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The beginning of a new year is a good time to start new habits. A good habit for Christ followers to get into is daily reading and meditation on God’s word. If you don’t already have a regular Bible reading plan, or if you’re looking for a new plan, here are some Bible reading plans and devotionals.

There are several dozen devotional books in the church library. To make them more accessible, we have moved them into the Welcome Center. Also, you can check these books out for a full year. There is a huge variety of subjects and plans available.

Also available in the church Welcome Center are copies of the Helping Hand lesson guide, published by the Seventh Day Baptist Christian Education Council. There are weekly lessons and daily Bible readings.

The Helping Hand is edited by Steve Osborn, who used to be a pastor here at the Connecting Church. It is also available in Kindle format and large print. For more information, contact Nick Kersten, nkersten@seventhdaybaptist.org.

Our Daily Bread (https://odb.org/ ) is another popular devotional. You can get the daily readings online, by email, on Facebook or subscribe to the print magazine.

If you have a smartphone, the YouVersion Bible App + Audio has many reading plans. You can read by subject matter, specific books or sections of the Bible and different length of plans. It has plans to read through the Bible in a year, but it also has a plan to read though the Bible in 3 years.

The Bible app can remind you every morning to do your reading and you can select which version of the Bible you want to read. “+ Audio” means the Bible App can read the passage to you and you can follow along while it reads. The Bible App is available for free in the Apple App store and the Google Play store.

The BibleProject has several plans on the Bible App, but one in particular is “One Story that leads to Jesus” This one-year reading plan guides you through the Bible with an emphasis at looking how the entire Bible points to Jesus.

Besides the daily readings, it occasionally includes videos from the BibleProject that illuminate the passages.

Read more about BibleProject reading plans at https://bibleproject.com/reading-plans/

A plan that hasn’t made it into the Bible App yet is the Five Day Bible Reading Schedule (https://fivedaybiblereading.com/). You can download and print the PDF of the reading schedule and keep it with your Bible or wherever you do your Bible reading.

The advantage of the 5-day plan is that you have less chance of falling behind and getting discouraged. Every day you have a reading from the Old and New Testament, in chronological order. Every other day or so there is a chapter from the Psalms.

This is just a small sample of the Bible reading plans that are out there. Some are just a few verses with a longer devotional attached. And some take you through large swatches of scripture every day.

The important thing is to take advantage of this New Year to start a New Plan for reading the Bible regularly