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Transform Your Faith in 2025: Grove Hill's Plan For The Coming Year
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In this episode, Dan Sanchez is joined by Pastor Ridley Barron, Jon Ballard, and Kyle Hess to explore Grove Hill Church’s 2025 Bible reading plan. The team dives into the vision behind reading through the Bible chronologically, emphasizing the transformative power of engaging with scripture daily. They discuss how this approach brings clarity to the story of God’s work throughout history, fosters deeper relationships with His Word, and helps individuals and families stay consistent in their spiritual journeys. Whether you’re a seasoned Bible reader or starting fresh, this episode offers practical insights and encouragement to make scripture a daily habit.
Timestamps:
00:01 – Introduction and overview of the 2025 Bible reading plan
01:00 – Why the chronological approach matters
02:53 – How often have the hosts read through the Bible?
06:00 – Immersion in scripture: Benefits of focused, daily engagement
10:13 – Engaging students with foundational Bible stories
12:36 – Discipleship and accountability through shared reading
14:05 – Practical tips for preparing for the reading plan
17:43 – Immersion from every angle: Reading, listening, and applying scripture
18:42 – Closing encouragement to join the church-wide challenge
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Transcript
00:00:01
Dan Sanchez
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church Podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez, and today I'm joined by Ridley, John, and Kyle, and we're gonna be diving into our favorite thing. One of our favorite things is the Word of God, the Bible, right? Because we're church podcasts, that's what we do.
00:00:16
Dan Sanchez
But I want to talk about it in a specific way related to the the Bible reading plan. You've probably heard, because Ridley, you've talked about this from the stage, but I wanted to do like a deep dive episode on like the like what what we're doing next year, why we're doing it, and kind of get behind the heart of it to kind of start prepping and getting people ready. I know we're even we're doing some sales on those Bibles, and $10 for the Bibles is over.
00:00:39
Dan Sanchez
It's a great deal.
00:00:40
Ridley
That's a fantastic deal.
00:00:41
Dan Sanchez
Hard to find even a mini Bible for less than 15 bucks on Amazon these days.
00:00:44
Jon
Yeah.
00:00:44
Ridley
Yeah, yeah.
00:00:45
Dan Sanchez
So a full Bible is is a good deal. I bought, I ordered four of them. So before we dive more and call, give people a link to go order those, uh, where they want to open it up with like, what, what is the plan for next year?
00:00:56
Dan Sanchez
Uh, and then we'll go into why, why that plan.
00:01:00
Ridley
the the word we keep using is immersed. We want to get people immersed in the Word of God. And for many of us, Even the most devoted readers, we have our favorite places that we like to settle in scripture. well We'll go back to some of the tried and true passages. We love the New Testament, obviously. More devoted people will dip back into the Psalms and the Proverbs a lot. But what we want to do is we want to do a march from the very beginning, the very beginning of human history with Genesis and walk people through chronologically how it happened and
00:01:33
Ridley
I think the advantages here of this are, number one, doing it chronologically helps you to put all the pieces in the right order. Sometimes we read it as it is in the Bible and and it confuses us a little bit about how events took place. I think secondly, though, it helps to bring some cohesiveness to all 66 books. It's one thing to hear your pastors get up there on a Sunday morning and talk about how God is the hero of the Bible and Jesus is the hero of the Bible.
00:01:59
Ridley
but then to walk through it on a yearly basis and to reaffirm those messages over and over again, you go, you know what? Jesus really is on every page of this book. So that's that's our goal. We wanna get people so familiar with this word that it becomes like, oh, do I dare say like the phone in their hands that they they turned to it and trust it?
00:02:20
Dan Sanchez
If you've been listening to this podcast, you know, it's like the, it's like the theme of this podcast is stay in the word, read the Bible, stay in it, keep reading.
00:02:25
Ridley
Yes, yes.
00:02:27
Dan Sanchez
It's like the one thing I'm like, if you could do one thing, read the Bible, the call to action on almost every episode for a good reason, because it is like the core thing that, you know, makes you a Christian.
00:02:32
Kyle
Mm hmm.
00:02:39
Dan Sanchez
You have to know what being a Christian actually is. You have to know the story behind it. You have to know about our hope. And it's, I guess more than a story. It's really, it's, it's a, There's power in in those words.
00:02:51
Dan Sanchez
It's God-breathed instructions for us. I wanna ask everybody, all all three of you, just roughly, how many times do you think you've actually read the entire word?
00:02:55
Ridley
Ooh.
00:03:03
Dan Sanchez
Like read through the whole Bible?
00:03:06
Jon
I'd say lesson four.
00:03:07
Kyle
I've.
00:03:09
Jon
I know it's for sure been two, but intentionally walking through, I know for sure two times, but some of that happened throughout Bible college.
00:03:21
Jon
and again, just in the last three, four years, walking through my, on my own. Uh, but again, it's because of the encouragement, thank goodness of, you know, Grove Hill church, but, uh, former friends of mine challenging each other, uh, to go deep in the word.
00:03:38
Jon
And I like what Ridley was just talking about us getting more acquainted with the historical context of the events in Scripture. Us as a ah ah church culture, you know those who call themselves Christians, I liken it to the comparison of we're almost in an acquaintance mode and not a friendship. We have an acquaintance with the Scriptures, but this hopefully this next year in 2025, we're gonna get really intentional about our friendship and going deeper in the word and making a whole lot more sense.
00:04:12
Ridley
I like that John, that's good. Aquinas versus a friendship.
00:04:17
Kyle
I've read through the Bible once as far as like from start to finish, like you would a book. I've done that once in my life. Other than that, it's just been going back to different areas of scripture.
00:04:27
Kyle
You know, I've probably, if you collaborate all the times I've read each book and put them together, it'd be a different story.
00:04:32
Ridley
Yeah.
00:04:34
Kyle
But as far as just reading it through once.
00:04:36
Ridley
Uh, I'm probably, I'm actually doing it right now chronologically, about 10 days away from finishing.
00:04:42
Kyle
yeah
00:04:44
Ridley
I think this will be my 11th or 12th time reading it through. My favorite, people freak out when I say this, but we were challenged to do it ah at at another church. My favorite is when we read the Bible through in 90 days.
00:04:57
Dan Sanchez
B90X, come on.
00:04:57
Ridley
That was amazing. Yeah, that's exactly what it was like.
00:05:00
Kyle
P90X.
00:05:01
Ridley
And the reason it was so cool is because you were reading such big chunks of scripture each day that it really did connect the stories that, you know, oh wait, Esther happens while so-and-so was king over here in Israel, and that's all going on at the same time, you know?
00:05:03
Dan Sanchez
but I've heard it cold.
00:05:06
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:05:14
Ridley
So it was it was very eye-opening for me, even as a student at Bible College and seminary, I read the Bible through, but 90 days, man, it's like like drinking from a fire hose.
00:05:27
Dan Sanchez
I've heard good things about that. I've heard because you're so immersed in it that, like when you're immersed when in anything, what happens? Well, it starts taking over your brain, starts reprogramming you.
00:05:36
Ridley
you yeah
00:05:39
Dan Sanchez
You start dreaming this stuff because it's, if you're spending that much time focused on it, it literally starts to reprogram how you think, which, yeah.
00:05:40
Ridley
right like it Yeah, And yeah, and the other thing that happens too is because you're taking however long to read 90 in 90 days, read that much scripture, you're
00:05:45
Jon
Thank you.
00:05:52
Dan Sanchez
Hmm.
00:05:54
Ridley
By necessity, pulling out some things that are not good for you, like too much TV, too much social media, because you've got ah ah you got to replace that with something.
00:05:59
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:06:03
Ridley
So it's good on both ends of that. Man, it's amazing. Maybe 2026 will do that.
00:06:09
Dan Sanchez
Oh, that'd be fun. That'd be a strong start 26. I'm actually thinking that that would be, that'd be a good idea. That'd be fun. Because again that washing of the mind happens a lot I've only read through the Bible entirely one time just because I was going through it like a Christian discipleship program and it was required and I'm so glad that it was because it forces me to go through all the It's easy to get started in Genesis by the time you're rolling around through Haggai.
00:06:33
Dan Sanchez
You're just kind of like You know, it's hard to get it all the way through as how many times have we read the books like Haggai or Habakkuk or Lamentations Not as much
00:06:34
Ridley
oh
00:06:37
Ridley
Yeah, the prophets can weigh you down.
00:06:46
Dan Sanchez
but it is good to read it all the way through. I'm glad you picked the chronological one. Is there any particular reason why you stuck with chronological rather than just a traditional read through?
00:06:55
Ridley
To me, it's it's a better context for things because we're talking, if if you have the traditional view, which I think most of us do, if you're talking that the Bible is 4,000 years of recorded stuff, you you kind of start breaking that down and and realize that, oh, what happened between Genesis and first Kings was several hundred years of time. So you can't just read it in that order and not miss the fact that, oh, there's a bunch of stuff that happened in the world at that time that helped set the set the stage for these stories.
00:07:27
Ridley
So I used to have a friend who used to tell me all the time, he would read the Bible through. He was one of these guys who did it regularly, but he would read the Bible through with the history books sitting next to his Bible. So he could cross-reference, you know, here's this event. This is what was going on in the world at the time, which is a pretty cool idea. I've never taken that one on.
00:07:44
Dan Sanchez
It's like the Bible is intense enough to read through in a year, adding like a whole nother three books, the size of the Bible to read through with it.
00:07:50
Ridley
Yeah.
00:07:51
Dan Sanchez
You're like, yeah, that is a task.
00:07:53
Ridley
Yeah.
00:07:55
Ridley
I actually, last year is part of our Three Men in the Bible thing that we were doing.
00:07:56
Dan Sanchez
so
00:08:00
Ridley
I've ordered a book, I think I've got it here somewhere, but it was a ah ah survey of the Old Testament. And it was probably one of the best ones I have ever had my hands on. And it was because of that.
00:08:11
Ridley
The the author did it for you, but he would pull in biblical stories and set them in the in the context of world events and what was going on. And I mean, ah ah I learned a lot just getting ready to teach those classes on Wednesday night.
00:08:24
Ridley
so
00:08:26
Dan Sanchez
Absolutely. Some of the most eye-opening things I've had even recently was just doing my kids' homeschool through Roman times and just reading the history, but it was, again, it was Christian homeschooling curriculum. So it pulled in right up alongside what was going on with Jesus and Azeroth, you know, and what what was going on in Rome during that time.
00:08:36
Ridley
right
00:08:43
Dan Sanchez
And it gave me so much more context. So there is something about studying history alongside, because it gives you why, why Herod was crazy, like the context.
00:08:45
Ridley
know
00:08:50
Ridley
Yeah.
00:08:50
Kyle
Hm.
00:08:54
Ridley
Yeah, and you know, another book, but What I've referenced many times and probably referred to people is reading scripture through Western eyes.
00:09:04
Jon
Yeah.
00:09:05
Ridley
That would be a good one for people to read before they got into this chronological because it helps us to go, oh, wait, you mean when they say a certain thing, it's not meant the way we mean it here in the United States in the 21st century?
00:09:14
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:09:16
Ridley
No, not at all. it' so It's like I i just connect these dots this morning reading the scripture about Jesus when he was in the Sermon on the Mount talking about if anybody calls a man a fool, you know, he's committed murder already.
00:09:28
Ridley
Well, the reason that was such a severe thing, because we call people fools all the time here and really don't think much about it, is because they equated, because of the Old Testament, they equated the idea of a fool as someone who says in his heart, there is no God.
00:09:42
Ridley
So when you say you're a fool in the Old Testament, you're not just saying you're an idiot or you're silly, you're literally saying you can go to hell because you don't believe in God.
00:09:52
Dan Sanchez
Hmm.
00:09:52
Ridley
I thought, wow, that's something entirely different. That that ranks it up a different level. So yeah, I think there's a lot of a lot of context.
00:09:58
Dan Sanchez
Context.
00:10:01
Ridley
We're hopefully gonna give some people this year as they read through this thing chronologically.
00:10:04
Dan Sanchez
Kyle and John, what are you looking forward to this year as we read through it chronologically together?
00:10:10
Kyle
I'm pretty pumped for my students as I walk them through it. I've noticed recently, and I know it's not and feasible for every student coming in into the church to know every Bible study story that ever existed, but there's been some key statements from different students that have been in church their whole life and didn't know certain crucial Old Testament biblical stories where it kind of blew my mind.
00:10:37
Kyle
In fact, one of them had come back to me and said, hey, have you ever heard about the 10 plagues? You know, like it was new information to them. And I thought, man, like that's a staple in my upbringing, the 10 plagues, you know, and so.
00:10:49
Ridley
Yeah.
00:10:51
Kyle
I'm excited that that no, we're not going to catch and remember every single story we read through. for a high school boy to hear that Samson killed a thousand men with a jawbone of a donkey, that's pretty cool, right? and And to be able to encounter those things in God's word, to say, man, this this book is like is wild at the same time as it's just the foundation of everything we know.
00:11:12
Kyle
I'm excited to walk them through at some of those instances and just give them a better understanding of some, really it's coming down to Old Testament foundation because i think they i I think they get the idea of the New Testament, but to see the Old Testament playing into it, especially in a chronological way, it's going to be super beneficial to them.
00:11:33
Jon
Yeah, definitely. I think to both of these guys' points, it's very, very pivotal that we're building the foundation the right way. And that's those foundational elements from, you know, 4,000 years ago to the time of Christ, the early church, all those things. But really the, and what Guthrie does in chronological Bibles are doing is what they're doing is just giving us clarity and focus. Sometimes that is one of the hardest aspects of discipleship is telling somebody where to start. And I feel like this gives you a ah ah clear picture of step by step, day by day, week by week, this is what you can walk through. And I think it gives us accountability too. And how 2025 gets set up is discipling
00:12:23
Jon
whether it's in our discipleship groups or in our other small groups throughout the church, I think it gives great focus to to where people are, but where they're going to get to be by the end of 2025.
00:12:37
Dan Sanchez
Really, I'm looking forward to seeing how it all ties together with all of us going through it, it's syncing with what's going on, youth ministry, kids ministry. I am curious, Ridley, how are you going to be approaching the chunks in the sermons?
00:12:48
Dan Sanchez
Are you going to kind of essentially just go and give context and kind of lead up to like a main point as we read through it together, going all the way through the Bible?
00:12:54
Ridley
Yeah, obviously six days of scripture is too much to try to encompass in any sermon. So what we're just going to do is we're going to be pulling out key sections of the scripture reading each week to focus on, build a sermon from, to build Bible studies around. The guys and Lori, as they are developing material for their classes and for life groups and stuff like that, of course, they'll have the same permission to draw from any part of the week.
00:13:17
Ridley
But for the most part, we'll we'll kind of center around the key, like a really key passage during that week and not try to go back and revisit the whole week. so
00:13:27
Dan Sanchez
All right, well, it's coming up soon. I know we have those Bibles on sale for $10 a piece. Like I said, it's a fantastic deal. I bought four, one for each of us in my family since we're going to be reading the Bible a lot more.
00:13:37
Ridley
Yeah.
00:13:38
Dan Sanchez
We all need our own copies to be working through it. I'm like, I haven't found an audio version of this particular like chron chronology for this particular version, but I'm looking for it because I'm a big audio listener.
00:13:50
Dan Sanchez
So I'm like, I could, you know, I can like knock out a lot of it just on a workout, be listening to the word.
00:13:50
Ridley
Well, it is on the Bible app.
00:13:55
Dan Sanchez
It's on the Bible app.
00:13:56
Ridley
It is on the Bible app so you can read it.
00:13:56
Dan Sanchez
Oh, great.
00:13:57
Ridley
They can read it for you. So let's throw that out there because there are some people who listen on the way to work. So that's a great way to be involved. If you're not a great reader, that there's your opportunity for an audio version of it.
00:14:09
Dan Sanchez
I've heard it's double good. If you like listen to it while you're reading to it, like you have someone like that, you're hitting multiple senses all at once.
00:14:12
Ridley
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:14:16
Dan Sanchez
So I've heard good things about that too. If you ever want to try it, especially if it's free up on the Bible app already, you buy that book for underlining to it.
00:14:17
Ridley
Yep.
00:14:21
Kyle
i want to throw it i want to throw a word of I want to throw a word of encouragement. If you're not currently spending time in God's word, hitting the ground going 15 miles an hour, day one in January when we start the chronological, it's gonna be overwhelming.
00:14:38
Kyle
And so you've got over a month before January, start carving out that time to get in the word every morning or every night, schedule it, put it on your phone and say, hey, this is my through the Bible reading time.
00:14:45
Ridley
and
00:14:51
Jon
Yep.
00:14:52
Kyle
And kind of prepare for this because the last thing we want
00:14:55
Kyle
is people to get into the whole thing of a New Year's resolution where it's great for four days and then you're like, forget it, I failed.
00:15:01
Jon
Okay.
00:15:04
Kyle
you know and This isn't a pass or fail situation.
00:15:05
Ridley
Good word.
00:15:09
Kyle
This is this is a ah ah marathon of daily putting your feet to the ground and saying, hey, I'm going to do this and then stick with it.
00:15:19
Ridley
Yeah, I actually had a guy in our church who's excited about doing this. He's already ordered the books, the Bibles for his family. He already had one copy of it himself.
00:15:29
Ridley
So he called me yesterday and said, I've already started reading because I know because of my work schedule, I will fall behind. He said, so I don't want to be behind. He said, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I said, Atta boy. and Good job.
00:15:39
Kyle
Yep.
00:15:39
Ridley
He's only halfway through Genesis. so
00:15:42
Dan Sanchez
I know I'll be able to get through it. I think the hard part for me is I tend to just like binge like a massive amount of it all at once.
00:15:48
Ridley
yeah
00:15:48
Dan Sanchez
I'll take like four hours and just paul pull through to catch up or to get ahead. But I'm like, this time I'm like, man, I really just, the habit I think is more important than anything. Sitting down and doing it daily and being consistent with that is probably the big thing.
00:15:59
Jon
<unk>
00:16:01
Dan Sanchez
I think no matter what, if you've never been through the Bible, however, you got to do it.
00:16:01
Ridley
Yeah.
00:16:05
Dan Sanchez
If you got to knock it all out at once, if you got to do it consistently, whatever works best for you, just get through it.
00:16:09
Ridley
Yeah. Uh-huh.
00:16:11
Dan Sanchez
Of course, it's better if you're in alignment with where we're all at on a weekly schedule. if you're like if you've read through it once before, make I mean, maybe you'll you'll share this challenge with me of trying to just not try to catch up, just try to be diligent in doing it every single day, because that's where the most transformation is going to come.
00:16:26
Ridley
right
00:16:29
Kyle
Yeah, kelly Kelly and I talked this about this last night because we're parents.
00:16:29
Ridley
i
00:16:34
Kyle
We have young kids. We've got busy schedules. And we said, in order to do this, we're probably going to have to stay ahead of the schedule at least four to six days. We don't want to go too far ahead because like you said, Dan, we want to coincide with the sermons and and the reading for the week.
00:16:50
Kyle
But we plan on being a bit ahead for those days.
00:16:51
Ridley
Hi, Brian.
00:16:55
Kyle
For the day you wake up and your kids are vomiting everywhere, you have no control and you're just like, this is a bad day, right? I don't have i don't have the ability to do it today.
00:17:00
Ridley
yeah Yep.
00:17:02
Kyle
So you can have those days where you a little, you know, buffer.
00:17:07
Ridley
And just so people are aware, it's a six-day reading plan.
00:17:07
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:17:10
Ridley
So there is a day built in for you to try to catch up if you need to.
00:17:11
Dan Sanchez
Come on.
00:17:14
Ridley
So that's helpful as well. Have you guys ever been in one of those fancy showers that that has the jets that spray from all different directions, catches you on the front, the back, the side, the top, that kind of stuff?
00:17:23
Dan Sanchez
Yes.
00:17:25
Ridley
This is what I picture in my head this coming year. i want I want the Word of God to hit you from every angle, every possibility.
00:17:31
Kyle
Hm.
00:17:33
Ridley
I want it to catch you in places that you never suspected the Word of God would catch your heart. this is why
00:17:38
Jon
the
00:17:39
Ridley
The staff has already been meeting and talking about these questions for the dinner table, the Bible studies the youth will be involved in, reading it, listening to it, trying to be intentional about how we include it in the worship. We just wanted to catch you because the truth is many times when we sit down and read the word of God, it's the parts we didn't expect that catches and really, really break into our hearts.
00:18:02
Ridley
You know, you sit down and start reading the story of Moses and you go, oh, I know about the Ten Commandments. I know about the Bernie Bush, but it's something that you didn't suspect that's really going to catch you.
00:18:07
Jon
And.
00:18:11
Ridley
So we want you to be immersed in it as much as we possibly can. We might even come to your house at Christmas time and sing Christmas camels about it.
00:18:18
Dan Sanchez
Well, thank you, gentlemen, for joining me to talk about this upcoming challenge we're all taking together in order to read through the Bible in a year chronologically. look I'm really looking forward to doing this. I've never done it together with a congregation before, so I think it's going to be transformational for individuals, but even us collectively.
00:18:30
Ridley
Yeah. Hey, can I say one more little plug? Let me say one more little plug, because I want to make sure everybody hears this. You got the QR code on Sunday morning. You can call the office. You can email the office. You can text the office.
00:18:46
Ridley
You don't have to use the QR code, because I know some people aren't comfortable with that. You don't have to use the QR code to order your Bible. If you want to be a part of this, even come up on Sunday morning and give a slip of paper to one of our guys and say, I want to order the Bible. We'll get you the Bible. We'll get it figured out. We want everybody to have this in hand before, I would say before Christmas. So during the holidays, we're not having to scramble around and do it. Let's get it in your hand. So day one, you're ready to go with you and your family.
00:19:10
Dan Sanchez
We'll finish with that.