I love New Year’s Day and the feeling of a fresh start. In fact, I love the first day of a new month and even Monday mornings, the fresh start to a new week. It’s an opportunity to begin anew, to start a good habit or end a bad one, to begin a long-awaited project or nagging chore. I used to get so disappointed in myself whenever I didn’t accomplish my goal or my new habit got pushed to the wayside, overcome by old routines and lack of motivation. I thought to myself, “Great, now I have to wait another year before I make ‘x’ a reality.” I’m not sure why or how I got stuck in this flawed mindset, but it held for many years.
It wasn’t until reading a few Bible verses that the realization came to me (call it the Holy Spirit) that I didn’t have to wait for a new year to begin anew and if I delay too long I could miss out all together on what God has planned for me.
The Lord’s acts of mercy indeed do not end, For His compassions do not fail.
They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
-Lamentations 3:22-23
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer person is decaying, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day.
-2 Corinthians 4:16
This is the day which the Lord has made;
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
-Psalm 118:24
Every day I will bless You,
And I will praise Your name forever and ever.
-Psalm 145:2
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.
-James 4:13-17
What I’m learning is that every day matters and in reality, we have so few of them to take hold of. Sadly, I think over all of the wasted days of my past, but I must remind myself that dwelling on the past means not acting in the present and looking forward to the future.
So I have a NEW New Year’s resolution: resolving to not wait for a new year to begin anew.
During one of my husband’s deployments (4 months), I decided it was high time I read the bible cover to cover, so I started looking for bible reading plans that would help me to stay on track. Most of the planners I found were dated beginning with the new year. But I was eventually able to find a 90 day plan and completed my life-long goal before he returned.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about how much I’d like to do it again, but not at such a fast pace. I want to have time to soak in His word, but at the same time I don’t want to take 5 years to do it. So I thought about searching for another tracker, but wait! I love to design planners and trackers myself, so why not make one and then share it with others who may be searching for a fun way to keep track of their Bible reading progress?
So today, I’d like to share with you a new freebie: Bible Reading Plan and Bookmarks. I designed them to complete the reading of the entire Bible in 360 day, just shy of a year. We all need wiggle room; life happens! Both the reading plan pages and bookmarks have a botanical floral pattern that can be colored or left plain. Reading plans don’t have to be boring! I enjoy the bookmark style to keep my place in my Bible. But I also am a checklist person, so the tracking pages are super helpful. It is a digital download that can be printed over and over each year! Subscribe below!
Even if a Bible reading plan is not your cup of tea, I hope that you learn from my mistake and not wait until a new year, or even a new week, to start something new, whether it’s reading the Bible or something else. As long as we’re breathing, we have power to accomplish amazing things. So don’t let another day pass you by, jump in and start anew!
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