“He should keep it with him all the time and read from it every day of his life.” (Deuteronomy 17:19a NCV)

For most of the 2,000-year history of the Church, only priests got to personally read the Bible, but now billions of us have access to it. In spite of this, many believers are more faithful to reading their daily newspaper than their Bibles.

It’s no wonder why we don’t grow. We can’t watch television for three hours, then read the Bible for three minutes and expect to grow.

Many who claim to believe the Bible “from cover to cover” have never read it from cover to cover. But if you will read the Bible just fifteen minutes a day, you will read completely through it once a year.

If you cut out one 30-minute television program a day and read your Bible instead, you will read through the entire Bible twice a year.

Daily Bible reading will keep you in range of God’s voice. This is why God instructed the kings of Israel to always keep a copy of his Word nearby: “He should keep it with him all the time and read from it every day of his life” (Deuteronomy 17:19a NCV).

But don’t just keep it near you; read it regularly! A simple tool that is helpful for this is a daily Bible reading plan. It will prevent you from just skipping around the Bible arbitrarily and overlooking sections.

Talk About It

– With what projects or hobbies do you show great discipline in your attention to them? How can you apply that same discipline to your daily Bible reading?

– How do you think 15 minutes a day in God’s Word would change the way you approach your everyday life?