2024 Challenge: read through the Bible

Are you in?

  • Yes, and it’s the first time

    Votes: 4 66.7%

  • Yes, and I’ve done it before

    Votes: 2 33.3%

  • No, but I still wanted to vote

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    6
Everybody, especially the rookies, ready to go? Just like eating and elephant…one bite at a time.

Anybody gonna sign up and commit last minute?
 
Maybe this is too ambitious. Shoot for the stars and maybe hit the moon is my philosophy, though. JUST DON'T QUIT.

I have read though the entire bible many times, and it just keeps getting better. This past year was an eye opener for all the political and economic intrigues, venal and selfish motivations of the "heroes of the faith," that jumped out at me as I read, especially in the Old Testament.

I have decided that this year I am going to do a bit of a deviation. There is a plan which will take you through the New Testament once a month. It is approximately 9 chapters per day, or about 5 pages (gospel sections are longer, epistles are shorter). If I combine this with reading five psalms a day this will take me thru the psalms once a month (150 of them), and a proverb, this will take me thru the NT, Psalms and Proverbs 12 times during the year.

While that may be a bit ambitious, and I reserve the right to whittle it down if it becomes too cumbersome, it is approx 14 chapters a day, and can be done with less than 30 mins of cursory reading. Given that I spend at least 30 mins a day playing chess online, I think that the issue is my bad priorities rather than lack of time.

This is not a "new year's resolution" but a simple desire to have a mental framework of each NT book in my head, chapter by chapter, by the end of the year. Some of them are already pretty well formed. Others less so.

Here is a link to the plan to read thru the NT 12 times in year. Hopefully it might be helpful to someone in here. https://bibleplan.org/plans/new-testament-in-a-month/#nabre
 
Wrapping up my lesson for tomorrow, and the material included this quote:

If you want to hear God speak to you, read the Bible. And if you want to hear God speak to you in an audible voice, read the Bible aloud.

- John MacArthur
 
what's up with this youverse app?
chrono defaulted to ESV, and gave me the option to listen. but it also wanted to report my name and stuff and i said no, but it still let me read and listen.
I downloaded ASV because it also has a little speaker in the menu... but it doesn't let me listen.
 
Took MacArthur's advice and read Proverbs 2 aloud. Good stuff. There is something about verbalizing the written word that compels my attention and opens a door for observation of things I would not (or at least have not) seen. Thanks.
 
I have started three times and failed each time and am starting again. I am reading the NASB version of a MacArthur Study Bible. I really liked this in the forward when I got it.

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as posted above:
" I used audio cassettes. It made it so much easier.."

i listened to the free ones from our local library.
cassettes...way back in the day.
 
We’re wrapping up Day 7. How’s it going for everybody, especially the rookies?

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The key is to make it a habit as best you can. Same time, same location if possible. If you’re using YouVersion, you can set a reminder for each day directly in the app. Other apps probably have that option as well. Or just set a daily alarm. Oddly enough, Sunday seems to be the hardest day for me. 🤔

Remember what I mentioned earlier…if you happen to miss a day, you can do two days the next day. But if you miss more than that, it might work better to just double-up for a couple days in a row instead of trying to catch up all in one day.
 
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So far, OK with the NT. Not very consistent with psalms and proverbs, but I am not worried about that. Wrote outlines of 4 gospels. Nothing written on Acts, but hey, I have 11 more runs this year! lol
This year, I am struck over and over with the truth that the Holy Spirit WITHIN me is the one on whom I should, moment by moment, trust to direct, guide, lead, teach and work out my actions.

If that does not sound like a bunch of heebie jeebie crap, then I don't think you are listening. It is weird, bizarre, unearthly.... like "invasion of the body snatchers" or something. The idea that a separate personality lives inside me is definitely bizarre, when one thinks about it.

The refusal to live like that is the root of all my unhappiness, though.
 
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Day 15

Just checking in. How’s it going for everybody so far?

If anybody else wants to join us, it’s definitely not too late. Just read two days worth each day this month…and then you’ll be all caught up.
 
BigWaylon said:
Day 15

Just checking in. How’s it going for everybody so far?

If anybody else wants to join us, it’s definitely not too late. Just read two days worth each day this month…and then you’ll be all caught up.
Click to expand...
some unknown wag wrote "This book will keep you from sin..... OR.... sin will keep you from this book"

It really is as simple as that. Not hectoring the members of the group here. Really a slap in my own face for bad priorities.
 
Just had one of those “how have I missed that” moments I talked about earlier.

Didn’t realize “Red sky at night, sailors' delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” was biblical.

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Wow, this is a fantastic challenge. I'm in... and praying for everyone that committed to the challenge. For those that have not walked through the garden of the entire Bible, you have nothing but eternal reward before you. "Wisdom is a tree of life for those that grasp it." The scriptures should be read and re-read, read out loud in the company of others and meditated upon in private throughout the day. Reading through the bible regularly will form a canonical understanding that will help with sorting out the hard and challenging verses. With time, biblical literacy will allow people to grow in their understanding. I find it refreshing that believers are challenging other believers to do big things. I have grown so much because others have challenged me in my walk with things just like this. There are many ways to experience the bible. Some other challenges to consider would be to hand copy a book of the bible and give your copy to a growing, hungry, budding believer and challenge them to copy a book of the bible themselves and pass their copy on and challenge someone else, and so on (i.e. a bible copying chain). The other thing worth considering after one has read through the bible would be to think big and memorize a short book of the bible, like say 1 Peter. Our family sets annual goals like this. Two years ago after reading Gordan Wehnam's Psalms as Torah we spent a year chanting the Psalms, "the prayerbook of the saints." We learned the age old tradition of chanting and found an awesome Psalter and we chanted through the entire Psalms in one year (breaking Psalm 119 into multiple days). We were amazed at how easy "chanting" facilitated memorizing select psalms. The point here is that personal discipline and putting one foot in front of the other and walking daily in the word will only yield tremendous lasting fruit....so long as we are "doers of the word and not hearer's only."
 
Day 24 of the plan. I can confidently say that God "shows up" in my life when I read the bible. The most discouraging and defeating thing that can go on in my life is feeling like God is far away (if existing at all), and feeling both overwhelmed and defeated by life and its pressures.

Reading the bible is like opening a door so that God comes in and changes the view.

A lot of my psyche as a young man was formed by a lot of pretty intense drug use, so there are constant analogies to that. I remember the first time I ever got high smoking dope and I thought "wow! this is a whole new world".... and I was right. It was a cheap and soiled imitation, though of how the Holy Spirit changes the "lens" though which I view life. He changes nothing, yet everything, and the deadening and boring and depressing banalities of life are changed, transformed, exciting and encouraging.

There is no book like that one.

Again, this year I am doing a "core" of reading thru the New Testament once a month, with options for Psalms and Proverbs (150 Psalms/5 per day, 31 Proverbs/1 per day).

Again, when God shows up, it is more than just "nice".... but it is nice.
 
Philosofarmer said:
Wow, this is a fantastic challenge. I'm in... and praying for everyone that committed to the challenge. For those that have not walked through the garden of the entire Bible, you have nothing but eternal reward before you. "Wisdom is a tree of life for those that grasp it." The scriptures should be read and re-read, read out loud in the company of others and meditated upon in private throughout the day. Reading through the bible regularly will form a canonical understanding that will help with sorting out the hard and challenging verses. With time, biblical literacy will allow people to grow in their understanding. I find it refreshing that believers are challenging other believers to do big things. I have grown so much because others have challenged me in my walk with things just like this. There are many ways to experience the bible. Some other challenges to consider would be to hand copy a book of the bible and give your copy to a growing, hungry, budding believer and challenge them to copy a book of the bible themselves and pass their copy on and challenge someone else, and so on (i.e. a bible copying chain). The other thing worth considering after one has read through the bible would be to think big and memorize a short book of the bible, like say 1 Peter. Our family sets annual goals like this. Two years ago after reading Gordan Wehnam's Psalms as Torah we spent a year chanting the Psalms, "the prayerbook of the saints." We learned the age old tradition of chanting and found an awesome Psalter and we chanted through the entire Psalms in one year (breaking Psalm 119 into multiple days). We were amazed at how easy "chanting" facilitated memorizing select psalms. The point here is that personal discipline and putting one foot in front of the other and walking daily in the word will only yield tremendous lasting fruit....so long as we are "doers of the word and not hearer's only."
Click to expand...
I would be most interested in what tools you used to facilitate chanting the psalms.
 
End of month one. The readings are actually for 29 days, and I am finishing up the first round thru the New Testament today with Revelation 15-22. I failed miserably in my secondary goal of psalms and proverbs (and I don't care. It was too much).

A note I made on Revelation in reading:
14.1 then i looked..... Like, I saw this and then that and then this.......Revelation is like a series of unconnected snapshots, united only by themes and concepts. It is NOT a book of serial progressions thru history or a pretelling of a set of historical events. It is a pictorial and allegorical set of visions concerning: The sovereignty of God, the spinning out of the gospel message, the reign of Christ now, the rage of the wicked against God's people, the preservation of God's people through trial, the final victory of God, the utter loss of those who resist Him, the vanquishing of Satan, and other like themes. They are like Carole seeking to "arrange" as set of pictures into books of historical events and thematic unity. This collage has the picture of those in the eternal security, peace, and reward that awaits, with another pic of the hour of judgment, with angels crying out ( non verbal? are angels and messengers of God constantly giving out voiceless cries to repent? I think so, maybe ) to worship God and turn, and finally back to the fate of the godly and the fate of the wicked.... followed by a scene of judgment that is horrifying in its slaughter.

it is meant to be sobering...............

This last collection of thematic pictures concerns the winding up of all, and I can't do anything but smile when I realize the end score is already announced. All I have to do is suit up and get out there on the field.
 
Here’s a short passage that should encourage you in the “why” you’re doing this. I was given this passage back in junior high by the guy that was mentoring me. I’ve used it many times through the years. I even had a poster made that hung in the room while I taught a group of middle school boys for three years.

Psalm 119:9-11

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Just saw this thread, I actually started a plan about 96 days ago. So I'm a little ahead, lol. A few passages a day and a schedule with reminders is super helpful to me.
 
Checking in:
So I started reading last year, Jan 1. Stuck with it thru day 153 or June 2nd. Think I was 12 books in.
Cause of that, and the fear of incompletion, I decided to pick up where I stopped which was at Proverbs.
I'm not the best at managing time and it hasn't become a daily habit yet but I'm finished with Proverbs and on into 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles.
I find it easy for me to linger too long sometimes on a particular verse or passage and have to remind myself to keep moving.
Maybe try and focus more on the main points instead of hung up on details. Yeah...Proverbs has many main points!!

As an aside, I've been watching the services online from a church in Raleigh for well over a year.
Had no idea but just found out youngest daughter has been going there
for a few weeks and seems to like it, so I'm planning on going with her and check it out.
I've never known her to attend anywhere on a regular basis so I am very happy to hear this.

Anywho,
Happy reading all
 
Day 50.

How’s everybody doing? Anybody new joined in? Anybody willing to admit you’ve thrown in the flag and quit? Hoping we have some in that first group, but not the second. Plenty of time to catch up at this point in the year!

I’ve done good as far as what I committed to myself. I haven’t missed a day, and haven’t read ahead. One days worth each day. And I’ve read it all instead of listening.

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Thought about @Jeppo as I read one of today’s passages. Several mentions of sashes in Exodus 28.
 
90-day check-in. It would be nice to hear an update from everyone involved! Hopefully all 18 are still with us. Maybe some others are doing it that didn’t vote in the poll.

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It’s times like this that I’m glad I’m doing the M’Cheyne plan. Reading 4-5 chapters of Leviticus each day gets to be a chore!
 
I'm on track, as of today. This is really a great idea, and one I have done several times before. There is always something new to notice, to learn, and to share. I really appreciate the challenge.

Confession time. It seems I have struggled this year with the reading plan. I really do enjoy ths plan, as well as the Bible. I don;t know. Maybe it has something to do with being the preacher and "having" to do it every week, every day for my sermons and lessons and such. I know and have realized it is very importnt for me to read for me. I need to learn for myself, not just to preach to others.

I'm thankful for the guys who are sticking with it.
 
Ok…there’s a couple replies. How about the rest of you?
 
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