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- Home > Newsletters & Articles > Articles > Bible in a Month Reading Plan
Bible in a Month Reading Plan
Did you know if you read 10 chapters of the New Testament each day, you can read the entire New Testament in ONE month. If you read 25 chapters of the Bible each day, you could read through the entire Bible in roughly TWO months. We want to put out a little challenge for you. We challenge you to either read through the New Testament or the whole Bible. Take it slow, don’t beat yourself up if you skip a few days and by all means keep going.
Here is a plan for reading through the Bible in two months:
You will be surprised at how quickly you will be reading each section over again and at how much more sense it makes each time you read it. The beauty of this plan is it keeps varying things up for you so you don’t get bored and quit.
Can you do it? Reply to this article and tell us how you’re doing.
*Notice that we have written out and mixed the order of the Prophets and the New Testament up a little on the chart below. The simple reason for it is it’s hard to read all of the long books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel) in a row. If you look at the order we put them in, it gives you one long book followed by a few short ones from that same section. This makes it easier to keep going. We have also grouped books together that were written by the same author, such as John’s letters.
Bible reading is like anything else. It takes time to "develop your muscles". You don’t start out reading 50 chapters a day any more than you start out running 10 miles a day or cooking a huge gourmet dinner or playing 4 worship sets a day. You have to build up to it.
What we really want to build is a faithfulness of reading the Bible each day.
I recommend 5 chapters (Genesis 1-5). Then the next day, 5 more chapters (1 Samuel 1-5).
I would do that for two weeks. It’s easier to want to jump ahead and start reading 15-20 chapters each day simply because you have vision for it right now. That’s great for today but we want consistency. I prefer to leave my Bible reading time still hungry for more so that I come back tomorrow excited. That’s why I say to just do 5 chapters a day for two weeks.
After two weeks, upgrade to 10 chapters a day but still use the section divisions. If you have been going for two weeks, five days a week, you should be finished about to read Genesis 11-15. Go ahead, read it. Also read from the second section (1Samuel 11-15).
The next day you read 10 chapters again, 5 from each of the next two sections. Do this again and again for two more weeks. You should be starting to get used to the way the Bible works while still reading it in digestible chunks.
It’s been two more weeks so it’s time to add to your program. We’re now at 15 chapters a day, 5 from each section. Wow, you’re getting to be a scholar.
Two more weeks!!! Now you’re at 20 chapters a day. You’ve never read this much of the Bible.
Another two weeks; you are reading 25 chapters a day, 5 chapters from each of the sections of the Bible. If you read at this pace you will read the Bible every two months.
You get the point by now. It’s expandability. Grow slowly… I got to the point for a season to where I was reading 10 chapters from each section, 50 chapters a day. It’s the Bible in a month plan.
Reading whole passages this way really brought the Bible together as a whole. Try it out and tell me what you think. You can’t go wrong even if you find that the plan is dumb. It’s still the Bible and it’ll still change your life.
Right after I graduated from college, during the summer of 2004, I moved to Seoul, Korea. My sister has lived there for the last 7 years, and at the time she and her husband were pregnant with their first son. Being their first, they wanted to have him in the US so she asked me to "trade places" with her for about 6 months. I did.
Suddenly I found myself living alone in another country, in a small apartment, and no one to push me forward spiritually. Up to this point in my life I had been thoroughly surrounded by the nightly prayer meetings we had started at Houghton College. All throughout my school years those prayer meetings had anchored me and helped me develop spiritually. But there I was, no Houghton College, no nightly prayer meetings, just me and 20 million Koreans.
To further complicate things, one of my weekly responsibilities was to preach a 20-30 minute sermon at the English Worship Service. I was actually really excited about the opportunity to preach every week. I had learned so much about God the last four years of praying nightly that I was sure that there could be no lack of profound thoughts and anecdotes just waiting to gush forth in a sermon.
Being that one of the functions of the English Worship Service was for the Koreans to learn English in the context of church, they asked me if I could type up my sermons a few days in advance so that everyone could read through them before they arrived, and then read along with me while I preached.
Week One: pretty good!
Week Two: same..
Week Three: This is getting hard…
Week Four: I hit the wall
By that fourth week I realized that all of the things I had been preaching were simply repeating the words and phrases that I had heard other anointed women and men of God say. It had worked for them so I figured it should work for me; and it did, up to a point.
That night I listened to a teaching by Allen Hood, still one of my favorite men out there. He talked about "the problem" we have in America. We have many preachers but not many friends of God. We have many echoes but not many true voices. And I crumbled to the ground in my tiny apartment because I knew that everything he was saying was about me.
I didn’t have much in my little apartment but what I did I have used. I grabbed my Bible and started reading. No place better to start than Genesis. But wait… I always seem to get stuck and give up reading once I hit Leviticus and Numbers. Wouldn’t it be great to also be reading another section of the Bible, a section that I was currently enjoying? That way the enjoyable part would give me strength to continue through the "boring" part. Hmmm… I realized I was on to something.
I already knew that if I read 10 chapters of the New Testament each day I would finish it in a month. I wondered if I could do the same with the Old Testament. I added all of the chapters of the OT up and found that it was about 4x bigger than the New Testament.
I found 5 basic sections:
Since I didn’t have anything to do all day, I decided to pray and ask God to give me grace to read the Bible. If I’d have had a blog back then it would have been interesting to say the least. I ended up reading 10 chapters a day from each section (50 chapters a day) and ended the Bible in a month. Wow! I couldn’t believe it. So I did it again. I was stirred by Allen’s word and my barrenness and the need I knew I had to get a message, to become a friend of God. I had to eat the Bible, digest it, know it, experience it.
I guess that’s about it. Oh, one more thing….
Just this year I finally stopped using this plan. Why? Because I found a Bible that wouldn’t let me use it. It has no chapters and no verses which makes reading 10 chapters very hard. But I’ll honestly tell you that it’s one of the best Bible Reading experiences I’ve had. And it’s only $9, how can you go wrong?!!! Check it out at www.thebooksofthebible.info