5 Bible Study Goals to Set Before the Year Ends

There are enough weeks left in the year to finish something real. Not a whole Bible, but something you would be glad to have done.

Galatians 6:9 says not to be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season if we don't give up. In due season is the part that argues for a finish date rather than a feeling. Reaping is promised to the ones who stayed, not the ones who started well. Five goals follow. Choose one, not five, and write the finish date next to it.

One: Finish a Book You Have Never Read

Everyone has them. Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 2 Peter, Obadiah. Most of the short ones can be read in a single sitting.

Pick one you could not summarize if asked, read it twice in the same week, and write half a page about what it was for.

Read it in one sitting the first time, without stopping to look anything up. Confusion is fine on a first pass and the second reading answers a surprising amount of it.

Two: Memorize One Chapter

Not one verse. One short chapter, worked at two verses a week. Psalm 23, Psalm 121, Colossians 3 or 1 Corinthians 13.

Twelve weeks at that pace covers most short chapters. Having a whole chapter in you is a different experience from having verses, because you get the argument along with the lines.

Three: Study One Subject All the Way Through

Choose one thread and follow it. Rest, or generosity, or fear, or God's faithfulness.

Use a concordance or a search, gather twenty passages, read them in order, and write what you found. Six sittings will do it and you will own that subject afterward.

Keep the passages in the order you found them rather than sorting them by how much you liked them. Some of the twenty will complicate the others, and that complication is usually the most useful thing you will take away.

Four: Fill One Notebook

A single small notebook, filled by December with observations, questions and prayers. That is the entire goal.

It is measurable, it does not depend on comprehension, and it survives busy weeks. Three lines on a hard day still counts as progress toward a full notebook.

Buy the notebook small. A pocket sized one fills in two months and a large one sits half empty in June, quietly reminding you of a goal you did not meet.

Five: Read One Book With Someone Else

Ask one person to read a short book alongside you and talk about it three times before the year ends.

This is the goal most likely to change something, because you cannot quietly abandon it without telling another person.

Set the Date Today

Pick one of the five, write the finishing date on the first page of the notebook or the inside cover of the Bible, and tell someone which one you chose.

The year has room in it yet. Choose now, while there is still enough of it left to matter.

Small and finished beats large and abandoned every time. You are not aiming to impress anyone in December, only to arrive there having actually completed something.