Thoroughly Equipped in 2013

2 Timothy 3: ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Would you be willing to read through the Bible with me in 2013?  If the Bible was given to us so we could be thoroughly equipped, then if we neglect it we will be ill-equipped and unprepared.

Here’s what I’d like to ask you to do:

·         Form a habit of daily Bible reading of 3 or 4 chapters each day.

·         Answer a few questions each day from a study sheet designed to get you to think about and apply what you’ve read.

·         Read the whole Bible in 2013.

Here’s what I’ll do:

·         Provide a study sheet each week.  The purpose of the study sheet is to get you to think about what you’ve read, what it means, and how to apply it in life.  I don’t want you to believe things just because you heard them in church, but because you know what the Bible says.

·         Make the study sheet available at church and online.

·         Base the message at Prayer Watch each Sunday morning on a passage from that week’s reading.

·         Provide small group Bible studies where we can dig a little deeper.

The schedule I’d like to use is based on reading some from the New Testament, some from the Psalms, and some from the rest of the Old Testament each week.  The reasons for doing it this way are:

·         The Old Testament is much larger than the New Testament, but the New Testament has more direct application to our lives.  If you read the Bible cover to cover, you will spend most of the year in the Old Testament.  Reading the New Testament and the Old Testament at the same time gives us the benefit of both throughout the year.

·         Psalms come from the heart of people inspired by God.  They are worth thinking over as you read them.  For this reason, we’ll spread them out over the year, reading a few each week, rather than reading through them all at once.

Did you know?

·         You can read the Bible every year for your whole life and you will always be finding something new or seeing a new way to apply it.

·         As you read, there will be some parts of the Bible you may find hard to understand, but the Lord will help you get something from it.

·         There are 1189 chapters in the Bible.  This is about 3 ¼ per day for a year.  Reading the whole Bible all at once might seem overwhelming, but reading 3 or 4 chapters a day is achievable if you form the habit.

·         Reading 3 or 4 chapters per day will only take 10 to 15 minutes.  You may well spend more than that thinking about it or re-reading it.

·         If your eyesight or reading ability is limited, you can listen to the Bible.  There are several versions and different narrators available that you can listen to online for free here: http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/