Welcome to 2025! A brand-new year brimming with great new possibilities.
A favorite resolution at the start of the year is to read the Bible more, or to read through the entire Bible during the year. Unfortunately, for many, our Bible reading resolutions often remain unrealized, and are soon forgotten early in the year.
This is largely due to not having a clear plan as to how we are going to approach reading the Bible during the year. To help you avoid this pitfall in 2025, I want to suggest 7 different ways you can approach reading your Bible in 2025 and some steps you can take to make these ventures successful.
1. Reading through the Bible in a year
One useful approach to reading the Bible in 2025 is having a plan to read through the entire Bible in a year. This is doable if you just read 3-4 chapters every day. You can do this using a reading plan, many of which can be found for free on the internet. Or by simply reading 3-4 chapters of whatever book of the Bible you wish to read and tracking your progress until you finish all the books of the Bible during the year.
You may want to read the Bible in a translation you have never read before, if you have previously finished reading the Bible in a familiar translation. For some other suggestions on how to read through the Bible in a year see our January 1, 2024 blog post "Reading Through the Bible in 2024".
2. Studying selected books of the Bible
Another approach to your 2025 Bible reading could be to select a number of books of the Bible that you have always wanted to understand better and to decide to spend 2025 studying these books.
With this approach you can spend several months on a different book of the Bible at a time. You will want to gather, borrow or acquire study Bibles and commentaries, as well as other books explaining how to read the particular book’s genre, to help you in your study.
This approach gives you the freedom to spend months of the year immersing yourself in the thought and point of view of a particular book, as you study it verse by verse and consider different authors’ understanding of its meaning. Your study will also be enriched by reading and / or listening to the books you are studying in different translations.
It helps to have a clear plan up front. And so, it makes sense to actually select the books you want to study during the course of the year from the start, so that you can make a clear plan as to what you will be studying and begin acquiring study materials.
3. Learning how to read a particular genre of Biblical literature
The Bible is composed of different kinds of writing (called genres), each having its own literary conventions governing how it is written and understood.
Poetry in the Bible is a different genre than narrative, with different rules around how they are written and read. Similarly, prophecy is different than letters and historical writing is different from wisdom literature.
Your understanding of the Bible could be significantly improved by reading a book on how to read the Bible, such as Fee & Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, which explains how to read the different genres of Biblical literature, followed by putting into practice the reading skills taught by reading that kind of literature in the Bible.
You could for instance improve your reading and understanding of how to read Biblical poetry by focusing on reading the Psalms, wisdom literature and prophetic writings, in tandem with reading some books on how to read and interpret Hebrew poetry.
4. Studying a topic or Biblical theme
Another approach to reading the Bible is to study out selected topics or themes during the course of the year. A good place to start with this approach, would be to use a concordance to look up where words related to the topic or theme you are interested in studying appear in the Bible and then studying those passages.
However, this approach often requires a little more resourcefulness than usually anticipated, as discovering the places in which a topic is dealt with in the Bible is not limited to using a concordance to locate words related to the topic. This is because, often the Bible will address a topic without using specific words that we tend to look for. Conversely, sometimes related words are used in the Bible in passages that have nothing to do with the topic that we are hoping to study.
This is where reading the Bible broadly helps, by enabling us to locate books or passages which deal with particular subjects or themes. Beginning readers can perhaps seek assistance from more experienced readers by asking them to suggest books or passages which deal with a subject or topic they wish to study. Or topical study guides, such as Naves Topical Study Bible could be a useful resource.
Alternatively, one could choose to read through the Bible for oneself, paying close attention to all the places where the topic or Biblical theme you are interested in appears.
5. Reading the Bible as a Story
A related approach is to seek to read the entire Bible as a unified story, by paying attention to the various threads which begin in Genesis and then run throughout the entire Biblical narrative.
The Bible Project is a great resource for this, and there are also a number of videos in our Reading the Bible as a Story series that could also be helpful.
Threads that could be followed and studied throughout the Biblical story include, God’s Dwelling with Humankind, the Seed Who is to Come, the Image of God, the Tree of Life, and the Gate of God. Perhaps you could check out a few of these titles in our video library for an introduction to these threads that can be traced throughout the Biblical storyline.
6. Spiritually Reading the Bible
There are also a number of ways in which to read the Bible for a spiritual encounter with God, in which the focus is not on acquiring knowledge of the meaning of a particular passage or on its interpretation.
Spiritual reading of the Bible is an approach to reading Scripture that involves listening to, reflecting on and praying with different Biblical texts. It requires slowing down and reading the text slowly and prayerfully and even reading the same passage multiple times to meditate on it.
Rather than actively probing the text for meaning, it requires passively listening to the text, and allowing its message to act upon us, as we listen for God’s voice. It involves reflecting on the text by savoring words, phrases and concepts that catch our attention. And praying with the text by responding to God with questions, confessions and requests.
Once such approach to reading the Bible is Lectio Divina (Latin for divine reading). It’s basic steps are:
Reading a short passage of scripture slowly and reflectively;
Meditating by reflecting on its meaning;
Praying in response to the passage;
Contemplating the Word of God (such as in contemplative prayer – e.g. centering prayer).
There are many useful guides to the practice of spiritual reading of Scripture such as Lectio Divina, which can be explored to lead to encounter with God in our reading of the Bible.
7. Reading in Community
Finally, all the approaches mentioned above can be pursued together with others in a community. Instead of simply reading the Bible on our own, we can also come together with groups of others of our choosing to read scripture together.
We can do this in small group Bible discussions, or in informal book clubs, or in Bible seminars or classes studying a particular topic, or in small groups that meet to practice Lectio Divina or other forms of spiritual reading of Scripture together.
The advantage of reading the Bible in community is that we can learn from each other and some of our individual misunderstandings or misperceptions can be corrected by a community of faith. We can also discover truth and understandings which emerge from our group interactions, and which would not be possible to acquire on our own.
Hopefully, from the suggestions above you will be able to develop a plan that will lead to your reading the Bible more in 2025 and in these encounters to seeing God through Scripture.