As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.
1 Peter 2:2
There is a goal that a lot of people start, especially on January 1st, to read the bible in a year. Now this is an honorable goal to set for your year, and one that if maintained, will add great depth to your walk with God.
Unfortunately though, the success rate for this endeavor is quite low. One of the reasons for this is that it requires a number of chapters of the bible to be read every day. This is all fine and dandy when life is good and you have the time and space to plow through the chapters allocated for the day. The challenge arises however, when life gets hectic and you miss a day or two of readings. Then the pressure of having to stay on track starts to intensify, with the number of chapters needed to be read blowing out to quite a significant number. A few people are able to reverse the slide and get back on track with a day or two of reading many chapters, but for many people, the goal becomes too big of an obstacle and they abandon it altogether.
There is a better way. And it involves dropping the goal of reading the bible in a year, and instead having the goal (forming the habit) of reading the bible every day.
It works like this. Set a goal that you will pick up (or open up if on an app) the bible and read every day. It may only be a verse, a passage or a chapter. How much you read is not important at this stage. The important thing is that you do it every day without fail. Some days, because of time constraints or other challenges, you may only read a verse. Other days where you have more time, you may read a few chapters. Again, quantity is not important at this stage, consistency is. Every day, no matter what, show up and read something in your bible. This is the only goal. If you read your bible that day, no matter if it was only a verse, then you succeeded for the day.
To make this work, have a place where you record that you showed up and read your bible. A calendar can be helpful in tracking this. There are also apps where you can track your progress daily. As you progress in this, you will start to see a streak of consistent days where you achieved your goal. The most important thing now is not to break the streak!
What am I trying to teach you here? I am trying to help you develop the habit of daily bible reading. And beyond that, as you are consistent in the habit, you will be forming daily bible reading as a part of your identity. It becomes an identity-based habit.
Identity based habits stick. You are now a daily bible reader. This is an identity statement which will serve you very well for the rest of your life. Because the daily reading of the bible will not just be something you do because you feel like it, but will be something you do because it’s linked to your identity of what you do every day. Just like brushing your teeth or combing your hair every day, bible reading will become that much of a habit in your life. Where if you didn’t do it, you would feel odd, like you missed something vital in your day that makes up who you are.
You will find, too, that when the identity of being a daily bible reader is firmly embedded in who you are, you will read the bible from cover to cover over time. Not because you set yourself a goal, but because that’s the natural progression of a daily bible reader.