Where Do I Start Reading The Bible?

To this day the most popular book in history is still the Bible. Why is that? It’s no ordinary book. It’s actually a collection of historical stories, letters, and prophecies all inspired by God. It’s a giant love letter from God to us to show us just how much He loves us. But with 66 books, over 40 authors, and 2 parts called the New and Old Testament, where should I start reading? This common question we have all asked at one point or another. Here are 3 ideas to help us get started.

One Year Bible

These are readily available in both physical book and digital forms. There are 365 daily readings that will give us passages from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. The great thing about this is that in one year, we can read the entire bible. Some might be asking, “Why don’t we just start in Genesis and read through to the end.” Well, there is a great old saying, The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. There is great benefit in reading both Testaments because they will help us interpret each other. The One Year Bible gives us a daily dose of just that. Now one word of caution. It’s very easy that if we miss a day or 2 of reading, we may feel overwhelmed that we fell behind and now we have to ready 3 days worth in one. Don’t. Just pick up where we left. This is supposed to be fun, insightful, educational and relational. It’s not a daily quota to check off, it’s a relationship with our Heavenly Father, and discovering the treasures of just how much He loves us.

Topical Study

This is nice because let’s say we want to grow in our marriage, as a parent, as a boss, overcome fear in an area of our life, and the list goes on and on, we can do a topical study. A great free resource that we can do either by ourselves or even with friends is at bible.com. They have mobile apps and websites that we can use to choose a topic and go through that study. They often have passages with scripture, followed up with an illustrative story and some questions to help us go deeper.

Fresh Start

For most people that have either given their life to Christ for the first time or rededicated their life, they would love to have a firm foundation as they start their relationship with God. Which principles from the Bible we should understand early on is covered in Fresh Start. Fresh Start is a video class that Pastor Erik put together to help believers have a solid start. We host this class every month and for more information visit elementchurch.com/freshstart