Reading Plans . . . and Reading, in 2010

To mark the beginning of the year, I set out to gather together all of the Bible reading plans I had been seeing fly across my blog reader this past month and a half. So, for that list, sample below . . . but then keep reading.

• Crossway has produced several (several) reading plans based on the ESV, including RSS and email and iCal distribution . . . the site might even do the reading for you. Nevertheless, check it out here, or shortcut to the reading plan published in the ESV Study Bible [pdf].
• There is also a reading plan created by 19th century Scottish minister, Robert Murray M’Cheyne. This was used as an outline for a two-volume devotional work by D. A. Carson called, For the Love of God (which is now a blog). I have not read Carson’s book, but here is the reading plan [PDF] and, of course, a companion blog.
• The Journey Church in St. Louis has a reading plan [PDF] plus a devotional blog that includes . . . video devotions! Okay.
• Denis Haack and the fine folks at Ransom Fellowship, in a realistic vein, offer a reading plan for “shirkers and slackers” [PDF].
• Finally, along the same lines as Ransom Fellowship, Eric Costa of Ascension Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon has written a simple 50-week plan [PDF].

So, there’s the list of reading plans. Have fun and, when your “best laid schemes,” quoting Burns, fall apart in mid-February, I’ll be here to comfort you. White-out all the dates before beginning!

But, first things first . . . pray.

It is beyond comprehension to me how often prayer is left out of the matrix of reading one’s Bible. Scripture is God’s means for providing the way we are instructed in life, rebuked for our dashing in the wrong direction, corrected for our sin, and trained for living holy lives (2 Timothy 3.14-17). So, of course, read your Bible! But pray before every opportunity.

Suspiciously, prayer is rarely mentioned by those who would admonish us to read. Just one example: while the intent of the authors is to deal primarily with hermeneutics (i.e. interpretation), it is shocking to me that a book titled, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth would have virtually nothing to say about prayer!

As we read God’s Word, we learn about God. But Christianity is a Revealed Religion, meaning that our God makes Himself known to us. Were He not to do so, we would never find Him. Because He has made us and knows everything about us, and because He desires us to live a certain way, He graciously shapes us by His Word. Reading the Bible, then, is a spiritual exercise as well as a physical one. Dan Doriani in Getting the Message warns that believers should read the Bible in a different way than nonbelievers; “the believer’s essential advantage is that he takes the right posture before the Bible (7).” He goes on to stress that the heart of the reader matters and that Jesus taught His disciples how to have the right attitude of heart: prayer.

I would recommend that at every opportunity you have for sitting down with your Bible, you begin with prayer. Get into the habit of sitting with your Bible in your lap and praying the Lord’s Prayer before beginning. If time is an issue, a fried of mine would always begin with the last lines from Isaiah 40.6-8:

A voice says, ‘Cry!’
And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

Regardless, it seems to me that any prayer should include two elements: thank God for speaking to you (you don’t deserve His attention!), and ask Him to make you a fit reader of His Word.

Then, read.