This morning I want to tell my fellow Mormons about something exciting I have discovered.  First a confession- for years I have struggled to find a system of scripture reading that worked for me.

As a single adult I would often get distracted from my intent on reading and forget to do it and when I did remember the results were frequently less than satisfying.  Maybe it’s bad to say but more often than not I felt kind of bored reading the same material week after week and hearing the same commentary track inside my brain, new insight seemingly few and far between.

I tried different study guides and reading systems but nothing seemed to help, so scripture reading became something I do more out of obedience than anything else and that will only get you to remember so far and help you so much.  What to do?

With recent obstacles I had been challenged multiple times to make scripture reading more of a priority.  In particular, my bishop asked me to read the Ensign (our Church magazine) each day but if I struggled to read the scriptures how could I add The Ensign on to it?

Well, I have come upon a solution that will sincerely help me and I hope you as well.  There is a website called http://www.readthescriptures.com and it is a paid service that makes reading the scriptures and other church materials in an organized way easy.    It costs $4.99 a month but I’m very excited about it.  Seems well worth it to me.

Here’s how it works:

You log on to www.readthescriptures.com and make an account.   Then you select ‘Create a Schedule’.  This will take you to the ‘Available Reading Selections’ screen.  You can see below that you have a wide arrange of choices including reading your sunday lessons, church cannon and The Ensign.  Select what you want to read and then it will ask you how frequently and how fast you want to get through the selection.  This will create a reading schedule for you to accomplish your goal.

Each day of your schedule you will receive an email with a link to what you are reading.  You then follow the link and it takes you to the scripture or article on lds.org and you can read or have it read to you.  Then when you are done you log back on to your email and click ‘Complete’.  If for some reason you don’t want to read that section you select ‘Send More’.   After selecting complete you will be taken to this screen where you can get an idea of your progress:

It’s a simple system but I think it is really going to help me to organize my scripture reading, be reminded and set goals.  They also have journal, highlighting and other services to work with your reading.  The fact is I’m a creature of routine and this website is going to help me make those reoutines.  It’s pretty exciting.

Like I said, clearly you can get all of this information without the service.  You can just read the scriptures in bed at home but I found this way more engaging and helpful.

What do you do to make scripture reading work in your life?