The Bible in a Month

I read the entire Bible in a month and here's how it went.

In the ending months of 2022 I was struggling with deciding what I wanted to do in the new year for my daily reading plan. Over the last 5-7 years I have tried following plans and going freestyle and I know for a fact that I need a plan to keep me accountable. I was looking into chronological plans, a plan that broke down the Bible by theme (history, poetic, prophetic, letters, etc.) and a regular old Bible in a year plan. Nothing was resonating with me and so in the last week of December I decided to go with the thematic plan. You really can't go wrong when it comes to being in the Word of God one way or another, I tend to overthink it. However, on New Year's Eve eve I came across a really interesting reading plan that I had seen once in the past. @gospelscribe on Instagram posted about the "Bible in a Month" plan and I knew immediately that I wanted to try it.

Gospel Adorned is a website I am newly becoming familiar with and it was she who originally made this plan. Looking at this plan and then at my month, I knew it was going to be hard, but definitely possible. I spent the first 3 weekends of January on a plane, coming and going from 3 different places, and because of this I knew I would be able to catch up if I fell behind and that I had a little more down time than normal. I learned quickly that in order to accomplish this task, I would have to change a few things in my daily routine and that was perfectly fine with me. I am a lover of resolutions but find that they are often daunting, no matter how attainable I try to make them. So, I resolved to build better habits this year and this plan is a large part of shaping my resolutions into reality.

In order to have enough time in the day I spent the month of January up at 5:30 am 4 mornings a week, spending 1.5-2 hours each morning in God's word, attempting to read the entirety of the Bible in a month. These 5:30 am wakeup calls harkened to the days of opening the coffee shop in high school and college and actually weren't that bad once I got back into the habit. They only happened M-TH on work days, and I read throughout the day on the weekends. Reading the Bible in a month is in and of itself no great feat. I know those who have read the entire New Testament in one sitting and I always thought of it as an unattainable action, now, however, I know what it would take to accomplish that.

Learning quickly how much time was required to make this goal feasible, I started structuring my days differently. Early mornings spent in God's word, downtime spent in His word, free time and travel time, and basically most of my spare moments were spent in the Word. And that was just what my 2023 needed to start off well. I was forced to build the habits I was hoping to simply by having this plan pushing me forward. Now, getting up at 5:30 or 6:00 doesn't seem quite so intense. Spending 1-2 hours in the Bible uninterrupted seemed like a boring task before this plan, but now it sounds like the richest peace.

This plan isn't for everyone, I know that. Depending on how fast or slow you read it could be seriously overwhelming. A friend endeavored to complete this plan with me and found after just a few days that it was wrecking her sleep schedule to the point that it wasn't worth it to keep it up. My hope is that from reading this you can look at something like reading the Bible in a year and feel a little less daunted. That whatever goal or plan you are following is a good one. That regardless of staying on track or checking off the box, it is about spending time with God and with His word and not about the plan.

I finished this plan two days later than what is planned and that's okay. I am grateful for attempting this plan and feel that it has been an incredible reset and revamp in my spiritual life. I'm excited to dive into the Word each day and I hope that I continue to do so, whether it is for two hours or two minutes. God wants to have a relationship with us and being in His word is how we start.

“For those considering the journey, you may be surprised how doable it is. It takes about seventy hours to read the Bible cover to cover. “That’s less time than the average American spends in front of the television ever month,” observes Donald S. Whitney. “In other words, if most people would exchange their TV time for Scripture reading, they’d finish reading the entire Bible in four weeks or less. If that sounds unworkable, consider this: in no more than fifteen minutes a day you can read through the Bible in less than a year’s time.”

— David Mathis from “Habits of Grace”