I Finished the Course

This morning I finished reading the Bible from cover to cover, in 88 days.  The program I was using through Mom's Toolbox was a 90 day plan, but there were 2 days built in for make up days.  Thankfully, I didn't need to use them.  I kept with the reading plan and finished on time.  Wow!

It was wonderful reading from start to finish.  Some days were difficult and others were easy.  Most of the Bible read like a wonderful story, going in chronological order from the beginning of man to the end of days.  The prophetic parts were a little difficult for me, but they just require more in-depth studying in the future.

There were so many benefits of reading through the Bible from start to finish.  Here are a few:

• Reading verses and a song comes in to my head.  There are so many, many songs out there that stemmed from Bible verses!  For a musically inclined person like me, this was such a blessing to see where the songs got their origins.
• Reading verses and knowing them.  There are so many verses I have heard over the years that I just can't remember where they came from.  It was good to read them and to put them into the proper context.
• Reading verses and realizing they are a lot longer than I know them.  Being a Cubbies teacher at church, I teach verses to 3 & 4 year-olds.  These verses are usually shortened so they can remember the key parts of a verse.  I've been saying them for 6 years now and it was fun to see how some of them are so much longer than how we study them.  For example, according to the Cubbies, Romans 5:8 says, "While we were sinners, Christ died for us."  But Romans 5:8 actually says "But God shows His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  The first part of that verse is wonderful!
• The blessing of knowledge.  Do I pretend to know it all?  Nope! (If I do, smack me.)  But reading through the entire Bible has allowed me to gain knowledge of God and His perfect plan.  It also helped me to understand and get a clearer picture of what happened to lead up to Christ's life, death and resurrection on the earth.  Admittedly, the Old Testament is what I have read the least in my life as a believer.  So reading through the entire Bible has been wonderful to see all the history.
• The blessing of time.  I don't know how He did it, but God granted me time each and every day to read His word.  Yes, my house isn't spotless, but everything that was essential to my household was completed every day.  I was able to add reading 12 pages of the Bible into my schedule and still get the essentials finished daily.  I've learned that in honoring God and putting Him first, He grants me time to still accomplish things I need to get done.

I've been asked if I'll do this program again in the future.  Yes!  Not right away mind you, this is something that does require a lot of time, for me it was 1-2 hours of quiet reading daily.  But in the future I would love to go back through and read it all quickly again.  For now, there were some books in the Old Testament that I would like to go back through and study, like Isaiah and the minor prophets.

If you've never read through the entire Bible, this is a great way to do it.  It's also a wonderful way to jump start your reading and get you in a daily habit of reading God's word.  There is another group starting up on Monday, July 11, if you are interested please head over to Mom's Toolbox and check it out.