THE BIBLE READING PLAN

• Attentive: God hears and responds to the needs of His children.
• Compassionate: God cares for His children and acts on their behalf.
• Creator: God made everything. He is uncreated.
• Deliverer: God rescues and saves His children.
• Eternal: God is not limited by and exists outside of time.
• Faithful: God always keeps His promises.
• Generous: God gives what is best and beyond what is deserved.
• Glorious: God displays His greatness and worth.
• Good: God is what is best and gives what is best. He is incapable of doing harm.
• Holy: God is perfect, pure and without sin.
• Incomprehensible: God is beyond our understanding. We can comprehend Him in part but not in whole.
• Infinite: God has no limits in His person or on His power.
• Immutable/Unchanging: God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
• Jealous: God will not share His glory with another. All glory rightfully belongs to Him.
• Just: God is fair in all His actions and judgments. He cannot over-punish or under-punish. 
• Loving: God feels and displays infinite, unconditional affection toward His children. His love for them does not depend on their worth, response or merit.
• Merciful: God does not give His children the punishment they deserve.
• Omnipotent/Almighty: God holds all power. Nothing is too hard for God. What He wills, He can accomplish.
• Omnipresent: God is fully present everywhere.
• Omniscient: God knows everything: past, present and future; all potential and real outcomes; all things micro and macro.
• Patient/Long-Suffering: God is untiring and bears with His children.
• Provider: God meets the needs of His children.
• Refuge: God is a place of safety and protection for His children.
• Righteous: God is always good and right.
• Self-Existent: God depends on nothing and no one to give Him life or existence.
• Self-Sufficient: God is not vulnerable. He has no needs.
• Sovereign: God does everything according to His plan and pleasure. He controls all things.
• Transcendent: God is not like humans. He is infinitely higher in being and action.
• Truthful: Whatever God speaks or does is truth and reality.
• Wrathful: God hates all unrighteousness.
• Wise: God knows what is best and acts accordingly. He cannot choose wrongly.
• Worthy: God deserves all glory and honor and praise.

This reading plan will take you through the entire Bible over the next two years. It has been said that the Christian life is a marathon and not a race. That’s why we had the desire to break our reading plan into four separate volumes. We want to help you develop habits and a long obedience in the same direction. Each volume will chronologically work its way through the story of scripture with key milestones that we will focus on along the way. You’ll read two or three chapters a day and sometimes skim through larger portions that contain genealogies and census information. Each day’s reading includes a Psalm upon which you can meditate and pray. By the end of the reading plan, you’ll have prayed through the book of Psalms two and a half times. There will be a few weeks of rest and reflection between each volume allowing you the time to reflect on the themes, truths and attributes of God along the way.

Each week as you begin reading through a new section of the Bible, we will email you the animated resources from the BibleProject that correspond to the assigned reading for further study and insight. These videos will outline the book’s design and overall message to help put your reading in context. In addition to these overview videos, you’ll also find helpful theme videos that explore several topics covered in the reading plan.

While the Bible is one unified story, it cannot all be read in the same way. By understanding how the Bible was written, we can better understand what the Bible actually is. Reading the Bible wisely requires that we learn about the ancient literary styles used by the biblical authors. But why did these writers express their ideas and claims through a variety of different types of literature? What was the purpose, and how can we understand them better?

The Bible is a multi-layered work, offering levels of insight as you re-read and meditate on the Bible. Explore the unique style of the Bible, which is meant to draw its readers into a lifelong journey of reading and meditation.

We know that the Bible is long and for many people an intimidating book, but we believe that the entire thing is telling one unified story that leads us to Jesus. So we want to help you learn how to read the Bible as you actually read through the entire thing for yourself. The Read Scripture experience is, first of all, a reading plan that has broken up the story of the Bible into sixteen chapters.

We rearrange the order of some of the books to help you see how this overall story works and how each book contributes to it. We begin with the creation of the world in the fall of humanity which leads to God’s covenant promises to Abraham and his family, the people of Israel. Then you come to God’s rescue of Israel in the exodus from Egypt, which is followed by the Covenant God makes with them at Mount Sinai.

From there, God leads Israel through the wilderness and then into the Promised Land where Israel grows into a nation and breaks the Covenant. This flows into the rise and fall of Israel’s Kingdom, which ends with Israel being exiled from the land. The story pauses right here and you’ll read through the poetry of the prophets who lived before Israel’s exile and also of the wisdom writings that reflect on this part of the story as well.

After this the story will pick up again and you’ll read the writings of the prophets who lived during the exile, then about the return of Israel from exile and the writings of the prophets who lived after the exile. You’ll conclude the Old Testament with the Book of Chronicles. It’s a summary of the story so far and how it all points forward to Jesus.

Finally we come to Jesus Himself and His announcement of the Kingdom of God, which is then followed by the letters of the Apostles to the people of Jesus’ Kingdom. Then, we’ll conclude the entire biblical story with the Revelation. A poetic vision of Jesus’s return and the healing of all creation. Each of these sixteen chapters has a number of reading sessions it will take to complete it. Some of these are shorter; others are longer. But if you take just 15 to 20 minutes a day to complete each session, you’ll be able to read through the entire Bible in less than a year.

Finally each day’s reading session includes a Psalm because we believe that reading the Bible is not just an intellectual experience but also spiritual.

Our hope is that the Read Scripture experience will help you read through the entire Bible with greater understanding than you ever have before so you can see for yourself the beauty and the wisdom of this ancient story that points us to Jesus.