Switching It Up

The past several years I have been using reading plans to read through the Bible in a year or less. I mainly operated in this way because a reading plan helped me to stay on track despite my lack of discipline and also because I wanted to increase my overall familiarity with the Bible by reading through several times. The first two times I went through I used the Discipleship Journal reading plan (PDF Version) which really helped me to see the connections between different parts of Scripture as I was reading in four places at one time. After that I tried to come up with my own plan, but I had trouble following through. Based on recommendations, I started using the first volume of "For the Love of God" by D.A. Carson, which is based upon the M'Cheyne reading plan. It was definitely helpful because it provided a daily devotional thought which applied to the reading for the day. I have been using it for the past year and am just finishing up this week.

At New Attitude I discovered something interesting about how I take notes and process. When we spent time in the morning meditating on Scripture, I took my notes on the printout they gave us rather than in a notebook or in a Bible. It reminded me of taking notes right next to the text on printouts of papers I had to read for my graduate class. I was kind of surprised at how much this helped me in interacting with the text. After establishing the discipline of daily reading, I found that it can still be easy for my eyes to move over the text for the day without actually learning or applying anything. Though I've taken notes before (written down interesting verses or a thought), this seemed to be especially helpful.

Based on that experience, I've decided to try something a little different for my reading during the next year. First, I've decided to use a printout of the text for taking notes on. This worked well at New Attitude and seems like a good solution to keeping the notes next to the passages they apply to. Also, a sheet of paper is easily portable and I can keep it in my bag to pull out at lunch for a second look. The readings will be stored in a 3-ring binder once I am finished so I can go back and look at them later. I'll be having the passages emailed to me thanks to the ESV Website. Secondly, I'm trying out a Chronological plan this time around and hoping that it will help me to gain a different viewpoint on the whole of Scripture than I have seen before. Finally, outside of this more focused reading, I hope to be taking some time (perhaps before bed) to read different sections of Scripture without the intense note taking, to continue to know God's Word better and to balance out my reading of other books about God with reading of the Bible.

What do you do for your devotional times? Have you found anything to be particularly helpful?