I have one piece of practical advice for 09. Before I get to it, I AM planning to post something tomorrow on the CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE and I plan to write something a little more profound on the whole 08 to 09 thing.
That being said, here’s one practical piece of advice for 09 that can’t wait:
OBTAIN & USE A BIBLE READING PLAN!
If you are planning to follow Jesus in the year 2009, then you will want His Words to live in you. You will want to love God’s Torah like He did. You will want to soak in the gospel stories. You will want to let the prophets correct your life. There is no substitute for it; you need to read the Scriptures. There are lots of ways of doing this. But we need to do it & we are WAY MORE likely to do it if we have a plan.
I use a plan put out by a ministry called “Navigators” – it is called the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan (click here for a PDF version of it).
I’ve also used the One Year Bible. When I first came to Journey, Mike Burns & lots of other people were (and still are) big fans of the One Year. I did it a couple of years. Then I used Butch Whitely’s bookmarks that correspond to the 1 Year. I’ll mail those to any of you who would like them who aren’t SD people. The last 5 years I’m back to the DJ Plan. It’s 98% the same – main difference: it divides New Testament readings into Gospels & other so that you stay reading about Jesus all year. Both plans are great. Just pick one.
