Perhaps the most helpful thing you can do for the health of your soul is to be regularly reading God’s word. Jesus said it was more important to the life of our soul than bread is to the life of our body. Just like other areas of your life (exercise, for example), your best resolve won’t be enough to actually execute what you know to be good for you. You need a plan.
Below are a number of plans with a brief description. If you’d rather read on your electronic device, some of these plans are available that way. You can search on google or a bible app.
Any bible reading is better for you than no bible reading. So if you look at these plans and are overwhelmed by the amount of reading, know that you can break the plan into multiple years. For the plans that have multiple readings each day, pick just 1 or 2 of the columns to read this year and read the rest next year (or break it into 3 years).
Bible Reading Plans:
- M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan: The plan for a year directs you through reading the NT and Psalms twice, and the OT once. A reading is listed for every day of each month.
- 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan: This plan leads you to read through the entire NT in 1 year. It does this with about 5 min/day and 5 days/week.
- Kingdom Bible Reading Plan: The plan for a year directs you through reading the Psalms twice and the rest of the Bible once. Only 25 readings are given each month so you can miss some days and still catch up by the end of the month.
- 52 Week Bible Reading Plan: This plan directs you through the Bible in a year, with each day of the week dedicated to a different genre: Epistles, The Law, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy, and Gospels.
- Book-at-a-Time Bible Reading Plan: This plan directs you through reading the entire Bible in a year. The first reading alternates between Old and New Testament books. The Gospels are spread throughout the year. The second reading takes you through a chapter or so of the wisdom literature and Isaiah.
- Alternative: You Set the Pace: If you really don’t want to use a plan, here’s a chart to help you track what you read. As you finish a chapter, cross it off the chart so you’ll know where to read next. And then when you finish a book, pick one you haven’t yet read.