Church Blog

For Your Blessing and Benefit: Three Plans

A few years back, I developed a plan for daily reading through the Scripture in one year, with a view toward preparing pastoral interns for ordination. It was an intense reading schedule, entailing reading and daily discussion that took us through the entire Psalter once per month, all four Gospels once per quarter, the rest of the New Testament twice per year, and the remainder of the Old Testament once. Obviously, this is far too ambitious a program for almost anyone besides, say, a pastoral intern motivated by the need to be ready for upcoming ordination exams! (It’s actually even worse than what I’ve shared here, because the “complete” version also includes daily readings through the entire Westminster Shorter Catechism and Book of Church Order each month. Yikes!)

However, since a number of people have expressed interest in this plan and asked if I’d share it with them, I thought it might be a good idea, in sharing that plan with you, also to provide a more reasonably paced reading plan for the blessing and benefit of anyone who might like to join along with myself and others as we read through the entire Bible in 2025.

Included here are three reading plans (download them here, all in one PDF):

• First, one for reading through the Psalter each month, with morning and evening readings. I can scarcely express how beneficial this has been for my spiritual life over the last few years. All I can say is, trust me and give this a try! Since there are 150 Psalms, that averages five Psalms per day. If this is too much, or if you find keeping up with morning and evening readings difficult, then…
• Second, a plan for reading through the Psalter in two months, i.e., for an average two-and-a-half Psalms per day, with readings in the morning or evening, rather than both.
• Third, a plan for reading four Bible chapters a day, with morning and evening readings. (And if you’re interested, the “super-charged” reading program to which I referred above simply combines the once-through-the-Psalter-in-a-month readings with the four Bible chapters a day.)

It is my prayer that at least one of these plans will work for you, and that it will help to make daily Bible reading a blessed part of each day in the coming year.

May the Lord bless you as you daily draw near to him by his word in 2025 and beyond!

Happy New Year!
Pastor Jules