The first Bible reading plan anyone ever shared with me may be the best plan for developing a daily habit of Bible reading.

I learned it soon after I was saved as a college freshman, and it's called the 5/7 plan. The plan is to read the Bible for at least five minutes a day, seven days a week. This idea is deceptively simple, yet effective in making Bible reading a daily habit.

Here's the secret that everyone who daily reads the Bible knows: the hard part is getting started.

But with the 5/7 plan, the time commitment on the front end isn't large, so it's easy to get started. And everyone has five minutes to give in a day.

When I first tried it, something surprised me. As it turned out, that five minute period actually went by pretty fast and I ended up reading longer than five minutes. As I became consistent, I was increasingly eager to read the Bible and devoted more time to it.

Someone could object: "Five minutes isn't long enough!"

But here's the math: 5 > 0. Better to read something than nothing.

Just by starting, most people will read for longer than 5 minutes.

Here's one other benefit to the 5/7 plan that I didn't learn until later. By consistently reading each day, the amount of the Bible I could read over time was massive.

Average readers read between 200 to 300 words per minute. How long do you suppose it would take you to read the entire Bible every year at those speeds?

At 200 w.p.m., just under 11 minutes a day.

At 250 w.p.m., under 9 minutes a day.

At 300 w.p.m., about 7 minutes a day.

It's like a dripping faucet. Each drip doesn't amount to much. But come back later and the bucket will be filled.

In this way, I read the entire Bible for the first time in my life as an undergrad.

So if you haven't developed the habit of daily Bible reading, try the 5/7 plan. You'll be amazed at how easy it is and how much of the Bible you'll read.

Drip. Drip. Drip. . .