For the Love of God

This year, the Bible reading plan I am following is the M'Cheyne Bible reading plan, devised by Robert Murray M'Cheyne in the early 19th Century. The idea is that you read through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice through the year.

I've started using my Bible app on my phone (I have YouVersion), which has it set up so you can select the reading plan you want and it will read it out. I like to listen to it on the way to work, I like that the app automatically moves onto the next reading, rather than needing me to manually search for the next chapter in the plan.

Then at night (inspired by an article about studing Gods word, not just reading it) I study one of the readings in more detail. I use my study Bible and Don Carsons book For The Love Of God (It's also posted daily on his blog) which takes one reading from the M'Chenyne plan each day and looks at it more closely (I can't remember if I've written about this book before or not, I've had both volume 1 and 2 for a few years and enjoy using them) .

So far I've found this really good. I like starting the day with the different readings, I hate to admit that I tend to skip over parts of chapters I find repeditive, but having the audio means I'm forced to actually hear all of the words. The more detailed study of one chapter is also good, because I have the ability to unpack it and think more deeply.

While the aim is to do it each day, I admit I've gotten a little behind already. But thats ok, I just pick up where I left off (ignoing the date at the top of the page) and keep going. Something like this forces me to read parts of the Bible I don't normally read, and over the year or so I will have read the whole Bible which will be a good overview.