Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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Today will be a transition day between installment (serial) readings. I’ve decided to convert the first chapter of what was going to be a book titled The Biblical Case for Finding Jesus in the Old Testament into a 4,500-word essay titled “Finding Jesus in the Old Testament.” It will take someone almost half an hour to read. (It’s half the length of The Duty of a Man.) But if you’ve been reading the installments here on Daily Help for the last week, you’ve already completed it.
Though I acknowledge that this change is confusing, it’s not worth your time for me to explain specifically why I have to make adjustments to my writing plans as I’m writing. All you need to know is that if I promise you content on a certain subject, then you are going to get that content in due time. It’s just that I can’t guarantee the form it will eventually take – whether a book or an essay or even smaller portions of writing. I haven’t changed my mind about any of the content I want to deliver to you through these daily installments – it’s just hard to tell how many words it’s going to take to cover a subject, and how those words ought to be structured, until you get them down on paper.
If I’m giving you a 500-word installment each day (which takes about 3 minutes to read), it really shouldn’t matter to you whether those 500 words are going to end up in a book or some shorter form. They just need to make sense in the sequence of installments they come.
As you can probably tell, I’m having to break up the content of the book I’m trying to write in order to improve the framing. After all, my goal is to provide you ideas in digestible doses. That ain’t as easy as it looks; it’s hard to simplify things. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said “For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.” Therefore, I’m always willing to make adjustments if I come to realize a better way to explain something.
The installment series I’ll begin tomorrow will also be an essay because it’s another chunk I had to separate from the book I’m trying to write. It’s very much related to the subject I’ve been covering in the most recent installments: finding Jesus in the Old Testament. In fact, it may be the greatest FJOT I’ve told you about so far. Its title is YHWH in the Old Testament, but there’s a lot more to this subject than you think. See you here tomorrow.
The Duty of a Man 