gospels even longer. That's why in 2011, I'm going with Discipleship Journal's Book-at-a-Time Bible Reading plan (pdf). Here's how they describe it.

The book-at-a-time Bible reading plan provides two readings for each day. The first reading alternates between Old and New Testament books, giving you three or four chapters a day. The Gospels are spread throughout the year.

The second reading takes you through a chapter or so of the wisdom literature and Isaiah. Combined,these readings will take you through the entire Bible in one year. 

To prevent the frustration of falling behind and to provide some reflection time, each month consists of only 25 readings. You’ll have several days each month to meditate more deeply on something that was significant to you in the past week, to catch up on missed readings, or to revisit favorite passages.

Discipleship Journal also offers the 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan (pdf), which they describe this way:

5 minutes per day, 5 days per week, 5 ways to dig deeper. Takes you through one chapter each day. Read the New Testament in one year.

All three of these reading plans, with an overview of each and links to printable versions in English and Spanish are on the Navigators' Discipleship Journal website.

If none of these plans suits your, check out this extensive collection of other reading plans. The main thing is to stick with the reading and allow God's Word to do its thing in your heart. Like the old song says, "Read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow!"

If you liked this post, you might also like my post about a 31-day prayer calendar to help you pray for your children.

Turboboost your Bible reading in 2011 with the ESV Study Bible, my favorite study Bible by far.