Read The Bible Through

By: David Hopkins

Wed, Apr 29, 2009

Have you ever tried to read the Bible through in a year? If so then you know how hard it can be.

And if not let me save you a few headaches.

But in any case keep reading this article to find out some strategies that can make reading the Bible through in a year a less painful goal.

Think of it this way.

Your Bible is a compilation of sixty six separate and complete books not one big old giant book that'll take you forever to read.

Therefore it should be read one book at a time and doesn't necessarily have to be from Genesis all the way through to Revelation.

My personal Bible reading strategy is to read psalms, proverbs, the new testament, then the old testament.

But you can start wherever you like.

Just pick a book.

There's wisdom to be uncovered in every last one of them.

Next, read the book all the way through without skipping or annotating because your trying to get the idea and purpose of the whole book to see the big picture of it.

Consider who wrote the book, what was he like, and what were times like in those days.

I use an extremely flexible thirty minute Bible reading plan that allows me to read the Bible three times a year at a calculated speed of around two hundred words per minute reading seven days a week.

This gives me three chances to read the Bible through in a year if I fall behind or if something comes up.

But since I read books at a time I can always recover quite easily.

Now imagine what you could do with that thirty minutes if you read at four hundred words per minute.

And what if you doubled the time to one hour instead of thirty minutes, you'd be reading all sixty six books of the Bible through once a month or twelve times a year!

Or have twelve chances to read the Bible through in a year.

Which is ultimately my goal.

And this is a very achievable and realistic goal.

Only thing is you have to be consistent and persistent to increase your desire to read longer and to increase your reading speed while not dropping off in comprehension.

I create my plans by using the Bible Reading Planner that I give away as a consolation for subscribing to this newsletter.

Next, I go to King James Bible Statistics and put the word count of the book that I am going to read in a calculator and divide by two hundred and sixteen.

That way I know how many minutes it will take me to read that book.

Then I divide that number by thirty to figure out how many days it will take me.

Then I just round up or down depending on the number.

Next, I check off that book in the planner and input the amount of days and let the software even out the readings as equally as possible.

And that's all.

Plus, this could be done with any amount of minutes or days with any of the books.

So you're not stuck reading from Genesis to Revelation.

And you can read anywhere from one to seven days a week.

You can even get creative and read the Bible in a snow ball fashion to increase your chances of completing it in a year even more.

This is what I mean.

You can read the smallest books first and build momentum by completing those books quickly until you get to the books that will take longer.

But by this time you may have already built up enough steam to make it through.

And the shortest books can be completed in about two minutes.

Still, that beats the pants off those wimpy read the Bible in one year programs that most people never finish anyway.

And some of them are just terrible because they skip around the different books of the Bible like a rock on water.

Whats more, most of them connect the end of books together with the beginning of other books like a train wreck.

And lastly, this takes away from your time to study the book in more detail between readings by using these Christian Meditation Techniques.