“I have hidden Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” Psalm 119:11
It’s important to spend some time reading the Bible every day. Even if you’ve read it every day for the last fifty years, it’s always good to refresh your mind with the Word. Continually reading it, pondering upon it, letting it sink into your heart and directing your actions accordingly, will change your life. Meditating on the Word of God is like a cow chewing the cud: keep bringing it up and chewing it over, to get every ounce of goodness out of it. Sometimes you’ll come up against temptation and not have your Bible and search tools handy. You need to have the Word in your heart. If we know what the Word says, we can immediately counter every temptation. If we know what the Word says, we can know what sin is and avoid it.
Our local radio station is promoting the ‘E-100’ Bible reading challenge: encouraging people to read 100 of the most essential passages of Scripture. At the start of this promotion, they quoted some astonishing figures about how many Christians have never read through the whole Bible.
I’ve used a variety of Bible reading plans over the years. Chronological readings can be quite insightful, especially marrying up the books of the prophets with Israel’s history in Kings and Chronicles. At the moment I’m using a pattern of Old Testament and a Psalm in the morning, and New Testament in the evening, on a 320-day cycle for the Old Testament and 160-day cycle for Psalms and the New Testament. That corresponds to about 3 chapters in the morning and 2 chapters in the evening. If you don’t have a Bible reading plan and would like some guidance, feel free to leave a comment with your contact details and I’ll send some options to you.
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