Time To Start Reading The Bible Every Day

It's a new yr & the perfect time to start reading the Bible every day. It's like taking medicine, it's something you need to do every day to feel better except in this case it's being spiritually better. My oddessy or adventure in devoting myself to reading the Bible every day began as thus: It was a yr ago that I got into reading the Bible from an actual Bible & every nite before I went to bed. A few yrs ago I felt convicted or realized that I wasn't reading my Bible every day like I should. I found on the internet some sites where you could get the Bible readings in your e-mail. I thought you can run but you can't hide lol. So I decided to try those. I did good at first but after awhile I got bogged down & would end up speed reading the e-mails or worse yet slipping them & then coming back to them later only to be all piled up & too hard to catch up. Around Christmas of 2005 I saw a Message Bible in a bookstore & really liked it. I figured if I had it I could read out of the Bible at nite before going to bed. So I asked hubby to get it for me for Christmas. It was on sale too. He got it for me & I started reading a chapter a day out of it each nite. After awhile I began wanting to read more so I decided I'd like to have another version to do more reading out of. I came across on a Christian website where they were giving away free cards with Bible reading plans on them. I saw a Gods Word Bible on sale or $5 or $6 so I had hubby get me that one & did the reading plan out of that one along with reading out of my Message Bible. That got me into checking out other translations of the Bible & looking at them & finding some I really liked. I wound up getting ones like the ESV (English Standard Version), Holman, New Living Translation, Sword Easy Reading King James Bible, New King James etc. & doing different reading out of them. Most of them my hubby got for me except for someone else getting me another Bible & a couple I got myself. I had hubby get me pocket size versions of most of them except my ESV & NKJV cuz those are easy to carry thinline Bibles. Anyway I started doing a number of readings from different plans including the ones in the daily bread booklets. I even took several of my Bibles with me on trips like our annual 2 weeks trip to visit hubbys sister & her family in Ohio so I could do my readings as I was doing each reading out of a different version. I was doing about 8 different readings each day. When we went to the reunion in the hillbilly area of KY Mike is from we went to a Bible Bookstore there. I found for sale there a card with a Bible reading plan on it. So I bought me one so si could do it & an extra one incase I lost that one. I read at nite before I go to bed as that works best for me due to me not being a morning person & if I have to go somewhere, then when I get up I am too rushed to read. Eventually after awhile I got overwhelmed & bogged down cuz I was doing so many readings. I didn't want to get too overwhelmed that I ended up giving up on it. So I decided that if I got overwhelmed & couldn't do all my readings that I wanted to do then at least I'd do whatever of the readings I could handle even if it was just one. I wound up doing the readings off the Bible reading plan card I got in KY. I'd do the old testament in my ESV Bible & the new testament in my Message Bible. I had come across something online saying the Message was a paraphrase. Since I normally don't care for paraphrases but since I did like the Message, I decided that if I read of out my Message Bible I would also read out of another regular translation so I'm not reading out of just a paraphrase. I was also reading a Psalm a day out of my Sword KJV Bible. I also did reading thru Revelation twice out of my Sword & AV7 KJV Bibles & read Daniel & Ezekiel thru once out of them. Cuz I had seen Jack Van Impe on tv talking about how Daniel related to Revelation & felt led to read the other 2 after that. Eventually got bogged down & rather than not read at all started reading a paraphrase. I was also reading a Psalm a day out of my Sword KJV Bible. I figured a Psalm a day is better than nothing at all. It's the lazy persons Bible reading plan lol. This Christmas my hubby got me a NKJV read thru the Bible in a yr bible that I wanted. He also got me a read thru the Bible chronologically in a yr New Living Translation Bible that's on sale at one of the Bible book stores here. So I am now doing the readings from those 2 Bibles & a Psalm a day reading. I hope to add to those readings the readings off the Bible reading plan card I got in KY . We'll see how many actually get done. The main thing is I am now reading before I got to bed at nite & I feel so much better for it. I have learned so much too. Didn't mean to ramble on so much but wanted to share my story of how I stuck with my Bible reading for a yr. The main thing is if you get bogged down or overwhelmed, read at least something each day even if it's just a little bit. It is better than not reading at all & you will have done your goal of daily Bible reading... :)