Hi, Church Family!
As we enter the new year, I have been reflecting on our core value of “Biblical Authority.” One of the best ways that I believe we can lean deeper into this value as a community is by pursuing Biblical literacy.
Biblical literacy means understanding the grand narrative of scripture from beginning to end. It’s about finding our place in God’s story by becoming familiar with the character and personality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as represented from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It’s also about seeing how God’s plan for salvation that began with the Jewish people has been opened up to every human being through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
While reading the Old Testament and the New Testament side by side over this past year, it has been exciting for me to see in deeper ways how the Bible ought to be trusted as an authoritative source of truth that reveals the character of God and can direct our every step!
In particular, over the last year, my own personal journey to prioritize Biblical literacy has helped me to see how sin and my attachments to the world can separate me from God and steal the life and peace that only He can offer me. As I’ve pondered the story of scripture from beginning to end, I’ve observed how God’s justice and God’s grace moves in the lives of imperfect children just like me, and I’ve become more acutely aware of the dangers and pitfalls that those who came before us have faced whenever they wandered or were led astray. Reading these stories has helped to promote a self-examination of my own heart, and it has prepared me to be better on guard against the schemes of the enemy who wishes to thwart God’s plan for my life.
In light of all this, I think it would be amazing for us as a church to set out on this same journey through scripture together in the New Year!
That being said, I want to invite you into a one-year journey to read the Bible from beginning to end in a bite-sized and manageable way that will likely require about 25 minutes each day. To do this, we as a church will be relying on the same free resource that I used last year, which is a chronological study of the Bible that is broken into a daily reading plan.
It is called “The Bible Recap,” and you can join our plan through the YouVersion Bible App here. (Joining the group provides a level of accountability as well as a place for us to share personal reflections!)
In addition to the reading plan, The Bible Recap also has some great (optional) additional resources:
- Daily Podcast: Because some parts of this journey through Scripture can be difficult at times, the Bible Recap also includes a short daily podcast that focuses on one “God Shot,” or one key takeaway from the reading each day. This should be viewed as a companion to your daily reading, and you can tune in and subscribe to that short daily podcast here.
- Daily Devotional: Alternatively, if you would rather read the recap of scripture each day, the same content in the Bible Recap podcast is also in book format which you can purchase here. The book is available in Kindle and paper format.