30 Days With Jesus
Today at Sunday School, we started our new series on Encountering God. The series focuses on spiritual disciplines, part of an annual emphasis on the topic of habits for spiritual growth. This year we are spending one week on each of the following:
- Time in God’s Word
- Giving
- Prayer
Mark Driscoll has a great post that summarizes this discipline. In an effort to make the study more “hands on” this year, we’ve issued a challenge to the kids to spend 30 days with Jesus. There are 30 days between today and Easter, not counting Sundays. So each day, students will be reading a story about Jesus. You can follow along if you’d like. (This chart [and others] comes from Zondervan; our version just adds the dates we’re reading it.)
Each Sunday, we’ll check in with the youth to see how its going and what they’re learning. You may also be interested in a series I wrote a while back about reading the Bible.
Bible Reading Plan
Awesome thing happened this evening. I like to have an empty inbox when I go to bed. It helps me sleep better, knowing what’s there. I answer quick stuff and mark the rest for follow-up the next morning at work if needed.
I had an email from one of our youth with a number of questions. One pertained to what’s the best way to read through the Bible over a period of time. I figured you might be interested in the resource as well:
- I like to tell people to open the JAR: John, Acts, Romans. John tells the story of Jesus’ life. Acts tells the story of the early church. And Romans gives many of the key truths of the Christian faith.
- If your goal is to read every word in the BIble in 3 years, you’ll want to be systematic in your approach. Zondervan has put together a number of plans for reading the Bible, including a 3-Year plan, which might be perfect for you. This plan gives about 1 chapter a day for you to read and prints off an easy check-off sheet.
- Another option is to go more topical in your study and then fill in the gaps at the end. The same site from Zondervan lists a number of 30 day Bible reading plans that might be of interest to you. They also have some nice 2-Week plans. You could print the 3-Year plan and mark it off while reading the shorter plans. Then, look over the 3-Year plan after you’ve finished the shorter plans and fill in the gaps.
