In our summer series of messages from Psalm 119, we have ben encouraged to let the Bible speak to us in our day to day lives. Yesterday we learned from the enduring example of George Mueller- a great man of God- who describes the necessity of regular daily Bible reading:

"I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it. It is absolutely needful in order that happiness in the Lord may continue, that the Scriptures be regularly read. These are God's appointed means for the nourishment of the inner man- to consider it, and ponder over it. Especially we should read regularly through the Scriptures, consecutively, and not pick out here and there a chapter. Otherwise, we remain spiritual dwarfs".

If you are not already doing so, or are not sure of where to begin, let me encourage you to use a plan to read the Bible this year. It's never too late to make a start, and there are several great options available.

This year, I will be using a plan I have not tried before, but it looks like a good one. It's called the 'Five Day Reading Plan'. How about joining me by using this as a guide for reading through the Bible in 2017?

The particular attraction of a five-day plan is that it gives two free days a week- which allows for catch up for days missed, or the opportunity to read something else- maybe for Bible study or sermon reflection- on the free days. Also, the plan is what they call 'pseudo-chronological' in that it covers the text of the Bible in the order the events happened. So, for example, various Psalms come at appropriate moments in the life of David, the books of Kings and Chronicles are read in harmony, and so on. This helps set the events in their historical context. Yet even though it’s chronological, it’s only pseudo-chronological. There are Old Testament and New Testament readings each day and the gospels are interspersed through the year. An ideal arrangement.

You can find the plan as a PDF file here.

If this plan doesn't suit you- there are a stack of other options. Here is a webpage that summarises a number of them.