So you want to read through the Bible in 2019. I hope that many will join us to read through the Bible in chronological order in 2019.

Is this your first time to set out to read it all in a year, or have you already read it through at one time or another?

Do you already read your Bible regularly, or do you have to dust it off first?

I ask these questions, not to embarrass you, but to get you to think objectively and realistically about how you might want to approach your Bible reading time in 2019.

The first time I read through the Bible in a year, I took on more than a single reading of all the books in the Bible. The plan I followed included reading the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs twice and the Old Testament once. I’m a slow reader, so it truly taxed me to get it all read. I did succeed, and I’m proud of the accomplishment. But, truthfully, I don’t recall a lot of what I read.

I could get embarrassed about that, but I choose to believe I did the best I could. And if this is your first time through, straight reading may be as much as you can do as well. If you find yourself getting behind, you might try listening to the Bible as you read it using Bible Gateway or another online Bible website that includes audio links to the Bible. Feel free to do what it takes to keep going and not give up.

On the other hand, if you have already read the entire Bible or most of it, you might bump up your reading approach just a little. For instance, you might underline or highlight some things that grab your attention, things you might want to go back and look for later. In my earliest times of reading through the Bible I didn’t concern myself with the many names of people and places. I thought they would be too hard to remember, so I just read them and kept going. This past year I chose to circle key names and places. It helped me to focus on them and to go back and find them if I came across a name again later. I also tried to keep up with the names of the different nations in the Promised Land this year by circling them. This is a simple thing to do that shouldn’t slow you down too much as you read, especially if it’s your first time.

I also underlined in my Bible with colors this past year to emphasize special kinds of text. That helped me to focus and I learned a lot by doing it. But I ended up underlining much more than I had originally intended. The Bible I used is a journaling Bible, so I can still add pictures to it.

I hope to use in 2019, at least in part, the Inductive approach to studying the Bible. This is new to me, so I want to read up on how it works before January. It may be more involved than I will have time to use fully on every passage, especially considering my slow reading issues, but I hope to use at least part of the plan on special passages. I asked a friend who introduced me to the Inductive approach to studying the Bible, and she was able to give me a PDF file with a comprehensive alphabetized list of recommended markup codes that I may use. But even so, I will have to use it only in part, so it doesn’t bog me down. Maybe another year I will cut back on the amount I will plan to read in a year, so I will have time to dig deeper into the passages.

What techniques have you used to help you understand the Bible better? Please share them in the comments below.

Photo copyright : Pamela Maxwell