For 2013 I’ve decided to take a different approach to Bible study and daily devotionals. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started down the “read the Bible in a year” route. I’ve read 60-80% of the Bible many times over the years. But some of those minor prophets? I’m not sure I’ve read them at all. It’s always the same story: fervent commitment for a few months (sometimes even half a year) and then somewhere something happens and I get behind. One year I think my attempt to read the whole Bible carried over to about 18-months before I started a different “system.”
I’m a system person – I’m always coming up with a better system to accomplish things. The problem is I’m not a good maintainer. I hate doing the same thing day-in and day-out. The drudgery really gets me down. I guess it makes sense that this would affect the way I do Bible study.
Now that I work at a company that creates software for Bible study, it seems fitting that I renew my commitment to the activity. But I wanted to come up with a more realistic plan/goal for myself. As I mentioned in this post, I’ve recently found that meditating on an entire chapter has been really encouraging to me. So, for 2013, I’ve done a little research and picked 38 chapters I’d like to meditate on.
Why 38? Well, I decided that 52 (a chapter per week) was not realistic. There is a 100% chance that I will fall off the wagon a few times during the year. There’s also a chance that I’ll want to meditate on a chapter for more than a week. I also didn’t want to pick anything that made it feel like the plan was set in stone (i.e. no 1 chapter every 2 weeks, or 3 chapters a month, etc.). That type of rigidity freaks me out because I feel obligated to stick with it. I’m not even committing to read all of them in a year or at all. It’s amazing how that type of freedom is so invigorating to me.
How did I pick my 38 chapters? Well, I did some Google searching and compared the results. Ultimately I chose to study all the chapters listed in the table of contents for Spurgeon’s Commentary on Great Chapters in the Bible, plus some recommendations from these blogs: Bahula.ca, Codex Markianus, and Ekklesia. I’ve really wanted to dig into some of the prophetic books, so a good chunk of what I chose came from those books.
- Deuteronomy 6
- Matthew 5-7
- Isaiah 6-7
- John 1
- Isaiah 14
- Psalm 23
- Isaiah 35
- John 14
- Isaiah 40
- Psalm 51
- John 15
- Isaiah 52
- John 17
- Isaiah 53
- Acts 2
- Isaiah 55
- Psalm 199
- Jeremiah 18
- Romans 8
- Jeremiah 31
- 1 Corinthians 15
- Lamentations 3
- Psalm 139
- Ephesians 1
- Ezekiel 8
- Colossians 1
- Ezekiel 10
- Ezekiel 33
- Psalm 103
- Hosea 14
- Daniel 9
- Psalm 22
- Zechariah 14
- Hebrews 11
- Malachi 4
