A 7-Week Bible Reading Plan

Read through the whole New Testament in less than 2 months.

There’s a lot of stuff I can’t stand! Actually I’ll use the word “hate”. There’s a lot of stuff I hate, but that’s ok, because Jesus hated stuff too.

I have a whole long list that I can’t include completely here, but just for starters, I hate…

• shopping without a list - get in, get what you need, and get out.

• youth group lock-ins - why make yourself jet-lagged without going anywhere?

• when people think very highly of themselves, especially pastors and umpires - Power feels good, but you’re really a mess, just like us.

• when people take pickleball court rules too seriously - it’s freaking pickleball, people.

• Rice Crispy Treats - marshmallows and beards don’t play nice.

• when people turn their hazards on in the rain - we are all driving in the rain and can already see you (plus it’s illegal).

• the Bible App - It’s not a real Bible!

Don’t get me wrong, I want order just as much as the next guy, but I can’t for the life of me figure out the paddle in the holes pickleball court system and I showed up with a bunch of friends I’d like to play with instead of you! So get over yourself!

But that’s not the one that’s probably most controversial on this list. It’s the so called Treats! I just can’t stand how they get stuck on the back of my front teeth! My tongue gets so tired I end up just using a fingernail to scrape them off. And don’t get me started on sticky fingers that process causes.

And then there’s the Bible App. Y’all, I seriously can’t stand when the pastor says “Please stand for the reading of the Scripture” and half the room stands up and pulls out a phone! I know. This is this is the kind of thing you start complaining about after you turn 50, but still.

Hear me out and don’t get me wrong. I have the Bible App. In fact, I get super nervous every time the little pop up window asks me to rate it. Seriously? I’m not comfortable with that at all!!! I feel like I’m critiqing the Bible!!!!

I’ll admit, the Bible App’s got its pluses. For starters, it’s convenient. It’s got tons of versions on it which is great for getting a better understanding of word meaning.

Side note: Please steer clear of the Passion Translation!! It might sound super poetic and fun to read, and there’s a reason for that. It ain’t a translation! But that’s a subject for another post.

And I really love all the Bible Plans, offered on the Bible App, especially that we can do them with friends. Oh, and it even has a feature my pastor uses to upload all his slides so you can follow along and take notes (just not real notes). So, I guess I don’t hate it hate it, but I do think we’re missing something if we only use our phones for our time in the Word. There are a few reasons I have issues with only using a phone as the source of reading scripture.

1. We are setting ourselves up for distraction by trying to use the most distracting thing in our lives to attempt to focus on the Word.

2. It’s very difficult to see the whole context of what we are reading. In the Twitter, sorry, I mean X world we are living in, we are so used to short, quick statements and we get super bored if anything gets longer than a 100 words. But most of the books of the Bible were meant to be read in their entirety, in one sitting. I believe we miss a lot when we just read our daily Bible verse and then a commentary by someone really smart telling us what that verse means. We miss the whole context and without context, it’s easy veer away from proper doctrine.

3. And I can’t do this with my phone…

Not only is this good for me to be able to look at and refer back to, but I’m also planning on passing it down to my children.

The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve seen the value of sitting down for long chunks of time, holding leather & paper in my hands and reading entire books of the Bible instead of breaking them up into verses and chapters.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t that take a lot of time? And the answer is sometimes, but not always.

Doing Some Math

A year or so ago, I got curious. How long would it take the average person to read each book of the New Testament? I Googled how many words were in each N.T. book and then I divided those numbers by the number of words the average person can read per minute. Do you know what I found? Most books of the New Testament can be read by most people, in their entirety, in less than 30 minutes. Sure, some of the longer books like the Gospels, Acts, Romans, and Revelation could take up 2 hours, but I figure if I’m willing to sit and watch a 2-hour movie written by mere human beings, I could give up a couple hours to sit still and read the God-breathed words of scripture.

So, I decided to put together a reading plan. I took the 27 books of the New Testament and I divided them by 4. I figured doing this 4 out of 7 days of the week was doable. I’d set aside about 30 minutes 3 of those days and then pick 1 day when I’d set aside 2 hours. Sunday seemed like a great day!

Then, I put them together in an order that made sense to me and kept the reading times to what I described above.

Finally, I decided to challenge all the Young Life leaders to do it along with me. Each week, we would do the readings and then discuss things that stood out to us.

Doctrine In The New Testament

In preparation for those discussion times, I wanted to make sure to bring up doctrinal points from each book of the Bible. My hope was to give the leaders a deeper understanding of proper Christian doctrine and help them see how the whole New Testament served to reveal solid doctrine.

I used the scripture index of Wayne Grudem’s Bible Doctrine, Second Edition: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith and made a list of doctrinal points I wanted to teach and discuss.

Wanna Give It A Shot?

Here’s the whole thing in pdf form. If you’re older like me, some of the print might be super small, so here’s the google sheet if you’d prefer that.

Let me know how it goes!