John Markum

Challenge #1: Read through the Bible

Edgewood Challenge #1:   Read through the Bible in one year.

For many years, Edgewood has maintained a focus on teaching the Word of God. But you shouldn’t take our word for it! You should read it for yourself and see what God says. And so we are unashamedly calling all of our people to begin reading through the entire Bible over the next year.

Let’s break that down… In order to read through the entire Bible in 365 days, you  would need to read on average approximately 4 chapters a day. Which takes the average 8th grader 15 minutes to read. For a mere fifteen minutes a day, you can read through the Bible. You could pull that off during the commercials of your favorite 1 hour TV show!

As many of you know, I am currently in the middle of reading through the entire Bible in 90 days. I am on day 46 and am about 4 days behind. But I was behind almost an entire week, so I’m catching up! When I get completely back on track, I’ll be just over the halfway point. I find that if I can stay focused on reading for 1 hour a day I can stay on track and even get ahead.

Our church has provided 1 year reading plans that split the reading up chronologically – an excellent resource. In addition to that, I want to direct your attention to a great online, Bible reading resource: youversion.com. YouVersion provides several different reading plans so one is bound to fit you. You can also choose to read in almost any translation. I happen to be reading in the New American Standard Bible (NASB) which I would recommend among a few others.

Bottomline: Get in the Bible! Spend some time in God’s Word. Create a regular time of 15 minutes to an hour and get alone with God. This requires you to be intentional about your relationship with God. Nothing worthwhile happens by accident. Including marriage, parenting, school, work,… and our relationship with God!

Imagine the change that we could create if, as a church, we all became faithful to reading God’s word? It would absolutely change the way we live, love, work, and relate to others. Let’s do this church!

Blessings,

John

Click here and check out www.youversion.com for yourself!

B90X

Ok, I’m totally blaming my friend and fellow pastor, Jason Smith, for getting me to do this… For some reason, I decided that I wasn’t busy enough between ministry, family, and maintaining my own sanity, and I have now begun a Bible reading plan that Jason and I (as well as several others) are fondly reffering to as “B90X”. What is that, you ask? We’re challenging each other, and holding one another accountable, to reading through the entire Bible… in 90 days. Now I’ve attempted some big tasks before, and I’ve read through the Bible multiple times… but this is intense! For one, Jason cheated! He began on New Year’s Day, a Saturday, which means I wasn’t going to get the first day’s reading knocked out until Sunday afternoon since I was elbow-deep in getting ready for a new night, series, and year for The Awakening. But I got caught up (2 days later, but who’s counting) and have been extremely blessed by God’s Word thus far in the reading plan.

I almost didn’t share this on the blog, mostly because I did’t want any of our readers thinking I was trying to flex my “I’m awesome” muscles, and coming off as proud or conceited. But I decided to go ahead with sharing about this experience for 3 reasons:

  1. It’s a lot easier to stay motivated when I have thousands  of viewer’s following my progress. Ok,… so maybe dozens, not thousands, but whatever.
  2. I hope this experience will challenge many of you to get into the Word in 2011, and possibly begin a reading plan of your own. Heck, maybe some of you are real Bible-reading juggernauts and will read through it in 60 days.
  3. God has already began overwhelming me with things from His Word in the past 4 days, that I feel compelled to share with you.So I’ll keep the updates down to a weekly basis.

If you are interested in beginning a Bible reading plan, I strongly urge you to go to youversion.com, create a free account, and select a reading plan. You can do anything from through the Bible in a year, 90 days, New Testament in 30 days, and on and on… some of them are pretty intense and require about an hour a day worth of reading, some are easy to follow and will simply keep you honest about staying in the Bible in 2011. I’ve found out that, so far, if I read for one hour, I can typically get through all the reading I need to, to stay on track. And that was while playing catch-up for 2 days. You can read through the entire Bible in one year by reading 4 chapters daily. That equates to about 15 minutes worth of reading for the average 8th grader.

Also, get someone to do a plan with you. Strength in numbers! And if you and your girlfriend want to go through a reading plan together, have other people join you.

I’ll post later about what God’s been doing to me so far in this reading, but go ahead and get started on your own reading plan. Feel free to use the comments on this post to ask questions about reading the Bible, or following a reading plan, or how God has lead you to get into His Word in the new year. Make 2011 different on purpose.

Blessings,

John

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