Hey there, friends!
We are getting closer to the start of our Bible reading plan. There are a couple of tips that I wanted to give you to help you be as successful as possible as you read. This is what I’ve come up with over five years of seriously studying the Bible. These tips help me and I’m sure they will help you too.
Use Audio Bible
Audio Bibles are incredible gifts, use them! I will open up the YouVersion Bible app and play the audio while I read along in my physical Bible. It helps keep you moving and engaged. If you lose your spot or get distracted you can pause it or play it a second or third time if needed. It’s a simple way to keep you on task and engage more than one sense which will help you engage and retain the material.
Use Do Not Disturb Mode
Even if you’re not planning to use an audio Bible on your phone. Practice using Do Not Disturb mode. It will help you stay focused and limit distractions. The constant busyness and ease of access to information have already shortened our attention spans significantly, don’t put yourself in a position where you are fighting the urge to check the notification you just got, it will almost certainly take your focus away from the flow of scripture. This can lead to frustration and ultimately calling it quits for the day.
Plan your Days
You have two days a week that you aren’t going to be using for reading. Take a look at your week and try to figure out when you are busiest. Plan your Bible reading on days and at times when the demand on your time will be lowest. It’s a simple practice that just requires a little work on the front end of the week.
Use your Grace Days
You will be tempted to quit if you miss a day. Don’t give up. Remember that you have built in days in this plan to catch up, I like to call them “grace days”. We are going to go slow and steady. You may have made a promise to yourself that sounds something like this: “I am going to read everyday and I won’t mess up this time”. This is not a good promise to make to yourself - you will surely break it! Instead make this promise, “Even when I have a busy day or week, I will reset and get back to it on Monday”. Give yourself permission to have a bad day instead of feeling like you’ve blown it. God is a God of grace, you’re going to see His grace in action as you read your Bible. Give yourself a little grace!
Take the Good Days With the Bad Ones
There are going to be good days where you understand the reading and you have an hour to spend diving deep into the chapters. These are the days that you want to celebrate. You may want to take notes or use Bible Study techniques like HEAR or SOAP to dig deeper into the Scriptures. However, on other days it is going to be all you can do to stay awake to listen to your audio Bible play. You don’t have to have an hour long study session where the Holy Spirit hits you with something new and exciting for your day to be successful. Stay diligent in the reading. You may be tucking wisdom away for a different season down the road. Celebrate the good days, stay faithful in the bad ones.
Quit Next Week
You may get behind and be tempted to give up. The Navy SEALS have a saying, “quit tomorrow”. The idea is that you can give in to emotion and quit immediately, or you can push through, get your job done for today, and quit tomorrow. We need to modify that for our purposes. If you feel like quitting, quit next week. Push through this week, catch up on your grace days and if you still want to quit next Monday when you get the email, you can hit the “Unsubscribe” button them. Don’t let the feeling of being behind cause you to quit on your goal. Push through, quit next week.
Let’s Go!
These are just a few tips that will help you get started reading. I’m looking forward to the year we are going to get to spend together. I’m ready to hear about what God is doing. Be sure, if you haven’t already, to pick your time and place for reading. Share it with a friend so that you can be successful! Also, I wanted to let you know that you can use the link below to refer people to the plan. If you share the link and someone joins because of it, I’ll be notified that you sent them. Maybe if you do this enough there will be a prize!
You got this.
-Woody
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