Another Trip Through the Bible

Last May, I wrote about how I had spent the previous six months listening through the Bible. 

The next month, I decided to start over. It took 7 months this time but I finished it on January 30th. Again, I listed to the New Living Translation (NLT). I like how the NLT makes the text easy to read and listen to while maintaining the original meaning. 

What stood out to me
Old Testament

• God is incredibly patient. He frequently would proclaim through a prophet that was about to bring judgement. I expected it to happen right away, but often, His plan would take years or even over a hundred years.
• It isn't random. By going through the Old Testament in a short time, you see how God's plan works out over several centuries.

New Testament

• In the OT, you will hear about how the "Spirit" comes on someone and they are able to do something unordinary like prophesying. In the NT, it appears that the primary way that the Apostles knew that God was taking the Gospel to gentiles was that they also received the "Spirit" and did similar things as was seen in the OT. I'm still unpacking what this means for me today. I may share more of this journey later.

The App
And now a commercial for YouVersion, the Bible application I've used every time I've read or listened through the Bible. They have made a few updates to the application that make it easier to use. That being said, there is one update I'd like to see. The app works great if you follow your reading plan on a daily basis. But it you don't, it makes it tough. I tend to listen 4 days a week and usually listen to 2 to 3 days worth at a time.  Each day, I end up using a feature called "Catch me up", which shifts my reading plan to the current day. It makes that day the current day. I'd like to see a reading plan setting that makes the plan's current day the current day. Would save me a few clicks around the screen every day.

In case you are not familiar with the Bible, here are a few facts:

• There are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament
• Much of the New Testament is made up of letters written to individuals or churches
• The majority of the books in the New Testament were written by a guy named Paul. You can read about Paul's conversion to Jesus in the book of Acts, chapter 9.

Give it a try

A couple of the other guys in the 3gdadnetwork have recently read through complete books of the Bible and really liked it. I'll let them tell their own stories.