The Bible in 90 Days

When I was somewhere in the 9-10 year old range, I determined to read the King James Bible through. My parents had already bought me the really cool Bible with large green Jesus lettering and huge painted pictures every couple hundred pages. Not owning a TV and not being allowed to read comic books, It was the rich colorful pictures that drew me in. Somehow I slogged through the Bible. I have no idea how long it took or when I finished, but I’m pretty sure I did make it through without giving up.

In Jay Kelly’s 2006 New Year’s kickoff sermon, he shared his goal of reading the Bible in a year. Inspired by the idea, I chose a four-track reading program and off I went… for about eight months. I hit the major prophets and just couldn’t finish. Doing the same thing for my Quiet TIme every single day just didn’t work for me.

In 2007 I tried again, this time recording the NIV Bible onto my MP3 player to keep things interesting, to stay awake (at times :-), and so I would end up with my own copy of the NIV Bible on MP3. I managed to last five months that time.

At that point I decided to develop my own read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan. My biggest reading hangups were Leviticus, Psalms, and the major prophets. At the same time, I felt like reading the Bible sequentially (like so many attempt to do) is counterproductive because the Jews and early Christians did really only had access to individual books of the Bible. My goal then (and I continue to work at it) is to create a program where people can naturally and topically read the whole Bible in a year. Subgoals include covering the Psalms and Proverbs along the way with relevant bite-sized chunks (e.g., scriptures about lying & deceit for the story about Namaan & Gehazi’s leprosy).
in 2009, knowing my past history, I found a program from somewhere with an accelerated schedule (90 days) rather than a full year. This seemed to be a good fit for me… 366 days later I managed to finish the Bible on 1/2/2010.

Yesterday I finished reading the Bible in exactly 90 days. How is that possible, you ask? It all started when I took my family over to Spokane for Tim DeWolfe and JoLynne Rawson’s wedding on Saturday afternoon. We stayed the night and on Sunday, we went to the great Spokane Christian Church for service. Jermaine Peacock preached a lesson preparing the entire congregation of >100 disciples to read the Bible in 90 days. It turns out that an organization (www.BibleIn90Days.org) provides materials to churches who want to take on this challenge en masse. These materials include special Bibles with the readings marked along with reading & discussion guides for midweek! The key idea is that all of us read books, and all you have to do is 12-16 pages of the Bible each day. I was so inspired that I came home and determined that if Jermaine’s 10-year-old could do it, I could too.

Let me share some things I learned from this reading project. First, I believe that much of the power of this program is in the corporate experience. The truth is that I did not receive that experience this summer. I sent out a general invitation for others in the Seattle church to join me, and a couple brothers & sisters in the North Shore took it on. However, we only reconnected every 4-6 weeks to see where each other were at in the reading.

A couple times I got to fellowship with one brother about our reading and it was those experiences that were by far the most valuable. The Bible in 90 days is sort of like the P90x exercise program. It’s intense and you feel closely bonded with your workout partner. It’s something you really can’t do by yourself.

My dream is that the Westside sector could all successfully do this program sometime in the next 18 months. To be honest, I think many of us are spiritually flabby and the discipline required to complete this program could prove immensely beneficial. Life in Seattle has a way of destroying any regularity in our times with God. Reading the Bible in 90 days is impossible without some sort of strategic plan, which I fear many of us lack. I enjoyed my time in Spokane last May, partly because life simply seemed less frantic and more measured. I’m fortunate in that my 60-minute bus ride each morning grants me a built-in block for my Quiet Time. But even if I lived next door to my work, I’d find a way to get some good time with God each day. If the Westside read the Bible like the disciples did on the original 1989 Seattle mission team, I think we would find our fellowship tremendously enriched and our fruitfulness would explode!

So what did I learn about the BIBLE during this experience? First of all, I learned that listening to the Bible is an essential aspect of experiencing it. I don’t think I would have made it through in 90 days if I hadn’t listened to the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah while biking to work. Hearing the word of God is different than reading it. In the first century, only a few people in each congregation could read. They experienced the Bible corporately. Paul exhorts Timothy in 1 Tim 4:13, “Devote yourself to the public reading of scripture.” Hearing the Bible read aloud without commentary is simple yet very powerful. Furthermore, it is a great alternative for those of us who hate reading, didn’t like school, or have large blocks of time that are not under our control.

As I ploughed through the New Testament, some days I read 4 or even 6 books. The same was true when I read the minor prophets. This experience simply wasn’t available to the early Christians. The earliest Christians simply had Jewish scrolls like the book of Isaiah with all its prophecies of the Christ. Once Paul and the other apostles started writing their letters, the lucky churches had 10-20% of the New Testament. Then they got smart and started copying the epistles and gospels en masse, ultimately resulting in the >5,000 Greek manuscripts that have been found to date. When I pick up a $1 paperback Bible from a thrift store, I don’t usually think about the incredible treasure trove that it contains! Every person today has access to the Bible, and they would have been the envy of every single one of the early Christians.

I don’t know what’s next for me. Right now I feel strongly motivated to keep working on my own Bible reading program that can make the Bible accessible to everyone. I’m also considering the possibility of developing a “Bible P90x” program of spiritual fitness for disciples. We don’t have to go to China or be in campus to push ourselves spiritually!

God’s Word is truly amazing. It endures because it is indeed “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). No one has ever fully plumbed the depths of the Bible. Every time you read it, the Holy Spirit rewards you with the gift of a new insight! None of us has ever seen God or even Jesus, but the Bible in our hands reveals more about God than we could ever dare ask!

Weeping may endure for a night...

I just wept... again. Today the court increased Miracle's visitations to four nights per week with her birth family. Since we've started dealing with the possibility of Miracle returning to her birth family, I have displaced most of the top 10 weeping experiences of my life. The only ones even in the running are maybe a relationship rejection, a couple people falling away from God, and a dysfunctional marriage situation in God's Kingdom.

Weeping is different than crying. When you cry, you're pretty much still in control. Tears usually come to me for good reasons: an inspiring song, listening to Sean Wooten describe Jesus coming back, a moving communion, pride over my kids.

When I weep, I'm not in control. Sometimes I wail. Sometimes I'm silent and the pain is too great for sound. When I see my kids hurt themselves, there is a period of silence before the wails and tears come. The longer the silence, the more it hurt. I wonder how God experiences my silent weeping.

The shortest verse in the Bible is "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Lazarus had just died and he had stayed away for a couple days so that Lazarus was buried, in order to maximize the glory given to God when he was resurrected. Jesus visited Bethany and saw a multitude of people weeping with Mary and Martha, the deceased's sisters. In Jewish culture, weeping over death had been raised to an art form and cultural experience.

After seeing both Mary & Martha in the throes of grief and the multitude of people sharing their pain, Jesus inquires about the tomb's location. In the brief dialogue that follows, Jesus weeps and then is deeply moved once more. I wonder how it came across. Respectful and empathetic for their feelings? In John 11:36-37, the Jews have two responses, "See how he loved him?" and "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" I wonder if Jesus wept at their spiritual condition. Or maybe he was just showing that he truly missed Lazarus.

Jesus was fully God and fully human and very much in touch with his emotions. Surely he handled them appropriately.

Weeping is cathartic. It releases the tension and emotional intensity that I feel. I often feel better just for having gotten it out. But I know it doesn't fix anything. I wonder if Jesus wept in the few days prior, or whether he had built-up tension that he had to release before he performed one of his greatest miracles?

The miracle certainly moved many people forward spiritually. "Jesus called in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.' Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him." (John 11:43-45) I wonder if Jesus' emotional vulnerability had anything to do with it? I should think I could trust someone with incredible power over the grave if I saw that person had real emotions.

I felt I was surrendered to God this morning, knowing the court date was today and that things could very well change. I was not surprised when Casey told me that the visitations had increased by a day. Nonetheless, it turns out I had plenty of feelings about it. I'm not going to get angry and hopefully my emotions won't keep me from performing my role as a husband, dad, or employee. But it would be disingenuous of me to claim that I can function perfectly fine without addressing this change.

One of the greatest things about the Bible is how it ends. In Rev. 21:3-4 God promises, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

There is hope for the future. Sometimes it feels like the wound will remain raw forever. It certainly takes emotional work and crying out to God to properly heal a deep wound. Tonight, I had no words to pray, but I started singing, "It's me, it's me, it's me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer" and before I knew it I was weeping. Jesus is the only physician who can really heal me.

One last promise about weeping is from the Old Testament. Ps. 30:5 states, "weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." Things look dark at times, but with God I can always hope for light around the corner. The Psalms are filled with emotions as the people of God in the past wrestled with their emotions and fought to rejoice and give their hearts to God.

2 Cor 4:17 offers more perspective: "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." My troubles now seem insurmountable at times. Tomorrow I will have to take one day at a time. But in the future when I see the face of God and stare out into eternity, I trust that my past troubles really will dissolve and fade from my memory into nothingness.