Growing with a newborn: Bible and prayer strategy

If you are not up to speed with my thoughts so far about preparing to grow in the newborn season, you can find them here and here. The following "plan" is put together with the realities of those posts in mind!

There is nothing fancy about my plan for Bible reading and prayer in coming months. It will be different to what I did when Audrey (my second baby) was born just over two years ago. What worked then will not work now.

Back then, I was working through "For the Love of God" by Don Carson. It follows Robert Murray M'Cheyne's Bible reading plan which goes through the Old Testament once and New Testament and Psalms twice in a year. I loved keeping a few different parts of the Bible's big story in view at once, reading a chapter from three or four different books each day. It forced me to read the Psalms, which I had previously little interest in. It was a great way to combat scriptural short sidedness (only reading my favourite bits!).

I didn't have to wake up every day and decide what to read, I just got on with it. Reading Don Carson's comments on a passage also helped when I was tired and mentally numb. The problem was, as I moved out of the newborn haze, I tended not to think much about the passage for myself. The next year I followed the same reading plan, minus Don Carson, writing brief notes in my ESV Journaling Bible instead. It was a good pattern for the era, but that was when Winton was 2 and slept a lot more in the day time. I will try and make a point of having that sort of reading plan every couple of years. This is not one of those years, I just don't have that much time!

Superficially, I also liked the feeling that I was "achieving" something in an otherwise unquantifiable set of activities. This is fine, except when it becomes a "tick the box" activity, which tends to puff pride but not mature godliness!

This time around:
I am choosing one deep well to drink from for a while. This means one smallish book of the Bible, probably Philippians, to simmer in for a few weeks or months. If I stay in one part of the Bible while my attention, energy and opportunities are fragmented, I might still be able to glean nuggets in small doses. Small doses can add up to meaningful thought on what God says.

I am choosing a part of the Bible that is is pretty familiar already. My aim is not to crack open new biblical territory, but to take refuge in and apply what I already know. A letter like Philippians is something I can read big chunks of or just a few verses, depending on the day. I plan to listen to Philippians when I am doing some jobs or driving. I will also find a few online sermons based on it for night time feeds (any suggestions?).

Obviously I will not be writing a blog series on Philippians, although I might share some short thoughts as I sit with it. Time will tell! I am hoping to keep dawdling through the Psalms as well.

Prayer
My current prayer "habit" is explained here. I will try to keep doing this, keeping my points to key words rather than sentences. I am aiming for humble dependence and regularity rather than a quantity of minutes spent in prayer each day.

I hope to be praying through what I am reading from Philippians and the Psalms. My regular prayer request for myself will be to see Jesus as greater every day and to live more humbly and single mindedly for his glory. I am concerned to keep a God centred, relational view of prayer rather than a self centred, task focussed one.

The logistics of how to actually make these plans a possibility is another post, coming soon! Please share anything you have found works for you in your situation, there are lots of us who will enjoy reading it and find it useful!