The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - BONUS: Preparing for the Bible in a Year Journey (2023)

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

Are you getting ready to read the Bible in a year? Fr. Mike shares why it's worth following the Bible in a Year journey and how to prepare for this life-changing adventure. He explains how the reading plan works, how to build a listening habit, and how to persevere along the year when it gets tough. He reminds us that it is our "why" that ultimately shapes our "way" through the Bible. He also shares practical resources that can help us get the most out of the Bible in a Year journey. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Today, we're going to do something a little bit differently. We're actually going to kind of have a relaunch, some tips and offer some steps you can take if you are either restarting the Bible in a Year or if you are starting it fresh and you wonder like, how do I do this? Like, how do you actually go through the Bible in a year on a podcast or on any kind of listening

device or through YouTube? Like, how do I do this kind of thing? We've done it for a year and we want you to join us this upcoming year. And so over the course of this last year, we've learned some things. Some of the things we learned are what works when it comes to the Bible in a year, what doesn't work when it comes to trying to get through the Bible in the air. And so to begin, a couple words. One is, thank you. Thank you for even being interested. If you found this page, if you found this podcast, I really truly believe that that is because God is doing something in your heart. Even if you're simply searching, that's no small thing. That's

actually a significant thing. In fact, what we believe as Christians is that every time we pray, it's always a response. So every time we search for the Lord, it's actually not us initiating that search. It's always, always us responding to his searching for us. And so I just want to encourage you. So you hopefully realize that if you find yourself here, that's because God has moved in your heart in some unique way. So that's the first thing. We just have to acknowledge that, that God cares about you. You're loved. You matter. Okay. So that's number one. Number two is, so why in the world would we even have the Bible in the year? You know, there are times when the year gets long. There are times when we make commitments and we start off really fresh with a

lot of steam, like we start off like gung-ho, ready to go, and then we lose our way. And as many famous people have said, you lose your way when you lose your why. And so I want to share with you, why did we do this podcast? Why do we do this YouTube channel? Why do we want to go through the Bible in here? And the main reason is because I think we live in a world that can often be troubling. We live in a world that is broken. We live in a world that's good, but broken.

And a lot of times we don't know the story and we don't know actually how does God fit into a world that's good, but broken? How do we fit into a world that's good, but broken? How do we interact with people who are also good, but broken? So we go to the Bible and in God's word, we find not just his story, which is the most important thing in the world, we also find our story. We don't just find our story, we find our place in his story. And what the Bible does, what opening yourself up to the word does

is it reshapes our lens. It gives us the opportunity to actually see the world through God's eyes. It actually see God through God's eyes as he's revealed himself to be. Too often, I think so many of us have this distorted view of God. We have a distorted view of ourselves. We have a distorted view of other people. And one of the things the Bible does is it corrects that. It's got corrective lenses, right? It gives us a restored vision of here's God saying, this is

what I'm really like. God's saying, here's what you really are. Yes, broken, but don't forget how good you are. In fact, don't forget how worth you are to me. What's your worth to God? Well, God himself says that you are worth his very death. And also we get a restored vision of what it is to be human so we can see other people as God sees them as well. And so the Bible in here is meant to be that. It's an opportunity just day by day, piece by piece, bit by bit, moment by moment to have that lens of our vision and our heart reshaped. So we can not only see how God sees, but also love how God loves. That's what's behind the whole thing. Next is, so what's the Great Adventure Bible? Well, Jeff Cavins created

this thing called the Great Adventure Bible Timeline. And his experience was probably like a lot of ours. And that was, he was reading through the Bible, you know, start with Genesis, great Exodus, great story. And then you hit Leviticus and you lose the story. And so one of the things he did when he was a pastor, he was raised Catholic, left the Catholic church for a while, became a pastor. And then he Catholic, left the Catholic church for a while, became a pastor, and then he came back to the Catholic church and brought this Great Adventure Bible timeline with him. When he came back, he brought a way to say, how can we read the Bible so that we don't lose the narrative thread? How can we read the Bible in such a way that we get

the story while we're reading all the words? I think sometimes, right, we miss the forest for the trees. We miss the story for all the details that kind of distract us from the story. They're very important words, obviously. They're very important other books in the Bible. But he narrowed down to essentially 14 time periods, over 16 books of the Bible, that if you stick with these time periods,

if you stick with these books, you'll get the whole story. And so what we did is people at Ascension, really smart people, really holy people, what they did is they sat down, took Jeff's Great Adventure Bible timeline, that reading plan, and said, okay, now here's the story. Where do the other books fit in the story? So when you're reading Leviticus, you actually are reading Leviticus in context. When you're reading Deuteronomy, you're reading Deuteronomy in context.

And so even the prophets, oh my gosh, over this last year, I got to tell you, I have always read the prophets. I mean, for what, 30 years now, but I have always read the prophets out of context. This was a incredibly new thing for me to be able to read the prophets and say, oh, that's right. This is the context, not only for the book of the different prophets, but for each chapter that we were reading and going through. And that is just a gift. And I don't know why it's taken me so long to read the prophets in context, because man, it's been a lot of years being lost when it comes to

the prophets. So that's the idea. That's kind of the philosophy behind the Great Adventure Bible Timeline. We also provide a Great Adventure reading plan. So the Bible in a Year reading plan is what you can get. You go to the websites and all those things, all the things will be linked. But when you get there, you can get your Bible in a Year reading plan at ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. And it has like, you know, each day, here's the time period, here's the reading in a year. And it has like, you know, each day, here's the time period, here's the reading we're having. And it goes all the way down, here's the day we're on.

That was so helpful for me. I had to print it off more than once because apparently I like to lose things. But after I, what I would start doing is every single day I would go through, I'd mark off another day. Just put a blue marker line through the whole thing. This is my completed, when I finally mark off another day, just put a blue marker line through the whole thing. This is my completed when I finally got today, 365, making those marks. It's so satisfying to realize that you're not just kind of listening and just trudging through and not getting anywhere.

To realize you're actually getting somewhere every single day. It's so, so incredible to be able to have the reading plan to be able to follow along with. Now, what that reading plan does is it, again, as I said, follows the narrative books of the Bible, but also fits the other books in context. So that first day is the book of Genesis, right? The very beginning of the Bible. It's the beginning of the story. But the ancillary book is the book of Job. And one of the reasons for that is because Job belongs to the early world. It's the context of Job. It's long before any of the covenants with the Lord, long before any of the prophets had showed up. It's that early world. So book of Job fits right there. And so check that

out later on. But here's another thing. Not only do I, every day when I go through this, I check off the day, but it's really helpful to develop habits. Now, I mentioned that people lose their way when they lose their why and self-discipline is good, but it only goes so far. At some point, our discipline runs out, but our why never really runs out. Like the reason why we're doing something never really runs out. So before we go any further, my invitation for you is going to be this, is going to be ask yourself the question or even ask the Lord the question, why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go through the Bible like this in such a way that actually changes the

way that I see the world, that I see the Lord, and I see myself? Why does that matter to you? You could say, well, because it changes the way I see God, I see the world and see myself. Great. That's awesome. But why does that matter to you? Because the day will come when I don't feel like it. So what is your why? I think that some people rely a lot on motivation, and that's not a problem. But we have to realize that motivation is not about having a lot of passion about something. Motivation is having a motive.

So what is your motive? Another way to say it is what is your why for wanting to read the Bible? For me, it was this. It was, I want to see the way the Lord sees. I want to love the way the Lord sees. I want to love the way the Lord loves. That's it. I found myself getting distracted and distressed by all the other voices that I was listening to and by all the chaos in our culture,

our country, in our church. And I thought, I bet, not I bet, I know the Lord has something to say about this. And I got to tell you, as often as I return to the word, like this, in this way that we've been doing it, we will do it for 365 days. When I return to the Lord's word like this, I tell you, there's a sense of peace. There's a sense of calm.

There's this sense of, this isn't just the wisdom of the world. This is the wisdom of the word that has penetrated my life. So how do you, you have a why, but then how do you develop a habit? One of the things that I love to have is the habit. And so I always pick a time. And that's the thing is, is if we're going to do something consistently, we need to know when we're going to do it. And so my invitation is pick a time. And now I invite people, don't pick a time that you will do on your best day. Pick a time you can do on your average day. Maybe not on your worst day, but on your average day. And now in that, I invite you to integrate the podcast into your daily life. That's a fancy way

of saying, give yourself permission to listen wherever it helps you to listen. So as an example, I know some people who they sit in their favorite chair or they sit at their kitchen table and they've got their Bible in front of them and they've got their pens and they've got their earphones in, or maybe they're playing on the speakers on their phone or whatever that thing is. And that's how they do it. That's what helps them get through. And so they never lose sight because they're listening and reading super good. If that's what helps you, perfect. But create that space that helps integrate, right? So it penetrates.

But I know others who say, you know, my morning routine is I get up, I press play, start brushing my teeth, and that's how I move on. Or my drive to work on the way to work is I listen to God's word on the way home. I pray about what I heard on the way there. Super good. But the way I have to invite people to make this a habit is to pick that time, pick that space, that place that really, really helps them that they're going to return to on a regular basis. Now, clearly, not everyone drives to work on Saturdays and Sundays. So another thing to keep in mind is not all of the habits, not all of the

places or the times are going to work every single day of the week. That's not a problem. If they work for the majority of your week, they'll work for the majority of your year to give yourself permission, not only to listen to God's word, wherever it helps you, but also to realize that you're listening on the pace that you need to listen. So don't worry at all, at all about needing to be perfect. And that's one of the big, big things is, gosh, so many people at the beginning of last year, when we first started listening to the Bible,

doing the Bible in the air, they would get discouraged. They would get discouraged because it became quickly apparent to them that they couldn't be perfect. That is not a problem because that's not the expectation. I want to say that again. Not being perfect is not a problem

because being perfect is not the expectation. For us, we are going to fail, but even failure is not final. Failure is not fatal. Failure just means I get up the next day and press play. In fact, one of my good friends, his name is Father Ben. Father Ben has always said this, and it's been true in my life, and I think it's probably true in your life. He says, the hardest day to read your Bible is the day after the day you don't read your Bible. He says, the hardest day to pray is the day after the day you neglect to pray.

And so what's going to happen is you're going to hit a random Monday or a Saturday or a Sunday, whatever the day is, or a weekend or a whole week, maybe even a month where you just didn't do it. You don't have to start over. All you have to do is,

okay, I stopped on day 18. That means I'm on day 19. Press play. That's it. So simple. One of the evil one's tricks, one of the evil one's temptations is to say if you can't do it perfectly,

then it's not worth doing. But no one's expecting you to do it perfectly. If you're expecting to do it perfectly, then you get to tell yourself that's not one of the expectations. If you miss a day, you miss a week, you miss a month, just press play, pick it up where you left off. In fact, I know so many people over the course of this last year who have said, they said

something along the lines of, I'm actually doing the Bible in three years because just my life's kind of busy. And so I usually get through about three or four podcasts in a week. That's awesome. That's great. Why? Because they're getting through three or four more parts of the Bible in a week than they would if they didn't, if they just quit.

They keep that in mind. In fact, I was talking with a man maybe a couple weeks ago. He's an older man. He's probably in his 90s and at least late eighties. And he has said that he started praying in the last year, started Bible in the year last year. And he said it's changed his entire life. Just 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day. He said it changed his entire life. And I think that is incredible. He's not making holy hours. He's not, you know, like 60 minutes long,

not an hour and a half. It is 15 minutes, 20 minutes on maybe those longer days, a little longer than that. But that has changed everything. It's not over the top. It's just consistency. And as I've said a thousand times, consistency beats intensity every single time. If you drop the ball, just pick it up and keep going. It is not a problem. Don't make it a problem. Having issues is not an issue. Having problems is not a problem. Not being perfect. Being perfect is not an expectation. So don't hold yourself to that. I just want to encourage you in that. Just in fact, one of the best things is coming face to face with, oh, I didn't do and missed a week. Okay, great. You have permission. Just press play. No problem. God loves you. You've heard his word last week. Just start hearing his word this week. No big deal. But at the same time, I want to offer you some encouragement. And this encouragement is

not just like, go, you can do it. The encouragement is, how do we keep doing it? How do we persevere? Well, I think sometimes we have these tools. So as an example, one of the tools is actually the Great Adventure Bible. And this is what I've been using. I'm so excited to restart this year

because when I've been narrating the Bible, I didn't write in my Bible. I just read, right? I'm so excited to now this upcoming year to listen and to write in the Bible, I didn't write in my Bible. I just read, right? I'm so excited to now this upcoming year to listen and to write in my Bible, to follow along in that way that just, you know, I don't have to get all the names right. Don't have to get all the words right. I get to just listen to some knucklehead in my ears, getting all the words right and writing down. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to use this tool, the Great Adventure Bible. I'm so excited about

this. But also we have this thing called the Bible in Your Companion. The Bible in Your Companion, it's got a lot of information that can really, really help because I kind of go through a lot of information, but there's some stuff I don't cover, right? In the commentary, because just like there's so much to talk about.

But for example, we're in the patriarchs, concluding the patriarchs and introducing the Exodus, Egypt and Exodus. They will have a, here's a key events and figures in this new timeline to be able to have this. What changes, what changes from patriarchs to Egypt and Exodus? It has some questions you can reflect on. It has basically, it just has, even has pictures and some maps in here that can be really, really helpful. Some prayers that help

you kind of dive more deeply into the word and ask the Lord to open up your hearts. This is really, really helpful. Some prayers that help you kind of dive more deeply into the word and ask the Lord to open up your hearts. This is really, really helpful. Volume one is available. Volume one is days one to 120. You realize there's 365 days. That means there's three volumes forthcoming. This physical book is available. Sometimes it's not available, right? Sometimes people buy all these books and they're not available in physical form, but they are available in ebook form. So keep that in mind if you're interested. For days 121 to 243, which is volume two, for those of you who are keeping track, that's going to keep it out for that volume two in the spring of 2022. So that's coming out relatively soon, depending on when you're watching or listening to this. We also have the Bible in Your Notebook. The idea behind that is, so this is the Bible in Your Companion, has more information to kind of supplement the information that I'm giving what you're listening to. Super helpful. The Bible in

Your Notebook is so you can capture your thoughts. We have that. We also have, it's called the Insight Journal. An Insight Journal, I really like this. It's hardcover, but it's really simple. It's called the Insight Journal. An Insight Journal, I really like this. It's hardcover, but it's really simple. It's a really elegant, simple journal. The idea behind it, it's called Insight Journal, is as often as you read or hear something in scripture, that can easily go in one ear and out the other. And so the Insight Journal was created with the idea that God wants you to capture what he's telling you, what he's revealing to you.

It is really, it would be really rare. That God wants you to capture what he's telling you, what he's revealing to you. It is really, it would be really rare. It'd be kind of almost even unthinkable to imagine that here's God who has gone to all of this trouble to reveal himself, to reveal his heart, to reveal his goodness, and then reveal it to us and actually even calling us to listen to the Bible in a year and not want us to remember what he revealed. But so often that's what happens. We just forget what he's revealed. So the Insight Journal in the Bible in a Year notebook

is also just an incredible opportunity to say, okay, this is what I wanna capture. This is what I don't want to forget as I'm moving forward. So that's really, really important. Okay, couple last things. As you're approaching this year, I just wanna encourage you, don't get discouraged. Persevere to get some of these tools

that can really help you. But more than anything, I think one of the tools that really helps most people is, I'm gonna say the S word, subscribe. If you are willing to subscribe to this podcast, if you're starting it for the first time to get daily notifications of the new episodes. If you're already subscribed, you're going to get daily updates. So that's awesome. Just so, so good because it's one of those ways that it keeps us

going because it showed up. I don't have to go hunting for it. It just presented itself. Now I'm going to listen. Also, if you're listening to The Bible in a Year on YouTube, be sure to subscribe. And this channel is the Bible in a Year YouTube channel. Ring the bell, all that stuff. Last thing, I think this is phenomenal. It is fantastic. It is maybe, as you would say, fantastico, because this year, the year 2022, we are also presenting the Bible in a Year in Spanish, which is incredible. It's the same

reading plan. It's the same great adventure Bible timeline. It's the same great adventure Bible, but everything's in Spanish. Different narrator, which is great. Different insights, which is even better. To be able to have the Bible in a year in Spanish is an incredible gift, not only to the native Spanish speakers, but also to those people who are in ministry to Spanish speakers. It just, how incredible is it to be able to hear the Bible in a language that you're trying to learn or a Bible that you want to get more even adept at being able to communicate the gospel to others who their native language or their first language is Spanish. What an incredible gift. So whether your first language is Spanish, whether you're trying to dive more deeply into Spanish,

we have the Great Adventure Bible in Spanish, as well as this Bible in a Year in Spanish. If you want to subscribe to that, or you can just find out more information about the Great Adventure Bible in Spanish, you can go to ascensionpress.com slash la biblia. That's L-A-B-I-B-L-I-A, la biblia. But I just want to last, last word. I know I've probably said that already. This last year has been an incredible gift. It's been an incredible journey, incredible community.

I'm looking forward to being part of this community this upcoming year as well. Not merely as the narrator, but as someone who I know my heart and I know my mind, that my heart needs to be penetrated by God's word. My mind needs to constantly,rated by God's word. My mind needs to constantly, constantly be transformed and renewed. And so I cannot wait to re-begin. And I hope that you join me for this upcoming journey, not expecting perfection because perfection is not an expectation, but just planning on never losing our way because we never lose our why.

Maybe your why is because the Lord has placed it in your heart that it's time. It's time to let him talk to you. You might have been doing a lot of talking to the Lord over the course of your life, and now I think it's time for him to talk to us. So, I don't know. I just want to let you know that I truly am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike, and I cannot wait to go on this journey with you.

See you tomorrow. God bless.