If you were a full time student, you could spend all day Monday studying maths, every Tuesday studying history, Wednesday science, Thursday theology, and every Friday you could study art. That would work. It would work even better if you studied a little of each topic each day, even if you spent the same amount of time in total. Why is that? We know about a couple of the reasons, but there are probably more.

It is somewhat like learning to swim. If you knew nothing about swimming, then it is probably feasible to learn in a day or two, if you worked on it full time. That would be very fatiguing. But, if you instead spent a half hour a day, then your muscles would have time to recover from the exertion, and the lessons would be far more enjoyable and effective. Also, your muscle memory would have time to become established and integrated between sessions, especially while you are sleeping. So, this too would increase the effectiveness of the training.

You might have noticed, when studying one topic for hours, that it is refreshing to think about something else for awhile. It is like our brains need a rest from that exercise by using some other “brain muscles” instead.

This post is really about daily Bible reading. Yes, there are a lot of ways to do Bible study and it is great to hear about methods that have been a blessing. We are not discouraging anyone from using their favourite approach, rather, we are simply sharing a key part of ours.

For well over a decade we have been reading the Bible out loud to our family daily, completing the Bible each year. This has been such a blessing. We don’t do this out of guilt or pride, but because we want to know what He has to say. We read it every day because of the above reasons, but mostly because it is cleansing and nourishing to the spirit. We repeat it every year because we want to be reminded. We read the whole Bible because that is what God saw fit to record.

Luke 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Job 36:22 Behold, God exalteth by his power: who teacheth like him?

It is so disappointing when we hear of anyone discouraging people from reading their Bible through each year. Don’t listen to them! Though, as a family, we employ many other tactics, this is the foundation for all of our other studies, both in the Bible and elsewhere. For any teaching you hear, you will have read the biblical context recently, and can more ably discern if the teaching is valid doctrinally. How else would we know for sure that some false teaching is not at all in the Bible, unless we had read it all ourselves? Study the genuine, in order to recognize a counterfeit.

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