Friday, August 31, 2012

A Word Challenge

We have a 'rule' in our house.  It started this year at Lent when I challenged M to join me in reading the Bible before we read anything else each day, and has stuck as a good principle to gently enforce.  It's become new again this week as she has a new iPod with a Bible app; she changes translations, listens to it read, and generally is happy to have another excuse to use her new technology each day.  She subscribes to a plan on the app that gives her a reading each day, but I have also challenged her to keep track of what she's read with the goal of reading the entire thing.

I printed off a super simple Bible reading chart for her that she promptly lost when she was giving her room a deep clean.  I'm printing off another one today and I wanted to share it here for you, and may I challenge you to the same thing?  So many people have read some of the Bible, some have even read lots, but haven't ever tackled the whole thing.  Our churches and families do not push this as mandatory, which I agree with, but I do believe that as believers, we should want to know what it says.  The best way to know it is to read it all, then read it again, and again and never stop.  In my life I've switched up often how I do it - front to back, chronologically, with all the books on slips of paper in a jar and pulled out randomly...  There is no right way to read it, and the only wrong one I can think of is to just not read it!

How do you encourage your kids to read the Bible?  Have you ever finished the whole thing?

2 comments:

Pops said...

I found Prof G. Horner's Bible reading system on the web over three years ago and am still using it (with a few adaptations). On his website he explains the what and why of his system and it is working for me. I imagine that googling the above reference will get you to his website.

Amanda said...

I went to a retreat where the speaker said that she reads an unspecified amount every day. I know that if you don't read enough to get a context it can be a problem, but this has worked well for me. I started in Genesis about three years ago and am now in Jeremiah. There isn't as much accountability, but I also can't get behind, which is nice.