The Bible is a fascinating book with the power to change lives. That’s a true statement, but let’s face it, if you’ve never read the Bible before, it can be pretty intimidating.

Sometimes people ask me what I get out of reading it. It’s an easy question, but it is hard to answer. I truly believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. In my life, it has had and continues to have the power to heal my sinful nature. Like a lot of people, I lived a pretty clean life externally, but I was filled with bitterness, rage, and lust deep inside. Trying to address that kind of negative internal dialog is daunting. I struggled with it for years until I developed a comprehensive Bible-reading plan. By the sheer power of that Word entering my mind, the internal dialog has been changed. I now live on the inside the persona I presented to the outside world. It has been a phenomenal change that took NO effort on my part other than to get deep into Scripture.

I tell you this to highlight my belief that the Bible is a living document with power to transform lives. It’s not some dusty tome, but a message from the very heart of God spoken to the hearts of men and women down through the ages. It boggles the mind that a document written by so many people over a period of 1500 years can be internally consistent and serve as a cohesive whole. Only God could do that!

So, let’s say you want to begin reading the Bible. How do you do that? Do you start at Genesis and move straight through to Revelation? Do you focus on the New Testament and treat the Old Testament as yesterday’s news? Do you break it up into more bite-sized chunks?

The Genesis to Revelation approach has great value because it displays God’s dealings with humanity from the beginning to the end. What I like about this approach is that you can vividly see the hand of God choosing men and women to build the DNA He would inhabit in the body of Jesus. Yep, you heard me right. The Old Testament describes how God chose a nation, then a people, and then a family into which He would incarnate. Even very curious Biblical references to Rahab, a harlot in Jericho, and Ruth, a Moabite woman who followed her mother-in-law to Israel, make sudden sense when you get the ah-hah moment of learning they are in Christ’s lineage. The problem with this approach is that it takes a long time to learn about the different types of writing in Scripture. There are a lot of “begats” to get through before the overall pattern takes shape in your mind.

A way to address this concern is to simultaneously read through different sections of the Bible. For instance,

• The Pentatuch is the first five books, attributable to Moses. They take us from creation until the time the Israelites arrived at the Promised Land after four centuries of slavery in Egypt. In the Pentatuch, God chose the nation of Israel into which He will incarnate.

• The History books (Joshua through Esther) tell Israel’s turbulent history from the time the Israelites entered the Promised Land until their exile in the Babylonian captivity. In these books, God chose the family of David.

• In the Wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs) we get our first glimpse into the heart of God—His intense love of creation, His pain at the separation caused by sin, and His promise to make it right. In a very poignant moment, Psalm 22 (written by David around 1000 BC!) speaks in the first person of the pain of being crucified. Interestingly enough, crucifixion hadn’t yet been invented when the Holy Spirit spoke those words into David’s heart.

• The Prophets (Isaiah through Malachi) make up the remainder of the Old Testament. These amazing men spoke God’s message, laying out God’s plan through the end of the age. In these marvelous books, which include eyewitness accounts of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, we find 300-some prophecies that spoke to the coming Messiah, all of which were fulfilled by Jesus.

• The Gospels (Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts of the Apostles) lay out  Christ’s life from four different perspectives. This is where we see the culmination of God’s DNA selection and the fulfillment of prophecies pertaining to Jesus’s first coming. (I should mention the prophets are on record with another 500 or so that pertain to His second coming—and many of those prophecies are being fulfilled in our lifetime.)

• The Epistles (Romans through Jude) are letters from the church fathers laying out Christian theology, harmonizing it with its Jewish roots, and forming the foundation of the church.

• Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It’s a prophecy book that pulls together all the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus’s coming in power and glory. It is the recounting of a vision given to the Apostle John. In his vision, John was transported ahead to the time of the end. He wrote what he saw, and for years it was believed to be a very symbolic rendering. However, as our scientific knowledge has progressed, it is pretty easy to see it as a first-century man’s depiction of global nuclear war—a chilling thought to be sure.

When people ask my suggestions on how to build a Bible-reading program, I often suggest a chapter from each of these sections per day. As time goes by, Scripture in its entirety will begin to take shape in your mind. You will be changed, and you’ll begin to fall in love with a message written to you from beyond the time/space continuum.

Soon, I will come out with a book entitled, The Challenge, which delves into each of these sections of the Bible and lays out some stunning examples of how science is just now coming up with concepts that were expressed clearly in the Bible. I think it’s a fascinating read, and hope to whet your appetites with some science-Bible tidbits in upcoming blogs.