My One Word for 2021

January 01, 2021 by Andrew Forrest in One Word

Since 2014, I’ve picked a One Word theme for the year. (Last year was 2 words, but you get the idea.)

This year’s word relates to a question I’m obsessed with:

Where does sustained success come from?

To put it another way:

Where does creativity come from? How can creativity be sustained? What does it take to make something of value? What does it take to get things done?

Jerry Seinfeld on Work

Tim Ferriss’s podcast is hit or miss for me, with more misses than hits. His best interviews are when he doesn’t know his guest personally and is somewhat intimidated by him or her. In those cases he postures and shows off a lot less than at other times, and tends to ask genuinely curious, perceptive questions. This brings to mind what one of Jim Collins’s mentors had to say to him one time: “you need to spend less time trying to be interesting and more time trying to be interested.” (I think one of the best interviews Mr. Ferriss has ever done was with Frank Blake of Home Depot—a good example of being interested, especially in his probing and curious questions about prayer.)

The recent Tim Ferriss interview with Jerry Seinfeld was one of his better ones, probably because they spent a lot of time talking about a subject that both men are interested in: what it takes to get work done.

Jerry Seinfeld is a disciplined writer, which is the only reason he’s been able to thrive as a stand-up comic decade after decade. Here’s Jerry talking about the process:

“But my writing sessions used to be very arduous, very painful, like pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I did it. I had to do it because there’s just, as I mentioned in the book, you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem. I learned that really fast and really young, and that saved my life and made my career, that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young. That principle is: you learn to be a writer. It’s really the profession of writing, that’s what standup comedy is. However you do it, anybody, you can do it any way you want, but if you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”

“If you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive.”

—Jerry Seinfeld, talking about the discipline of hard work

Putting Your Work In

You see this same principle in the lives of all professional athletes who make it. Sure, there are some people with talent who light up the highlight reels for a season or two, but there are no examples of athletes who stay on top for a career who don’t put in the work every day. There will always be Johnny Manziel types whose natural talent bring them fleeting success, but unless they learn to work, they will never be anything other than fleeting successes.

Recently I came across an interview with NFL quarterback Russell Wilson in which he said this:

“I gotta earn my career, you know, and how you earn it is by the approach that you take every day. There’s no such thing as days off.
“Someone asked me the other day….“How many days a year do you [work]”? The question is, How many days I don’t. That’s the real question. To me, it’s a 365 day lifestyle—it’s a lifestyle choice. I may take 2 days off a year…. That lifestyle allows you to play for a long time….
“Pretty much every day I wake up around 5….I always pray first and then I’m going to the facility or the gym and putting my work in.”

I don’t know of any professional athletes who have made it a career who wouldn’t say the same thing. Natural talent is what gets you in the door, but it’s hard work that allows you to stay.

My Life As an Artist

Several years ago now, I came to a conclusion about my work, and that is that my work is primarily creative. What I mean by that is that my primary task is to create something out of nothing every single week. I am—in my own peculiar way—an artist.

I know it sounds pretentious, but conceiving my job as a creative endeavor has been helpful to me. Every single week I stand up in front of a group of people—during the pandemic it’s been a much smaller group than before!—and preach. Preaching, to me, is about creating. Where there was nothing, now there is something.

I have the natural gifts to be a preacher—I have a good memory and I’m poised in front of groups of people. But those gifts can only help you to preach a good sermon once. But preaching once isn’t the job—preaching week after week after week, year after year after year—that’s the job. It is not possible to overstate just how hard it is to do this well.

And there is no way to do it well without putting in the work.

But let me confess something to you—that kind of work does not come easy to me.

My Two Best Sermon Series Yet

In 2020 I think I preached two excellent sermon series, in my opinion the best I’ve yet preached: Genesis (in two parts) to begin the year and Revelation to end it. I feel as if I actually understand those books now, and I felt like I was able to share that understanding with others in a clear and compelling way.

When I ask myself why and where that insight came from, there is one clear answer:

I put in the work, and God blessed it.

“Just Read for One Hour, You Idiot”

The kind of books I read to support these two particular sermon series are not quick reads—they require lots of concentration. I’m normally a quick reader, but with these books 20 pages might take me well over an hour. And so I committed to getting in one hour of reading per day, no matter what.

One hour of concentrated reading may not sound like much, but for me it was about keeping a sustainable pace, and allowing the hours to accumulate. “Just sit down and focus for one hour, you idiot” was the kind of self-talk I’d use, and it worked.

Consistency Is More Important Than Intensity

One of the things I really believe is that consistency is more important than intensity. Anyone can throw himself into a problem with frenzied determination for one day, but one day’s determined work is not what most problems need. Rather, most problems are solved with sustained, relentless focus, day after day after day.

To put it another way, the tortoise always beats the hare.

When You’re More Hare Than Tortoise

The problem is that I’m not naturally a tortoise—I’m naturally a hare. And in the age of the internet, I have to fight hard to keep my rabbit-like attention from flitting from one shiny carrot to another.

Deep Work

I know that Cal Newport is right, and that in a world of distraction the ability to give focused attention to the problem in front of you will make you that much more valuable.

I know he’s right, and I know that the only way I can survive in the game is if I put in the work.

At this stage in my life, this is more true than ever, because, by the way:

I have a book manuscript due to the publisher by April 1.

Jerry Seinfeld, Russell Wilson, Robert Caro

I think it’s because I’m not naturally a tortoise that I admire tortoise-like work so much. I find people like Jerry Seinfeld and Russell Wilson to be inspiring—I want to be like that. I want to be a tortoise.

For that reason, one of the books I read over the last several years and most enjoyed was a brief autobiography from the great biographer Robert Caro entitled, appropriately enough, Working. I loved reading about his patient, relentless process of coming to really understand his subject.

I also want to stand before God one day and give an account of what I’ve done with what he’s given me. I’d much rather be someone with one talent who made ten out of it than someone with ten talents who ended up with twenty.

But, that will only happen through work.

There Are No Shortcuts

The kind of work I’m talking about is the kind of deliberate practice, putting in the hours, doing the reps, private, unglamorous work without which it is not possible to be a sustained success. I’m not talking about meetings and appointments and phone calls and emails. I’m talking about sitting alone in a room by yourself and just, through force of will, making yourself focus on a problem, and working at it until you’ve wrestled it to the floor.

That’s the kind of work that honors God, because it shows we take his gifts seriously enough to actually develop and hone them.

In fact, I often feel the greatest sense of godly satisfaction when I can look back at something I’ve made and say, “I worked hard on that.”

There is a lot that I want to accomplish in the year ahead and in the years ahead. Like Peter Drucker, I’d like to accomplish more in the second half of my life than in the first. But nothing I want to accomplish will happen if I’m not willing to put in the work, day after day after day.

My One Word for 2021

And so, my one word for 2021?

Work.

P.S.

It’s 10:00 PM on New Year’s Day, and after I post this I’m going to bed a happy man. You know why?

Because I already put in my work for the day.

First day of the new year, done.

Here's to the Roaring Twenties

January 01, 2020 by Andrew Forrest in Personal

It’s going to be a great decade—the Roaring Twenties!

I’m not naive, and I know there will be hard times ahead. But I also know that life is what you make of it, and I believe these next ten years will be the best ten years of my life.

Why Not?!

Every year I pick a One Word theme for the year, but since it’s a new decade, I’ve decided to be extravagant and also pick a 2 word theme for these next 10 years.

My two-word theme for the Roaring Twenties is, “Why Not?”

Last year, just after Dabo Swinney led the Clemson Tigers to their 2nd National Championship in 3 years, he gave a postgame interview—all of which is worth watching—30 seconds of which have stayed with me since I first saw it. Over the past year I’ve gone back to that clip often.

Some background: Dabo, who grew up poor in Alabama, was a walk-on for the Alabama football team while he and his mom shared an apartment, because she had nowhere else to live. Dabo’s Clemson beat Alabama for both of its recent national titles. Here’s the clip:

Dabo Swinney gives a memorable answer in his National Championship postgame interview, January 7, 2019.

I love that!

It’s going to be a great decade.

It’s going to be the Roaring Twenties.

It’s going to be the best 10 years of my life.

Why Not?!

P.S. What’s your One Word (or two or three) for the Roaring Twenties?

Leave me a comment below.

My One Word for 2019

January 01, 2019 by Andrew Forrest in New Year's Resolutions, One Word

Permit me to say it again.

A few summers ago now, at about 4 o'clock in the morning, I heard someone call my name in a strong stage whisper:

"Andrew! ANDREW!"

I sat straight up. "Yes?! Hello? What is it?"

But my wife was still asleep. So were my children.

And then I knew.

This past summer, it happened again, in just the same way, at about the same time in the morning.

A couple of weeks later I was spending time with a someone in San Antonio who was doing some coaching with me. We were working toward an answer to this crucial question: "What exactly is my thing? What is it that God wants me to do?" And in that conference room with Greg, I had this piercing thought:

"But I already know what God wants me to do! He told me specifically."

This may sound crazy to you, but I knew the moment I heard someone calling my name that it was the Lord, and that he was calling me to meet him in early morning prayer. I know that as certainly as I know anything in my life. In the months after I heard my name called that first time, I was somewhat committed to early mornings, but often I woke and shambled down our creaky steps in a half-hearted, hurried way; my prayers were desultory and perfunctory.

This past summer, after that second early morning call and after the insight I had meeting with Greg, it all became just so clear to me:

The one thing I am certain of is that God wants me to pray early in the morning. If I don't do it, I am being directly disobedient. All the time people say, "If I could hear God speak to me, then I would do this or that." And here I am having heard the voice of the Lord Almighty HIMSELF telling me to do something, and often as not I wasn't really doing it.

I decided to recommit myself.

And amazing things that I thought were impossible have already happened. Immovable situations that I have been praying about have started to move.

But I actually don't think the amazing things are the point.

This past summer, some friends invited my family to use their house in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. In late summer in that part of Colorado, the weather is perfect: upper 40’s at dawn, lower 90’s at noon. I’d get up every morning early to sit wrapped in a blanket on the back deck in the dark, waiting for the sun to rise. The deer and the wild turkeys and the hummingbirds paid me no attention, if I kept still enough. I'd read my Bible and pray, and I would sit. It was golden.

But you know what my favorite time of the morning was?

After I'd been outside for hours and after the sun had risen, my 8 year-old son would tip-toe outside and join me. He'd climb into my rocking chair and snuggle into my blankets (I was wrapped like an eskimo baby), and we'd sit and quietly talk together. And I realized, after a few days of this, how much I was looking forward to our quiet meeting each morning.

It was my favorite part of the day.

What if, though? What if that's exactly what the Lord has been trying to get me to understand? What if early-morning prayer is not a chore to complete like milking the cows or walking the dog, or not even an important but sometimes bitter habit, like the deadlift or the pull-up? What if God Almighty Himself just wants to sit with...me...in the quiet of the early morning, before the day begins?

Therefore, I want to say it again.

All things seem possible in the early morning.

Nature's first green is gold

I love early morning, that time that seems like night until you look up and see that the sky is no longer black but has become that deep, rich blue color that only occurs there, then.

I expect that was the color of Eden's firmament, early Adam's first morning.

In the early morning, waking up and, for a brief moment, forgetting everything that you know except that it's a new day, that's the best time.

After that, of course, remembering rushes in like water through a sluice-gate, and the day tumbles over itself. That moment doesn't return.

But for that brief time, it's golden.

Early mornings are like a drop hanging on the end of a dropper, before it drips: all about potential, unrealized. And that's why I love them.

I wonder if Jesus loved early mornings for that reason, too. Before the Pharisees poked their fingers in his chest and asked him to justify himself, before he heard about the tragedy of the Tower of Siloam or how Pilate had profaned the sacrifice with the blood of those Galileans he'd killed, before John's disciples breathlessly told him about Herod's homocidal boasting before the dancing girl, I wonder: did Jesus savor those first few sinless minutes, before each day fell?

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

Nothing gold can stay, though, can it?

I memorized Robert Frost's little poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" twenty years ago or so, and I've always thought he says it well:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature‘s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf‘s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Dawn, which began pregnant with potential, always goes down to day, and day always comes with disappointment at best and disaster at worst.

Hopkins knew this: that in time, everything becomes ruined:

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

I love early mornings, but early mornings are like light itself: you can't hold on to them. Mornings turn into days.

And I don't need to tell you that days are difficult.

Days are difficult because that's how we make them--our dirty fingerprints are everywhere.

Every morning is like Eden's first morning: pristine. But no day remains like that. Days come with difficulty.

Yet days don't last either, do they? Days would have us believe that they are interminable, but we know by now that days irreversibly become evenings, and evenings inevitably become nights.

And every night is followed by a new morning.

I think that's what I love most about mornings, how there is always another one coming. Regardless of how heavy and ugly was the day, at least we know that a new morning is on its way.

Whoever it was who wrote Lamentations knew this about mornings:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning.
--Lamentations 3:22-23

C. S. Lewis says in his little book on the Psalms that Psalm 19 contains some of the finest poetry, not just in the entire Bible, but in all the world's literature. Here's how the Psalm opens:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.
--Psalm 19:1-6

It's a perfect image: the sun like a groom emerging from his tent on the morning of his wedding day, or like a runner who delights in the very act of running itself. (One thinks of Usain Bolt, effortlessly striding down the Olympic track.)

And it happens every morning.

So maybe God delights in mornings, too. Maybe the reason there's always another morning is because God himself can't wait to see another one. At least, that's what Chesterton thought:

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
--G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The ultimate morning, I guess, has to be Easter. It can't be a coincidence that the Resurrection happened "very early in the morning, while it was still dark." Of course the Spirit could have raised Jesus any time of the day or night, but here's what I think:

Easter morning was deliberate.

So, mornings to me are about the hope that God has a plan for me and for the world. Yes, days are difficult, but every morning is another promise that the Lord has something up his sleeve each new day. Yes, things are a mess, but God's not through with us yet.

Hopkins, whom I quoted earlier, has perhaps my favorite description of mornings ever (it's at the end):

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

"The dearest freshness deep down things." Yes, and each morning brings out that latent possibility. Here's that last part again:

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Yes. EXACTLY.

And God has been saying to me, "Yes. EXACTLY."

What I learned last year is that the Lord loves his mornings even more than I do, and has graciously invited me to share them, too.

So, let me say it again (and probably next year, too):

My one word for 2019 is morning.

I'd love to have you sign up to receive my newsletter. If you don't like it, you can always unsubscribe, right?

7 Reasons To Read Through the Gospels in 2019

December 31, 2018 by Andrew Forrest in Bible, New Year's Resolutions

I'm reading through the Gospels in 2019. We'll read each Gospel through once, and the readings are only assigned Monday-Friday, so we'll read at a pace with which anyone can keep up. Here are 7 reasons you should join me.

1. The #First15 Will Change Your Life

Nothing you can do will have a greater effect on your life than spending the first 15 minutes of the day in prayer, silence, and scripture.

2. You Need a Plan to Follow

Trying to read the Bible without a plan is like going to the gym without a plan: you'll end up accomplishing far less than you would otherwise, you'll play to your strengths, and you'll quit too early.

3. You Will Have Unexpected Difficulties in 2019

The best way to prepare for the unknown is to develop greater peace and poise beforehand. Reading the Bible is something the Holy Spirit uses to give us those things.

4. These Are The Most Important Documents in the World

Even if you aren't sure that you trust the Gospels, you simply must read them if you want to be an educated person. They are the most important documents ever written, and it's not even close.

5. I'll Post Everyday (So Subscribe)

I'll be posting something short every day (or, at least every weekday) to help you get the most out of your reading. You can subscribe to receive a brief post on each weekday's reading here.

6. Your Kids Can Do It, Too

Kids from elementary school on up can absolutely read through the Gospels. Do it as a family challenge for 2019.

7. You Have No Excuses!

The readings will take about 5 minutes a day;
Will only be on the weekdays;
Are so short that you can easily catch up if you fall behind;
And won't be from any of the difficult Old Testament passages, but only the Gospels.

In other words, you have no excuses!

[For more info, see mungerplace.org/bible.]

My One Word for 2018

January 01, 2018 by Andrew Forrest in New Year's Resolutions, One Word

All things seem possible in the early morning.

Nature's first green is gold

I love early morning, that time that seems like night until you look up and see that the sky is no longer black but has become that deep, rich blue color that only occurs there, then.I expect that was the color of Eden's firmament, early Adam's first morning.In the early morning, waking up and, for a brief moment, forgetting everything that you know except that it's a new day, that's the best time.After that, of course, remembering rushes in like water through a sluice-gate, and the day tumbles over itself. That moment doesn't return.But for that brief time, it's golden.

Early mornings are like a drop hanging on the end of a dropper, before it drips: all about potential, unrealized. And that's why I love them.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

Nothing gold can stay, though, can it?I memorized Robert Frost's little poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" twenty years ago or so, and I've always thought he says it well:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature‘s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf‘s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

Dawn, which began pregnant with potential, always goes down to day, and day always comes with disappointment at best and disaster at worst.

Hopkins knew this: that in time, everything becomes ruined:

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

??? And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

I love early mornings, but early mornings are like light itself: you can't hold on to them. Mornings turn into days.And I don't need to tell you that days are difficult.

Days are difficult because that's how we make them--our dirty fingerprints are everywhere.Every morning is like Eden's first morning: pristine. But no day remains like that. Days comes with difficulty.

Yet days don't last either, do they? Days would have us believe that they are interminable, but we know by now that days irreversibly become evenings, and evenings inevitably become nights.And every night is followed by a new morning.

I think that's what I love most about mornings, how there is always another one coming. Regardless of how heavy and ugly was the day, at least we know that a new morning is on its way.Whoever it was who wrote Lamentations knew this about mornings:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning.

? --Lamentations 3:22-23

C. S. Lewis says in his little book on the Psalms that Psalm 19 contains some of the finest poetry, not just in the entire Bible, but in all the world's literature. Here's how the Psalm opens:

The heavens declare the glory of God;And the firmament shows His handiwork.Day unto day utters speech,And night unto night reveals knowledge.There is no speech nor languageWhere their voice is not heard.Their line has gone out through all the earth,And their words to the end of the world.In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.Its rising is from one end of heaven,And its circuit to the other end;And there is nothing hidden from its heat.--Psalm 19:1-6

It's a perfect image: the sun like a groom emerging from his tent on the morning of his wedding day, or like a runner who delights?in the very act of running itself. (One thinks of Usain Bolt, effortlessly striding down the Olympic track.)And it happens every morning.

So maybe God delights in mornings, too. Maybe the reason there's always another morning is because God himself can't wait to see another one. At least, that's what Chesterton thought:

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.

It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

? --G.K. Chesterton,?Orthodoxy

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

??? It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

??? It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

??? And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

??? And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

??? There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

??? Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

??? World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

"The dearest freshness deep down things." Yes, and each morning brings out that latent possibility. Here's that last part again:

And though the last lights off the black West went

??? Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

??? World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Yes. EXACTLY.

My one word for 2018 is?morning.

I'd love to have you sign up to receive my newsletter. If you don't like it, you can always unsubscribe, right?

My Bible Reading Plan for 2018

December 29, 2017 by Andrew Forrest in Bible, New Year's Resolutions, Personal

I'm going to read through the Bible in 2018, but if I'm going to make it beyond the first few pages, I know enough about myself to know that I need a good plan to follow. If I go to the gym without a plan, I'll fool around for 10 minutes and then say, "I've done enough for today--time to go home." I need to have a plan in place before?I go to the gym, and in the same way I need a plan to read the Bible, too. Otherwise, I just won't get anything done.So, here are 6 elements of my plan to read through the entire Bible in 2018.

1. The Read Scripture Plan

I'm using the READ SCRIPTURE reading plan put out by The Bible Project guys. It's roughly a Genesis to Revelation plan, though the order of some of the Old Testament books are rearranged to help you follow the narrative arc a bit better.

The plan runs from January 1-December 24, 2018.
Each day's reading will take about 15-20 minutes to complete.
Every day there is 1 main reading (from either the Old Testament or New Testament, depending on where you are in the year).
And every day there is 1 Psalm for devotional purposes.

This "Read Scripture" video from the Bible Project guys explains the plan.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hUs4TXRuVk[/embed]

2. The Read Scripture App

There is a free Read Scripture app that I'm going to use. I'm planning on doing my reading in my own Bible (more on that below), but I'm excited about also using the app to help me stay on track.

The app includes each day's reading in a stripped-down format, so I can complete my reading right in the app, if I want.
The app also includes a setting to include a daily reminder on my phone, and allows me to track my progress.. I'm the kind of person who likes checking things off each day, so I'll use the app for that purpose.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the app also includes direct links to explanatory videos that are paired with a daily reading from time to time.

3. The Bible Project videos

The Read Scripture plan sometimes suggests explanatory videos to supplement a day's reading portion. (As I mentioned above, one of the benefits of the app is that it includes direct links to the videos, so you don't have to search on YouTube.) The videos the Bible Project guys are producing are REALLY GOOD. To cite one out of their dozens and dozens of really helpful videos, here is an overview of the Book of Leviticus:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmvyrLXoQio[/embed]

4. A Brand-New Bible

Though I'm going to use the app to keep my on track, I'm planning on using my own Bible to complete the readings. (We're handing out bookmarks at church with a month's worth of readings at a time; here's a pdf of the January schedule.)

I prefer to read on paper than in an app, when possible.
I like to make notes, circle, underline, etc.
This will be the same Bible I'll be preaching out of in 2018.

I used my Christmas money and bought a stunningly beautiful new Bible: a Cambridge Clarion Reference ESV in Black Goatskin. These Cambridge Bibles are $$$$, but they are absolutely the most beautiful books I have ever held.Here's how I decided on this particular Bible:

I didn't need a study Bible;
I wanted something relatively portable;
I also wanted it big enough to have room for notes;
I wanted cross-references (the little margin notes that tell you when the same quotation appears elsewhere in the Bible);
I wanted an ESV translation, since it's not what I've used previously;
And most importantly, I wanted a single-column text. All the other Bibles I own have double columns, but I thought it would be a good change to try a single column.

I eventually found myself deciding between two Bibles that met my criteria: the Cambridge Clarion ESV and the ESV Personal Reference Bible. Brad Schrum has a detailed and very helpful post with lots of pictures comparing the two. I decided on the Cambridge Clarion because it was slightly larger and I just liked the feel of it in my hand a bit more, but the ESV Personal Reference Bible was also a really good option. (If you're in the Dallas area, the bookstore at Dallas Theological Seminary has both editions, if you'd like to compare them.) If you are interested in getting a new Bible for 2018, here are two others that I've used personally for years:For a good study Bible, try The NIV Study Bible;For a nice thin Bible, try the NRSV Thinline.

5. A Bible Blog

Both on this site and on our church's Bible blog, I'll be adding thoughts from my reading. (On the church blog, my colleague Amanda will have notes for every single day of readings!) Occasional blogging will help me stay engaged with the reading.

6. The Bible Project newsletter

The Bible Project guys have a weekly newsletter than tracks along with the Read Scripture plan, offering a recap of the previous week and an overview of the coming week. I'm going to sign up on January 1. Go here to sign up; scroll down until you see the picture below. The newsletter is just one more reminder to help me stay on track--it's a marathon, not a sprint, you know?So, that's my plan to read through the Bible in 2018.I'll let you know how it goes....