Saturday, January 04, 2014

Spiritual Disciplines Update

I plan on making some changes to my bible reading routine in 2014, but before I lay out my new plan, I want to review what I have done. 

In 1986 my dad gave me a copy of the One Year Bible in the Living Bible paraphrase and since that time during the years when I have maintained the discipline of bible reading I have enjoyed using this reading plan, though I did graduate to the NIV version some time ago.

Since starting this blog in 2010 I have once again resurrected the habit of daily bible reading and with few exceptions I have consistently read every day.  So here is a summary of my bible reading plans over the past three years.

In 2011 I read through the New Living Translation of the One Year Bible.

In 2012 I read through the New King James Translation of the One Year Bible.

In 2013 I started reading the Chronological One Year Bible in the NIV translation, but I switched to the ESV translation in March, though I continued with the chronological reading plan for the year.

In March 2013 I also switched from reading on an e-reader to reading from a physical bible.  I spent a great deal of time and effort researching what version and format I wanted for my daily reading bible and I settled on the ESV single column legacy edition.  This bible has been an absolute joy to me, and I can’t recommend it enough.  It has large margins for notes and there are minimal distractions, just the text.  I have also found that I love the single column format, it presents the text beautifully especially in the Psalms and other poetry books.  I now have a system for marking up my bible and after 9 months of use, it is starting to feel very personal and unique to me.  It is a treasure.

Anyhow, what am I going to do in 2014?  I have decided to use the saturation method of bible reading.  I read the following blog post, a few weeks ago, and its recommendation of saturating yourself in a book for an extended period of time really resonated with me.  The first book I will tackle is Philippians.  I have always loved this book and the passage from Phil 3:8-11 is a passage that I have used as a ‘life-verse’ for many years.  Since it is a short book, I can read it in one sitting, so for at least the next month, I plan on soaking in the truths of this book, I plan on memorizing key passages and I plan on knowing this book inside out and backwards. 

Over the coming days I plan on updating this blog to reflect the things I learn as I take on this endeavour.

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