If you don’t have a plan to read through the Scriptures in 2020 yet, can I make a recommendation?

I have found the Five-Day Reading Schedule to be one of the most effective.

Why do I like it and recommend it?

  1. It guides you through the entire Bible in one year. If you invest approximately 20 minutes a day (five days a week), you will read Genesis to Revelation in one year.
  2. You only read five days a week – with two days off (allowing you to catch up for those missed days).
  3. The schedule is laid out in a (generally) chronological order, which means (for example): you will read the Psalms at the appropriate moments in the life of David and the books of Kings and Chronicles are read in harmony.
  4. And finally, this plan doesn’t start until the week of January 5 (so you’re not behind when you begin next week)!

Click here to download the free PDF schedule.

As we read and study Scripture, we must never forget that the goal of all Bible reading (as well as listening, studying, memorizing, etc.) is application to our daily lives so that we become more and more transformed into the image of Jesus.

In other words, Bible knowledge is not the end – rather it is the means to the end, which is becoming more like Jesus in all of our thoughts, attitudes and actions.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the story of the wise man and foolish man (Matthew 7:24-27). Both men heard God’s Word – but only one put into practice what he learned – and thus his life was built upon a “rock” (as opposed to sand) and withstood the storms that life threw at him.

Chuck Swindoll said it this way:

“What is a sign of [spiritual] maturity? Practicing what you hear. Through practice you become mature. You see, it’s one thing to grow old in the Lord, but it’s another thing to grow up in the Lord.

There are many people cruising from church to church, from Bible conference to Bible conference, filling notebook after notebook, wearing out Bible after Bible, who are still some of the crankiest, fussiest, grumpiest, most irresponsible people you meet. Why? Because they do not practice the things they hear.

This is the whole thrust of the book of James. He wants you to put to the test what you claim to believe – by doing it. A mature person is one who is involved in practicing on a regular, consistent basis what he hears and what he takes in. Just being exposed to Bible instruction won’t solve problems.”

James said “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22)

And then he goes on to say in verse 25…

“But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” (James 1:25)

Finally, let the words of John Stott encourage your heart as you begin another year of reading and studying Scripture:

“We must daily soak ourselves in the Scriptures. We must not just study, as through a microscope, the linguistic minutiae of a few verses, but take our telescope and scan the wide expanses of God’s Word, assimilating its grand theme of divine sovereignty in the redemption of mankind.

‘It is blessed,’ wrote Charles Spurgeon, ‘to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in scriptural language, and your spirit is flavored with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is bibline and the very essence of the Bible flows from you.”

I pray you have a wonderful 2020 as you personally engage with Scripture and seek to apply it to your life.

Happy New Year!