Why I Don't Like Reading the Bible in a Year

Have you ever read the Bible in a year? Or wanted to add that to your goals for next year?

Especially around the end of the year, this topic comes up a lot in the online space and in Christian circles. There are all kinds of reading plans out there that take you through the entire Bible in a year, from the New and Old Testament together to chronological to Genesis through Revelation plans. I’ve tried a few of them myself and found a few reasons they didn’t work for me and why I won’t be trying one again anytime soon.

I think anything that gets you into the Word is wonderful, there are just a few reasons I find these plans don’t set us up for success. If you’ve been considering taking on reading the whole Bible in a year, read on to learn my experience and why I’m not a fan.

Reading the Bible in a year is not for beginners.

I wasn’t familiar with the Bible at all when I tried to dive into reading in cover to cover in a year. I heard over and over that I needed to be reading God’s Word every day and I didn’t know how to get started, but I kept hearing about Bible in a year plans from my friends at church so I tried it.

I chose a combined New and Old Testament plan because I found the OT really hard to read and understand. I didn’t really know how to study the Bible for myself, nor did I know about all of the resources that exist to help with this exact struggle many Christians face.

I dove in with my Student Life Study Bible from high school and 2 years later, I still hadn’t finished the reading plan. I felt so much guilt and shame around this “failure” and started to give up on reading my Bible on my own altogether.

Just like with anything, it takes time and practice to learn and get proficient. Diving into reading the whole Bible in 1 year is not something I would recommend to new Bible readers or new Christians. Reading the whole Bible in a year is like drinking from a fire hydrant-it’s a lot of water but you only actually drink a very small portion.

Studying God’s Word is a lifelong endeavor and practice. In my opinion, there is no need to rush it.

It’s too fast for deep understanding.

The reason a lot of Christians don’t read the Bible or choose to read “easier” devotionals instead is that they feel how I did. They find it overwhelming and difficult to understand. Reading the Bible in a year is very fast. My plan required 2-3 Old Testament chapters and 1 New Testament chapter a day.

That is a lot of Scripture to dive into each day.

If you are a seasoned Bible scholar who has read each book multiple times, this might be doable for you. But I found myself so overwhelmed and understanding very little of what I had read.

That pace for someone new to studying the Bible is too fast to gain real understanding from Scripture. Was I encouraged when I read my Bible? Did I still learn? Yes, because I was at least reading God’s Word.

But there was little depth. There was little time for meditation and letting roots deepen. In my experience, quality is better than quantity. I would rather take a whole year to get through a few books that I truly learned from and understood than have read through the whole Bible in a year and barely remember what I’d read.

Depth is better than distance.

It turned into a checklist item and not a restful practice.

I wanted to read my Bible in a year because I had a desire to know God more and learn how to live a life that glorifies Him. This is a worthy desire all Christians should strive for but trying to follow my reading plan became more about keeping up with a checklist than being a soul-filling, restful practice. Missing a day or two or three lead to feeling like I had failed. I felt a lot of guilt and shame because I hadn’t kept up with my “good Christian girl” checklist item.

Instead of feeling a little sad because I missed out on time with my savior, I was dejected because I felt like I wasn’t doing good enough.

This is a big distinction when it comes to our relationships with Jesus. Our motivation to read and seek Him daily should come from wanting to spend time learning and being in His presence, not because you want to check something off your list for that day or because you want to earn His approval. You already have it.

As I was working through my Bible in a year plan and “failing” at keeping up, I realized these feelings of guilt and inadequacy were not from God. He wants us to seek Him simply because of who He is, not because of a reading plan.

These kinds of things are wonderful tools, but once they cross over to being more important to us than the actual act of meeting with our Savior regularly through reading His word, it is no longer a tool.

What do I do instead?

Eventually, I gave up on trying to meet this goal I had set for myself and instead reflected on my life and schedule to decide what would work best for me. Somewhere along my journey following Jesus I had been lead to believe that my time with God had to look a certain way or even be at a certain time of the day.

In order to figure out what would work best for me, I had to let go of all of that.

I knew that the way I wanted to dive in and study wasn’t conducive to my weekday schedule, so I set aside Saturday mornings to be my weekly coffee dates with Jesus. During the week, I read a First 5 devotional in the mornings, either in bed when I woke up or on my computer right when I got to my office.

I chose a book of the Bible and spent an hour or so diving into it on Saturday mornings. I did this for a few months and found I was learning so much and gaining much more from that 1 time a week than I had in the last 2 years of trying to read my Bible every single day.

If you want to see what tools I use and how I study my Bible, you can read the post below for a step by step overview!

I hope this helped you as you go forward with digging into God’s Word. No matter how you do it, or how often you fall behind, just keep going. Time in God’s Word is an investment that will reap more dividends than anything else you could do with your time.