5 Reasons Christians Who Have Always Found The Bible Boring Or Confusing Can't Put This One Down
It was never that you were not smart enough, and it was never that you were not faithful enough. In this one, Dr. Charles Stanley explains the hard verses at the foot of the same page you are reading.
The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Daily Bible · NASB
You Were Never Going To Get Through It Like A Novel. And It Was Never Boredom.
January begins with a clean notebook and a fresh promise: this time I am reading the whole Bible.
Genesis carries you because it moves like a story. Exodus keeps moving. Then Leviticus arrives, seventeen straight days of sacrifice law, and the book goes back on the shelf.
Open a hundred Bibles that stopped getting read. The bookmark is in almost the same place every time. About an inch in.
If this were willpower, people would quit at random points. They do not. They quit where the layout stops working.
And here is what nobody says out loud in church. Plenty of faithful people find parts of the Bible boring. The genealogies. The census lists. The measurements in cubits.
A passage feels boring when you cannot follow it. Boring is the symptom. Not understanding is the cause.
This Daily Bible changes the route. Each date brings you four places in Scripture:
- Old Testament — the longest portion of the day
- A Psalm
- A Proverb
- New Testament
So on a Leviticus morning you still get a psalm, a proverb and something from the Gospels. About fifteen minutes, and you are done.
The dry parts get carried by the parts that are not. That is how somebody who has quit five times gets to December.
If this were willpower, people would quit at random points. They do not.
The first enemy: a straight line through sixty-six very different books
When A Verse Is Difficult, The Explanation Is Right There On The Page
You read a line. You do not quite understand it. And you keep going.
Everybody does that. Do it enough times and reading the Bible turns into pretending. That is where most people stop.
So Dr. Charles Stanley put two small marks in the margin of this one.
A star means the verse beside it is a promise from God. In an ordinary Bible a promise is set in the same size type as a census record. Nothing tells you which is which. One small mark, and the page sorts itself.
An arrow means look down. At the foot of that same page is a block headed LIFE LESSONS, where Dr. Stanley takes that verse apart in plain words. Not a commentary. Not the back of the book. The page you are already on.
“Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life.”
There is an arrow beside it, and underneath: we cannot always see goodness and mercy ahead of us, but when we look back, we can see all the ways God has helped us.
You can hear that verse read at funerals for forty years and never once have somebody say that to you.
You do not leave the page, search your phone, open three tabs and forget what you were reading. Your finger follows the arrow down.
You are not just reading the Bible. Dr. Stanley is teaching you while you read it.
You are not just reading the Bible. Dr. Stanley is teaching you while you read it.
The second enemy: quietly skimming past what you did not understand
Every Verse You Know, Somebody Else Chose For You
You are not somebody who does not know the Bible.
You can finish Psalm 23 from memory. You know the Christmas story and the Easter story. You could sit down and tell a child about Noah, and Moses, and the lions' den.
So here is a question worth sitting with. Who picked those?
A pastor picked most of them, over twenty years of Sunday mornings. A Sunday school teacher picked a few more. Your mother picked one and wrote it inside a card. Every one of them was choosing.
So your Bible knowledge has the shape of other people's favorites. It does not have the shape of the book.
That is not ignorance. That is forty years of Sunday mornings, and the pieces never joined up.
Dr. Stanley explains what you read. He does not choose what you read. The date does that, and the date has no favorites.
This one is laid out by the day, all the way through. So across one year, your eyes reach every page. Including the pages nobody would ever have chosen for you.
Forty years of Sunday mornings. And the pieces never joined up.
The bonus enemy: a lifetime of other people's favorite verses
Missing A Morning Does Not Require Another Monday, Another January, Or Another Plan
A reading plan feels simple until life interrupts it. A doctor's appointment takes Tuesday, family arrives Thursday, and the next quiet morning opens beneath a stack of missed assignments.
Once the plan feels like a debt, opening the Bible can feel like admitting how far behind you are.
A plan tracks your progress, which means it also tracks what you owe it. Miss a Tuesday and a Thursday and it tells you that you are nine days behind.
Being nine days behind is a far better reason to quit than boredom ever was.
There is no schedule here. Open it to today's date and today is a full day's reading, however long it has been.
There is no day to catch up to.
The date also brings you into passages a topical search would never find for you: a short Proverb about speech, a Psalm for a hard week, or a sentence in an epistle that sends you somewhere else.
“He who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets, therefore do not associate with a gossip.”
A perfect streak is unnecessary. Today's date already tells you where the next reading begins.
The third enemy: believing one missed week ruined the whole yearFour Formats Put The Work In Different Places
The useful comparison is what each format asks of you at the two moments that stop a reading habit: choosing where to begin, and meeting a verse you do not understand.
| Format | Where the morning begins | When a verse is difficult |
|---|---|---|
| Your Bible | You choose the book and the chapter. | You skim past it. |
| A reading plan | You consult the schedule, then find the passages. | The plan gives you a route, not an explanation. |
| A devotional | Somebody else picked the passage and the theme. | That verse may not be in there at all. |
| This Daily Bible | You turn to the date. Four readings are waiting. | An arrow, and the answer at the foot of the same page. |
When Something Is Weighing On You, You Will Know Where To Turn
Some mornings you sit down with something already pressing on you.
A diagnosis. A phone call. A decision you have gone back and forth on for a month. Someone you love in hospice.
And you have no idea where in the Bible to even look.
So you read whatever is in front of you and it does not touch the thing. Or you close it and do not read at all.
There are two sections in here built for exactly that.
- Answers To Life's Questions. A real question printed plainly, with the answer underneath. You look up the situation rather than the word
- What The Bible Says About. Everything Scripture says on one subject, gathered in one place
“If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?”
Gideon's question gives that feeling biblical language before the teaching walks through it.
And every so often a full Life Principle section, a longer teaching that lines up with what you have just been reading. These are the truths Dr. Stanley taught for fifty years.
Here is one. As children of a sovereign God, we are never victims of our circumstances.
Sit with that on a morning when things feel heavy.
You bring the question. The page shows you where Scripture begins answering it.
The fourth enemy: needing help and not knowing which book to open
You Were Never Bad At The Bible. You Just Never Had One Built To Help You.
Think about what happens in a sermon.
A man reads a passage out loud. Then he spends twenty minutes telling you what it means, and where it touches an ordinary Tuesday.
Passage, then explanation. It is the oldest teaching structure the church has. Nobody ever put it in the book.
That is all this Bible is. The passage, then a man explaining it, on the same page. Page after page after page.
And the man explaining it is Dr. Charles F. Stanley, who pastored First Baptist Atlanta for close to fifty years and taught on In Touch for four decades.
It is easy to believe that people who understand their Bible were handed something you were not. A sharper mind for it. A steadier faith.
That belief has stopped more good people from trying again than anything else on this page.
The truth is simpler. They had help. A father who explained it at the table. A pastor who taught verse by verse for ten years. Four years of seminary.
Nobody understands a difficult book unaided. The only real difference is who had somebody explaining it.
You already have the heart for this. What you never had was a Bible built to meet you where you are.
You were never bad at the Bible. You just never had one built to help you.
The fifth enemy: mistaking a lack of help for a lack of faithThe Mechanism Is Printed On The Page
The daily sequence, the margin symbols, the teaching blocks and the dated pages are all visible before you decide whether this belongs in your morning.
The Date Chooses
Each day already contains the four readings. The first decision of the morning has been removed.
The Margin Points
Stars identify promises and arrows point to the Life Lesson on the page you are reading.
The Notes Teach
Life Lessons, Life Principles, topic sections and questions connect Scripture to ordinary decisions.
“This is how I finally got through the Bible in a year … this is my fifth time through.”
She showed her own marked, visibly used copy while explaining the daily sequence and the page symbols. That is her experience, and reading habits vary from person to person.
What Readers Say
The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Daily Bible
The verse, then Dr. Charles Stanley explaining it, printed on the same page. One dated reading a morning, about fifteen minutes, until you have read the whole book.
Charles F. Stanley · New American Standard · 365 Dated Readings
- Every day's reading already chosen, so you never decide where to start
- Old Testament, a Psalm, a Proverb and New Testament daily, so no morning is all dry
- A star marks every promise from God, so you know one when you see it
- An arrow points to the Life Lesson on that same page, where Dr. Stanley explains the verse
- Life Principles, full teaching pages, lined up with what you have just read
- Life Examples, showing a real person in Scripture and what happened to them
- What The Bible Says About, gathering everything Scripture says on one subject
- Answers To Life's Questions, so you look up the situation rather than the word
- The complete New American Standard text, all sixty six books
- 365 dated readings, so twelve months from now you will have read the whole Bible
- Free express shipping and The Daily Prayer Blueprint ebook on 2 or 3 copies
- No schedule to fall behind on
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The Plain Answers
Is this the whole Bible, or a devotional?
It is the whole Bible. The complete New American Standard text, all sixty six books, arranged into 365 dated daily readings. Nothing is left out and nothing is reworded. What has been added is the teaching, printed underneath the passages it belongs to.
I have quit every reading plan I ever started.
That is exactly who this was built for. A plan tracks your progress, so it also tracks how far behind you are. This tracks the calendar. Turn to today's date and that day is a full day's reading, however long it has been. You do not have to start in January and you can never be behind.
Honestly, I find a lot of it boring. Will this be different?
Every morning gives you four different places in Scripture rather than one, so you are never stuck in a dry stretch on its own. On a Leviticus morning you still get a psalm, a proverb and something from the Gospels. And where a passage is hard, the explanation is printed on the same page.
Do I need to know the Bible well to understand this?
No. It was built for the opposite. Wherever there is an arrow in the margin, Dr. Stanley explains that verse on the same page in plain everyday words. You never need a commentary, a class, an app, or somebody to ask.
What are the star and the arrow?
A star beside a verse means that verse is a promise from God. An arrow means there is a Life Lesson on that same page where Dr. Stanley goes deeper on what you just read. Once you know what the two marks mean you stop skimming, because you can see where the teaching is.
How long does one day take?
Readers time it at twelve to eighteen minutes depending on the day and whether you pause over the teaching notes.
Which translation is this?
The New American Standard Bible. It is translated as close to word for word as English allows, straight from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and it is widely considered one of the most literal translations in print.
Is it wrong to read a different version than the one I grew up with?
No. The New American Standard was translated from the same Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek manuscripts, by scholars whose stated goal was to stay as close to the original wording as English allows. It is not a paraphrase and nothing has been softened. A great many lifelong King James readers keep their old Bible on the shelf and read this one every morning.
Which edition is shown here?
The red NASB Daily Bible with 365 dated readings. It is a different volume from the separate Life Principles Bible, so use the interior photographs above to confirm you are ordering the one on this page.
I already own a Bible.
So does almost everyone who orders this. The question is not whether you own one, it is whether the one you own has ever explained itself to you. If it has, you do not need this.
What if it does not work for me?
Read it for thirty days. If Scripture has not started opening up for you, send it back and we will refund it. See the refund policy for details.
You Were Never The Problem. The Bible You Were Handed Was.
Most Bibles sit closed while another year goes by. This one ends up open, marked and worn, because it teaches you while you read and never leaves you alone on a page you do not understand.
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