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Share Your Reading Plan Experience

If you’re reading through the Bible this year—whether on your own or joining us in our challenge to read 1 billion minutes in the Bible App™ during January—have you considered sharing what you’re up to? Jesus said we’re salt and light. When you openly tell others what God is doing in your life, you never know what He’ll do in the lives of those who hear it.

We’re blessed to live in a time where our opportunities to communicate are unprecedented in human history. Just 20 short years ago, if someone told you you’d be reading this blog right now, you wouldn’t even have had a context to understand what they meant.

Here are just a few ways you can share with the Bible App:

  • Share on your social networks. Mention @YouVersion on Twitter and in Facebook status updates. “Like” YouVersion on Facebook, and share the Facebook app and our page in Facebook. You can share individual verses—even your Reading Plan! We’ve tried to make it easy.
  • Write Notes about what you’re reading. When you mark your Notes as public, you can share what God’s showing you in His Word with everyone using YouVersion.com and the Bible App. (They’re on YouVersion.com, iPad/iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.)
  • Help your friends install the Bible App on their mobile devices. It’s free! It’s on iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, webOS, Java and Symbian.

And here are some other ways you can share:

  • Encourage your friends to read the Bible (whether in the Bible App or not).
  • Write about your Reading Plan on your blog. Consider not only covering what you’re reading, but challenging your readers and followers to join you.
  • Serve as a YouVersion volunteer in one of the many roles we could use help with: proofreading, user support, app testing, design, development, and more. Click here to sign up.

The ways you can share are limited only by your own imagination. Who are you praying for? Who do you know who needs to hear the message of God’s love? You don’t have to give them a hard sell. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar with a theology degree. All you need to know is what God has done in your life…and tell somebody.

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How to: Ask Your Friends for Help Reading the Bible

Yesterday we talked about the value of telling the people in your life about your goals. Today we’ll talk about taking that even further.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 says, “Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. But if someone is alone and falls, it’s just too bad, because there is no one to help him.”
(Good News Translation)
Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
(New Living Translation)

We need our friends. YouVersion makes it easy to recruit your friends and family to help you. When you sign up for a Reading Plan, consider taking just a minute to set up progress update emails that can be sent to a friend. (You can send them to yourself, too!):

  1. Sign in at YouVersion.com.
  2. Select My > Reading Plans.
  3. Click the link or the [Plan Overview] button for the plan you want help with.
  4. Click the Accountability tab (lower right).
  5. Turn Accountability on (lower left).
  6. Add each friend you want to receive updates.
    Note: They’ll need a free YouVersion.com account, and they need to be following you.
  7. Check your box if you also want to receive updates.
  8. Click [Save].

That’s it! Of course, things happen. If you happen to miss a day, it’s easy to get back on track. Just pick back up where you left off. You can even go to your plan at YouVersion.com and click the “Catch Me Up!” link at the bottom of the page, or go to your plan on your mobile device, view the Plan Info page, and tap the [Catch Me Up] button.

We hope you have a great year diving in to God’s Word!

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Go Public with Your Reading Plan

When we tell other people about our goals, we’re more likely to follow through and complete them. Even if you only mention it casually, it’s like making a check mark in your mind: “I need to do that.” Every time we talk to that person later, we’re reminded of our commitment. In this way, our relationships compel us to do the things we actually wanted to do in the first place.

Our friends and loved ones help us too, often without even realizing it, just by bringing it up: “Hey, remember you told me you were going to do that Bible reading plan this year? How’s that going? Where are you in it? How much have you read?”

Make your goal to read the Bible each day a part of your normal conversation. When you’re talking to your friends or family about everything else going on your life, even just casually mentioning it is enough.

Deuteronomy 11:18–21 says, “So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors.”
(New Living Translation)

There’s power in bringing the other people in your life…actually into your life.

Want a little extra help? Tomorrow, we’ll tell you how you can take this idea further.

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What Should I Read?

Have you ever read the entire Bible? It seems like a pretty big book, doesn’t it? So where do you start? What’s a good way to begin? Most people, once they decide to read the whole Bible, try to approach it like any other book: They start reading on page 1, then try to just keep going…

Reading Plans

But of course, the Bible’s not just any book. It’s much more than that: It’s God’s Word to us, a collection of inspired books and letters, given to His people, written across thousands of years. When we take them all together, the historical accounts, wisdom, and truth recorded in the Bible give us an overarching view of God’s overwhelming love for us.

To follow through on your desire to engage with the Scriptures every day in 2011, it makes sense to start with a plan. It’s our sincere hope here at YouVersion that we’ll be able to help people read 1 billion minutes in the Bible App™ just during January. Here are just a few of the 14 approaches we’ve brought together to help carry you through God’s Word:

  • The One Year ® Bible. In as little as 15 minutes a day, the One Year ® Bible in the New Living Translation (NLT) gives you daily readings from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs.
  • M’Cheyne One Year Reading Plan. Robert Murray M’Cheyne (pronounced mick-SHANE) was a Scottish minister from 1835 to 1843. His unique Bible reading plan takes you each day through 2 passages from the Old Testament, 1 from the New Testament, and 1 passage from either the Psalms or the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). In just one year, M’Cheyne will help you read the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice.
  • Chronological. Based on recent historical research, this plan delivers your daily Bible readings in the order the events actually occurred. Reading the Bible this way helps you understand the progression of what things happened when.
  • Bible in 90 Days. Make no mistake: This plan is a commitment. But the many who have gone through the entire Bible in just 90 days report that doing so helped them make lots of connections they had previously missed while in their Bible reading. You could consider it a challenge…or just a really worthwhile way to connect with God every day through His Word.

We want to help you love the Bible as much as we do. You can do this. Discover for yourself what a difference it can make to spend just a little time with God’s Word each day!

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Happy New Year!

Today begins many firsts: It’s the first day of 2011. The first day of January. And the first day of the God-sized goal we first shared with you back in November: To see users of the Bible App™ spend at least 1 billion minutes reading the Bible during just the month of January. Will you join us? Studies have shown a huge gap between how many people want to know more about the Bible…and those who actually read it. What about you? Why not make this the year that the Bible becomes a part of your daily life?

We’re ready for you! The Bible App is available on nearly every mobile platform, so you can read, take notes and share what you’re learning with your social networks. We have more Reading Plans than ever (more than 50, with even more on the way)! They’re a great way to walk through the Scriptures.

Here’s specifically what you can do to participate:

  1. Read as much Scripture in the Bible App as you can during January.
    (Signing up for a Reading Plan makes it easy.)
  2. Tell your friends about what the YouVersion community is doing. Tweet. Post status updates to Facebook. Write about it on your blog.
  3. Help friends and family install the Bible App on their mobile devices.
  4. Invite people you influence to join the revolution to discover (or rediscover) God’s Word.

Up for a serious challenge? Consider signing up for the Bible in 90 Days. Did you even know you could read the entire Bible in just three months? You can!

We can’t think of a better way to kick off 2011 than to devote ourselves to sharing the Bible, a book we love, with as many people as we can.