5 Reasons Christians Who Read Every Morning Still Have Not Read Most Of Their Bible
It was never a lack of faithfulness. A devotional only ever hands you a small piece of it, and the same pieces keep coming round. ★★★★★
Somebody Else Has Been Choosing Your Verses. For Twenty Years.
There is a choice being made every single morning and you are not the one making it. An editor sat in an office and decided which verse belongs on the fifth of March. A pastor decided what gets read from the front on Sunday.
They reach for the same places. Not out of laziness. Those are the passages that preach well, that comfort well, that fit in a paragraph, and there are perhaps fifty of them in the whole book.
So the habit has been yours for two decades. The selection has belonged to somebody else the entire time.
"It had honestly never crossed my mind that somebody sits down and chooses those verses. Once you see it you cannot unsee it."
Which Is Why Whole Books Of It Are Still Closed.
Try naming the passages you know well. Most people who have read faithfully for decades land somewhere around forty. Every one of them earned, every one of them worth knowing.
Now consider what that leaves. Entire books, first verse to last, sitting in the Bible on your own table, never opened once in twenty years of not missing a morning.
Nobody skips a book on purpose. It is simply what happens when the reading is chosen for you and the person doing the choosing keeps returning to the same shelf.
"I would have told you I knew my Bible. I am still turning up whole chapters I had never read a word of, and I am sixty eight."
This One Hands The Choosing To The Calendar.
You turn to today's date and the day is already made up. Nobody curated it. Nobody decided what you were ready for.
A portion of the Old Testament, then a Psalm, then a Proverb, then a portion of the New Testament. Roughly fifteen minutes, and then you are done.
Keep that up for a year and your eyes have been on every page of it. The genealogies. The minor prophets. The letters nobody reads out loud on a Sunday, which turn out to be where a great deal of it was hiding.
"It gives me what the day gives me. Some mornings that is hard and some mornings it is beautiful, and both of those beat another paragraph about being encouraged."
And You Are Not Left Alone With The Hard Parts.
Reading all of it means reading the difficult bits, and that is where most people who try this quietly give up. A chapter goes strange, there is nobody to ask, and the morning ends in a small private defeat.
Beside a verse here you will see a small asterisk, which marks a biblical promise. An arrow means there is a Life Lesson at the bottom of that same page, where Dr. Charles Stanley takes that exact verse and goes further into it.
They call it Same Page Teaching. Every other study Bible buries the note in the back and by the time you have found it the thread is gone. This one prints it four inches under the verse. Fifty years of his preaching, written for ordinary people rather than for scholars.
"I had read a great deal of it. Nobody had ever taught me any of it. There is a difference and I did not know that until this."
It Goes In The Fifteen Minutes You Are Already Spending.
Same chair. Same coffee. Same part of the morning before the house is up. Nothing about your routine has to move, because you already built the hard part years ago.
There is no plan to keep and no streak to protect, so there is nothing to fall behind on. If a week gets away from you, open it to that day and carry on.
Which brings up the thing nobody says out loud. Almost everything sold to Christians about Scripture is written for a person who is not reading it. Start today. Build the habit. Do not give up. You are twenty years past that, and being spoken to as though you are not wears thin after a while. This one assumes you were already at the table.
"I have not missed a morning in six years. This is the first thing I have bought that did not talk to me like I was starting out."
You Have Been Faithful. The Selection Was Small.
Those are two separate facts and only one of them is about you. Twenty years of mornings earned you the right to read the whole thing, and this is the version that puts the whole thing in front of you.
The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Daily Bible
All of it across one year, four readings a day, with Dr. Stanley's teaching printed on the same page as the verse. New American Standard Bible.
- Every page of it across one year of daily readings, rather than a selection somebody else made
- Four readings a day, Old Testament, a Psalm, a Proverb, and the New Testament, in about fifteen minutes
- Same Page Teaching, so Dr. Stanley's explanation sits four inches under the verse rather than in the back
- An asterisk marks a biblical promise, an arrow points to the Life Lesson on that same page
- Life Principle teaching sections every few days that line up with what you have just read
- No plan to keep and nothing to catch up on if a week gets away from you
Read it for 30 days. If a year of it in front of you is not worth more than another paragraph a morning, send it back and we will refund every cent. No forms, no questions, no hassle.