How to Choose What to Read Next in the Bible

Finishing a book of the Bible is a genuinely good feeling, and it is often followed by three weeks of not reading anything, because nobody decided what came next.

The decision is small and it is the whole hinge. Made in advance, the habit continues. Left open, it quietly ends.

Decide Before You Finish, Not After

Choose your next book while you are still two or three chapters from the end of this one.

Write it on the inside cover, or on the last page of your journal, or on a card in the back. When you close one book you open the next the following morning without a gap. The gap is what kills the habit, and the gap is entirely made of indecision.

Does Reading in Order Help?

Genesis to Revelation in order is an excellent goal and a common place to stop reading altogether, usually somewhere in the middle of Leviticus.

The Bible is a library, not a novel, and it was not assembled in the order it was written. Reading straight through is a worthwhile thing to do once you already have the habit. Starting there, before the habit exists, asks the hardest books of you when your momentum is at its lowest.

If you want the order, keep it but vary the pace. Read the narrative sections properly and read the law and genealogy sections more quickly, with a study Bible's introduction to tell you what they are doing there. Skimming with understanding beats grinding without it.

A Better Rule: Alternate

The rule that keeps people reading is to alternate between kinds of books.

A Gospel, then a letter. A history book, then a psalm collection. Something long, then something short. Variety does the work that willpower was doing, and you cover the same ground eventually while enjoying more of it.

What to Choose for Your Situation

If you are new, start with Mark. It is short, it moves, and it gets you the whole arc quickly. Then John, which covers the same person very differently.

If you are in a hard season, Psalms, a few at a time rather than in order. If you need practical wisdom, Proverbs or James. If your faith feels abstract, one of the histories, because they are full of ordinary people making a mess of things. If you are ready for something that will stretch you, Romans, slowly, with help.

Read Less Than You Think You Should

Ambitious plans fail on the days that go wrong, and every month contains several.

Three chapters a day sounds modest and is roughly a whole Bible in a year, which is a genuinely demanding pace. One chapter, read properly, is a better target for a first year. You are not behind. There is no schedule you are failing.

Plan for the Days You Miss

Every reading plan has a hidden assumption that you will not miss a day. You will.

Decide now what happens when you do. Not catching up, which turns a missed Tuesday into a debt and a debt into an abandoned plan. Just resume at today's reading. The point was never coverage. It was that you keep meeting Him in the text.

Pick the next book tonight and write it down. That is the whole practice.