The Old Testament used to scare me.
Like honestly and truly!! The KJV text seemed extra heavy with thee’s and thou’s. There were way too many things that didn’t seem to pertain to me and, I don’t know, studying the fruit of the spirit seemed to be a lot more straightforward.
Also . . . I’m an artist. I love the spontaneous and can’t follow a plan to save my life. Every couple of Saturdays when I get stressed about the amount of stuff I have to do, I open up Google calendar and plan my weekend all out. I color code it and set very precise time amounts . . . then, I take a look at it, nod in appreciation of the beauty of a well-organized weekend, and then never to look at it again.
Does that make any sense?? NO, but in my demented brain it does.
So, the idea of Bible plans always scared me.
Plus, they were always SO BIG. Like seriously . . . every day you have to read three separate passages and each one is five plus chapters. Do I have time for that? Are raccoons really thieves? Do they even know they have cute little black masks?
. . .
NO!
And, boy, if I skipped a day? I just threw it all out the window. Just give up, Amanda. You are already twenty chapters behind. Might as well close up shop because the ship has sunked.
And yet I felt like I HAD to have a perfectly planned out Read-The-Bible-In-A-Year sheet.
I HAD to stay on track, HAD to have enough time to dig into each passage, HAD to feel like I wasn’t simply reading for the sake of reading.
But, at the beginning of January 2018, I just found myself really, really wanting to be able to read the whole Bible. I know it sounds funny, but I became terrified that I’d die and I’d get to Heaven and God would be disappointed I never even bothered to read His Word in the all the time He’s given me.
It started out really rough.
I think by the time I headed off to camp in May 2018, I was probably slothing through Exodus.* (#lame) But then, the Psalms came alive to me in a way that they never could before. David’s cries for God’s peace and His praise for the steadfast love of God were what I can only label “delicious.” I found myself nodding so much, whispering David’s words, and finding a lot of them to be familiar to my own tongue. I wondered if I could find that much goodness in the rest of the OT.
*Kind of pro tip: I ALWAYS started in Genesis. Do you know how many years I said my resolution was to read the whole Bible? So for, ya know, eight years I’ve been reading Genesis 1-4 and then just running out of desire. So, I was like, forget this. I’ve read Genesis a ton. I’m gonna go rogue and start in EXODUS. *gasps from the Read the Bible in a Year program planners*
I even enjoyed books like Leviticus and Numbers. God revealed so many truths to me in those seemingly obscure chapters, and I definitely received more blessing than I ever thought imaginable.
So, if this rings a bell to you, be okay with ditching the fancy Bible reading plans. If you want to read ten chapters of Nehemiah today, go for it. If you’re running out of time, just one chapter of Hosea isn’t going to change your standing before God.
Take it at your own pace.
You can find amazing free resources online. The two I used the most were The Bible Project and She Reads Truth. TBP has great preliminary overviews of books which are super helpful to help you gain context as you dive into these heavy books, and She Reads Truth (side note: I really appreciate their graphic design since that happens to be my major and my love) has very lovely devotionals for almost every book of the Bible.
I didn’t finish reading the whole Bible in a year. But, between roughly May 2018 and February 2019, I read the whole OT (save a few chapters of Ezekiel . . . still have to go back to that).
When I finished Malachi, it was a magical feeling. I’ve read all of the New Testament in the past, so now I can say I’ve read the whole Bible. I know that doesn’t make me more holy, and there’s no Holy Badge I get to put on my Holy Vest of Righteousness.
But . . . come on. It’s pretty cool!
I have contemplated, scanned over, chewed, studied, and/or highlighted every word that we have on this earth that was breathed out by our holy God.
Don’t do it for Holy Brownie Points. They don’t exist. Read it because you love the God who wrote the Bible. Read it because you want to learn. Read it because it’s our instruction manual for life, and it’s infallible.
Don’t place pressure on the method. Just do it. Expect great things. God is going to use it in ways you could never imagine.
Yup. Even Leviticus.
