New Reading Plan for 2017!

We'll start a brand new Bible reading plan on Jan 1. After two years of daily reading and commentary on the Chronological Reading Plan, we're going to go through the Bible again in a year. But, this time we'll be following a different plan. It is called the Canonical Reading Plan. It goes straight through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, book by book in the order shown in your table of contents. We're calling this program "Daily Bread." You can find a list of daily readings at the WBF website by clicking here. The plan is also available at Blue Letter Bible and on the You Version Bible App for smartphones and tablets. 

There will be a blog posting each day showing the passage

for the day and offering some commentary as we go. The passage will be available at the top of the posting via a clickable link. You can either read the passage then return to the commentary or simply read the passage. 

There will be links posted to our email group and to the WBF facebook page each day as well.  

To make things easy, a special notice will be sent out each time a new book is started. That way, those who join late or fall behind will have 66 opportunities to rejoin the daily readings.  

The first posting will appear early Sunday morning. Meanwhile, here are a few tips I have found to be helpful in developing a daily reading discipline: 

• Make the decision!
• Make prayer a priority and ask for the Spirit's help.
• Pick a viable plan, one you can maintain.
• Don't over-reach. A plan that is too ambitious will be easy to drift away from. If you've never followed a plan before and all of them look daunting, try starting out with the New Testament (Matthew) and reading for 10 or 15 minutes a day, or even a paragraph...anything to get the discipline started. "God can do very much with very little". Give Him all you can and watch Him make it grow!
• Read with a friend. Accountability can be a strong
  
  motivator. You don't have to be together, just reading the same plan. You can check with each other periodically.
• Make your plan as accessible as possible. Many folks will listen to something in their car, a podcast, Bible on CD, audible reading on their smartphone, pocket-size Bible, email subscription, etc. Do whatever you need to do to make this as easy as possible to engage. 
• Try to set apart a specific time. Your best strategy will be to get up a little bit earlier and start your day with your reading. Forego a glance at your email or the weather. Let the Scripture saturate you right after you wake up. This will help you to continue on and sets an easy-to-achieve goal in your day.
• Before each reading, pray "Lord help me understand and absorb your word toady. Speak to me through your Scriptures."
• If you fall behind, don't make it a priority to get "caught
  
  up", just pick up where you left off. It's more important to maintain the discipline than it is to stick to the calendar. 
• Resist the urge to make this a study time. If there's something you want to look at more closely, highlight it and keep going. Your goal is to read and re-read the Bible until you get familiar with all of it. Taking time to do word studies and checking facts will hinder that goal. Once you develop the reading discipline, the study will come along.

So, ready your Bible, load your apps, bookmark your pages and let's do this together!