The new year, 2025, will be here soon, and as you go into the new year, I’d like to ask you a question: if you could choose one area of your life to improve, what would you choose?
If you’re like me, then you probably want to be a better person and have a more positive attitude. Maybe you’d like to reduce stress in your life, relax more, and laugh more. Maybe you want to improve your health—lose some of those extra pounds or start an exercise program.
The most important goal, however, is to improve your relationship with God, and the best way to have a good relationship with God is to read the Bible and pray every day. Reading the Bible every day will help you accomplish all the rest of your goals, and the best way to read the Bible every day is to follow a daily reading plan.
For this new year, 2025, I suggest following a plan that takes you through the whole Bible in a year.
In the next few minutes, I’m going to give seven reasons to read the Bible through in a year, but before jumping into those seven reasons, I have to say something about the importance of spending time with God daily. Jesus commands us to abide in him, meaning we must remain and continue in him. We must remain firmly connected to Jesus by obedience, prayer, and reading his word (see John 15:1-11).
So, even if you don’t read through the entire Bible, at a minimum you should be spending time every day with Jesus in prayer and in his word.
Now, let me jump right into seven reasons why it’s important to read through the Bible in a year.
Reason #1 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to walk with God. The main goal of a Bible reading guide is not to read the Bible. The goal is to spend time with God. Reading the Bible in a year helps you achieve and maintain a consistent walk with God. Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).”
God’s Word is your spiritual food. When you read the Bible, you grow spiritually. Jesus says that his words “are spirit and life (John 6:63).” Your relationship with God is possible only through his Word. Reading through the Bible daily builds that relationship. When you pick up this book, the Bible, you are spending time in fellowship and communion with the creator of the universe.
Jesus often told his listeners: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” In other words, you must open your heart to hear the spiritual message of God’s Word, and the practice of daily reading will help you to develop a heart in tune with God’s voice.
Through daily time with God, your emotional connection to God will grow, and he won’t be someone who seems far away. He will be someone who seems real. Reading the Bible in a year helps you to have this intimate, personal relationship with God.
Reason #2 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to understand God.
Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me (John 5:39).” Reading the Bible in a year will help you gain a deeper understanding of God.
Unless you read the Bible for yourself, you are dependent on what other people tell you about God. The Bible says that “faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ (Romans 10:17).” True faith comes from a personal involvement with the Word of God. You must chew on the Word for yourself. Don’t eat food that someone else chewed. Chew on it yourself. As you read the Bible, you will grow in faith and a personal knowledge of God. Don’t let God be a stranger. Get to know him. Find out what is important to him and how he feels about things. Read the Bible so that you can understand who God is.
Reason #3 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to learn biblical truths.
Let me be candid. The unfortunate reality in the church today is that many Christians are biblically illiterate. Many Christians have never read the entire Bible. And some have never even read all the New Testament. As a child of God, one of your goals should be to learn God’s word.
I have a question for you. When you get to heaven and the prophet Amos asks you what you thought about his book what will you say?
How will you answer the prophet Habakkuk if he asks if you liked his book? More importantly, how will you answer God when he asks why you didn’t read his book? Don’t let God’s Word, the Bible, sit on a shelf and gather dust. Pick it up and read it, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to have a goal to read through the Bible in a year.
Reading the entire Bible ensures we read all of God’s Word. Unless you have a good reason to read books like Leviticus or Chronicles, you tend to skip them and read the easier and more enjoyable books. The Bible says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).” Following a plan to read through the entire Bible motivates us to read those books that otherwise would remain unread. Some of these books, especially the ones with arcane rules and regulations and long genealogical lists, are hard to read, but even these hard-to-read books have a message from God. Reading the Bible in a year helps you to hear these messages.
Reason #4 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to understand the whole biblical story.
The only way to really understand the Bible is to read all of it. You need to see how all the stories fit together. God’s Word gives us a picture of Jesus and his work of redemption. The Bible begins with the story of creation and ends with the creation of a new heaven and new earth. In between these two events are stories of people like Abraham, Moses, David, various kings and prophets, and Jesus and his apostles. How do all these stories fit together? How does the story of Abraham tie into the story of Jesus and redemption? Only by reading the entire Bible from beginning to end can you see how the pieces of God’s plan fit together.
Only by reading the whole Bible can you begin to grasp the big picture and see how Jesus fits into the whole story. When you read the Bible, the light bulb goes on, and parts of the Bible that never made sense form a beautiful mosaic that is tied together by Jesus.
Jesus said that he came to fulfill God’s Word (Matthew 5:17; Luke 24:27). Read the whole Bible this next year so that you can see how Jesus fulfills God’s Word and you will gain a new understanding of the whole biblical story.
Reason #5 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to improve your mental and emotional health.
The Bible says, “Great peace have those who love your law (Psalm 119:165),” and the writer of Proverbs says, “Be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For [my words] are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh (Proverbs 4:20-22).”
Do you want peace for your soul? Do you want to be healthy? Spend time in God’s word, because reading the Bible in a year will improve your mental and emotional health.
Dr. Robert Friedland is a professor of neurology at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Friedland has studied people who have Alzheimer’s and found that people who regularly exercise their brains are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s.[1]
One of the best ways to exercise your brain is by reading the Bible. And one of the best ways to read the Bible is to have a daily reading guide.
According to Focus on the Family, research shows that people who read tend to be better able to concentrate and have an easier time processing information. According to this research, people who read have a better chance of having a successful, fulfilling life. They have a wider range of knowledge, have a better ability to understand how other people think and feel, are more flexible in attitudes towards others, and are more open to new ideas.[2]
Read the whole Bible this next year, and you will see an improvement in your mental and emotional health.
Reason #6 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to apply Word.
The Word of God has one true meaning and interpretation, but it has many applications. Each time you read it, you find new ways it speaks to your heart.
This book, the Bible, holds secrets that can be found only by reading it. I don’t mean that there are truths that no one has ever found. What I’m saying, is that you will find truths that you won’t hear in a sermon or on Christian radio. It may be something that your pastor has preached on but as you open the Word and read it for yourself, you gain a personal perspective that hits home.
The Bible has countless ways to touch your life that can only be discovered by reading through the entire Bible. Like beautiful and precious gems, these truths are lying buried in the pages of the Bible, and they are there, waiting for you to discover them. No matter how many years you’ve been a Christian, there are still hidden gems for you to discover.
Let me share something that I’ve noticed about Christians who spend time in God’s Word. I’ve found that those Christians who read their Bibles regularly are more open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. They are more open to the voice of God and more receptive to his leading. Read the whole Bible this next year so that you can apply it to your everyday life.
Finally, Reason #7 Reading the Bible in a year helps you to fight sin and temptation.Let’s be honest. Living a Christian life is not easy. Even the Apostle Paul confessed that he was in a knock-down drag-out fight with sin. Every day, we face temptations. Fortunately, we have the Word of God to help us.
Reading through the Bible in a year gives you an arsenal of weapons to fight against sin. When Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, he overcame those temptations by the Word of God. To each temptation, Jesus said, “It is written,” and he overcame the temptation with a verse from God’s Word.
The Bible says that we are to put on the armor of God so that we can withstand the schemes of the devil (see Ephesians 6:10-18). One of our most important spiritual weapons is the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.
Just like Popeye needed to open the can of spinach and eat the spinach to get the strength to fight the bad guys, so you need to open God’s Word and read it to get the power to fight the devil and his temptations.
To fight temptation, you need to know the Word, and to know the Word you must read it. Failure to read the Bible makes you more susceptible to temptation and the lies of the devil, but reading the Bible every day will help you to fight sin and temptation.
You might be saying, “Well, Pastor Steve, reading the Bible through in a year sounds like a good idea, but how much time will it take?
That’s a good question. On average, you should expect to spend about fifteen minutes a day. Fifteen minutes is a significant chunk of time, but the benefits of spending daily, consistent time in God’s Word far outweigh the amount of time it takes.
Reading the entire Bible may seem like a mountain too big to climb, but believe me, you can do it, and with a little motivation, what might seem to be an overwhelming chore, becomes a delightful pleasure.
So, let me encourage you to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. To help you accomplish this goal, I’ve prepared a simple Bible-reading guide that you can access here:
Read the Bible in a Year Guide
[1] Puzzles, Reading May Avert Disease, Cape Cod Times. An excerpt from The Associated Press, January 5, 2011. https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2001/03/06/puzzles-reading-may-avert-disease/51003130007/. Accessed December 5, 2024.
[2] Jewell, Andrea Vinley. The Benefits of Reading to Your Children. Focus on the Family, January 1, 2008. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/the-benefits-of-reading-to-your-children/. Accessed on December 5, 2024.
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