If starting well and having good intentions were lucrative, I’d be a millionaire by now. I am currently in the middle of designing a website, in the middle of reading at least 4 books, just starting out in two new jobs, just moved to a new apartment, and have 12 posts in the “drafts” folder of this blog. Twelve. Posts.
I am really good at starting. So it’s a rare, fun day when I get to celebrate finishing.
Just 1.5 years after starting, I officially finished reading through the Bible.
I could not have done it without YouVersion. Well, perhaps that’s hyperbole. I could have done it. I just know that I wouldn’t have.
Last year, to capitalize on the New Year’s Resolution craze, the folks at YouVersion launched reading plans to help people systematically read through the Bible. I picked “chronological” which took me through the Bible in the order the events actually happened, according to a certain set of scholars. It was a fascinating trip through the Scriptures. For example, the story of Job (which most scholars agree is the oldest book of the Bible) was planted right in the middle of Genesis, because that’s when it took place. In the New Testament, the book of Acts is interspersed with the epistles, giving context to the letters and their audience.
The first key to success for me was the ability to spread out the start and end dates of the plan to fit a more realistic schedule. I knew I would not have finished the Bible in a year. I knew that because that would be approximately the 35th time I got all the way to day 6 of a Bible reading plan, only to give up because I was 15 chapters behind. I’m just not that diligent to read my Bible for 45 minutes every day. Some people are. I’m not.
The second key was changing phones.
That’s right, I did almost all of the daily readings on my smartphone. About 3 months ago I switched to an Android phone. At the time, my iPhone didn’t have one key ability that my new Android phone did: an Audio Bible setting. With my new phone and bluetooth, I was able to listen to the Bible on my morning commute, and again on the way home from work. So even in the midst of picking up two jobs, moving, having a baby, writing a blog, designing websites, et (freaking) cetera I was able to keep up with my daily reading. And given some wiggle room by the flexible start-end dates, I made it through!
The bottom line? With FREE tools like YouVersion out there, there is no excuse to not be experiencing God’s word on a regular basis. If I can do it, anybody can do it. I’m so bad at finishing things,
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