Thoughts After Reading the Entire Bible in 29 Days
If you’ve never heard of The Shred before, it’s a Bible reading plan branded and popularized by Nathan Finochio (inspired by Pastor Jude Fouquier) who is an author, influencer, and one of the founders of TheosU—the Netflix of theological education. (Side note: Get yourself a TheosU subscription today. I cannot recommend it enough.)
The premise of The Shred reading plan is simple: Read the Bible cover-to-cover in 30 days.
If that sounds like a lot… it is. But it’s completely doable.
In fact, 2026 is now the second time I’ve successfully done it (and I even managed to shave a day off the end by reading ahead earlier in my last week).
Note: If you want to skip these next 2 sections and get straight to my personal insights from reading the Bible in 30 days, feel free to do so. For anyone intrigued by the idea of doing The Shred themselves, read on.
Tips if You Want to Do The Shred (You Should)
In order to succeed at doing this, there are a few tips / pointers that you’d be wise to implement:
Read fast. The purpose of the Shred is to see the outline of tree, not the shape of each and every leaf. Most people read the Bible devotionally—a chapter or two at a time. And most churches preach the Bible even more devotionally—a small passage a time. This is not either of those things. At times you might be (literally) skimming. This is ok.
Don’t fall behind. This is almost certainly death to your chances of success. If you only took 10 minutes to skim the ~40 chapters of scripture for that day, it’s better than completely falling off the rails. (I say this as someone who has also failed twice to complete the Shred.)
Break it up. This isn’t advice I personally followed as I’m sort of an all-or-nothing kind of guy (hence the Shred being something that resonates with me), but most people advocate this as a really good strategy. On average, you’ll be reading 2 - 3 hours per day. I’m a slow reader (even when I try not to be), so I erred high more often than not. This did mean that, especially in the latter half of the challenge, I was returning later in the day (or evening) to complete the remaining 5-10 pages of my daily reading.
Get accountability. This isn’t surefire, but it often helps. Do it with a friend. Have someone that you report to daily to ensure you’re doing the reading. As the saying goes (not scripture), “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Don’t read a paraphrase translation. This would be things like The Message or The Passion Translation. Read something a little more lean like an NIV (thought-for-thought) or ESV (word-for-word) so you aren’t missing the point, and aren’t tripling your reading length unnecessarily.
Semi-Optional: Don’t take a ton of notes. This one pains me to write as I am, through and through, a notetaker-while-I-read. I have a pretty bad memory for movies and books and most media, so I actively jot notes when I read something so I can remember the big ideas I want to revisit later. This is going to significantly lengthen the time it takes to do your daily readings if you’re constantly pausing to write something down in your phone or a notebook. The best compromise I can offer: use a highlighter on the most interesting things you read, and only put the truly exceptional stuff in a note on your phone. What I share below is what’s taken out of my notes (and what’s coming back to me as I write all of this).
Remember that the Bible was written for you but not to you. What I mean by that is: God, by his divine authority, foresaw and intended that one day, you’d hold a copy of the Bible in your hands and would read through it, searching for a deeper relationship and understanding with your Creator. That being said, you are not the subject of the Bible. When you read the Epistles (letters to people) in the New Testament, or you read God’s prophecies to Israel or Judah, you need to always remember that the authors of scripture (through the divine inspiration of God) are speaking to a specific audience, for a specific purpose, at a specific time in history. A scripture cannot mean now what it did not mean then. Period. Try hard not to project onto the Bible as you read it!
I’m sure there’s more, but that’s a great start. Some people listen to an audio Bible while they read along, but I personally am not that way.
The Benefits of Doing The Shred
If I’ve freaked you out by thinking that the bar is insanely high, rest assured that it can be done. Every year, thousands of Christians join in to read the Bible in full in the month of January. You can be one of them (and you don’t have to wait until next January to do it!).
As I said, this is my 2nd time succeeding at doing this (my first time was in January of 2018), and these are the benefits I’d tell you as of today:
Draw closer to God. I’ve got to tell you, today I feel like a very different man than when I started the Shred. I feel so saturated by the Holy Spirit and on fire for God. Scripture has permeated all of my thoughts. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8 (NIV)
Learn to love scripture. I don’t drink wine, or coffee, but most people (I’d imagine) didn’t love the taste initially. It’s an acquired taste. If you’ve ever felt like reading scripture is a bore (🙋🏻♂️), I can tell you that reading your Bible is the only way to teach yourself to love it. The more time you spend in the Word, the more time you want to spend in the Word.
Familiarizing yourself with the entire story arc of scripture. At the beginning of the journey, the entire thing feels wildly daunting. Impossible, even. Here’s the good news: It’s not. And when you start working your way through the History books, then to the Poetry, then the Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles, it’s incredible enlightening. I’m going to expand on this more in the next section, but it’s easily one of the best parts of doing the Shred: you get to see the entire picture of human history through the lens of Scripture. Thousands of years of history and God’s faithfulness summarized in ~1,500 pages. It’s a wild ride.
You see the same God yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but if you’ve never read through the entirety of the Old Testament, it’s easy to gain the perception that the God of the Old Testament is an angry dude, whereas the God of the New Testament (Jesus) is this hippy dippy, loving guy. Perhaps the greatest revelation of reading through the Old Testament is seeing how wicked humanity is. God starts making a lot more sense.
Becoming more educated about the Bible. No doubt, the Bible is overwhelming to those unfamiliar with it. The Bible is better thought of as a library (of 66 books) as opposed to a single book. When you take the time to do the Shred, you get a better handle on what’s actually in the Bible—and what isn’t.
My Personal Reflections From 2026’s Reading
If you read my tips, I recommended in #6 not to take too many notes as you go. I took my own advice, so what you see here is the handful of things I wrote down in a note on my phone, as well as my additional thoughts and reflections as they come back to me while writing this.
Note that this is deeply personal, and I reserve the right to “change my mind” on any theological expression here that I may later find to be incorrect, partial, missing-the-main-point, or eisegesis of any kind. I never want to make “connections” in scripture that God never intended.
Moses Bringing the Israelites Out of Egypt is a Big Deal
This is something that I hadn’t realized in the way that I did reading through this time. The Israelites being led out of Egypt — and the faithfulness that God promised of bringing them into the promised land — is a major theme and representation of God’s faithfulness throughout the rest of the Old Testament.
There are countless times — not only in the Old Testament, but all throughout the New Testament — where God’s faithfulness is referenced for what he did for the Israelites coming out of Egypt. It’s a huge illustration that gets brought up time and time again.
The next time I do the Shred, I’m definitely going to be reading the exodus through an entirely new lens. Understanding it’s referenced again for literally hundreds of years later helps you appreciate the gravity of what God is doing.
“The land flowing with milk & honey”
I’m cheating a little bit, as this is an observation that began years ago for me, but was re-ignited upon this readthrough.
In the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible), when Moses leads the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt, God has promised his people to bring them to Canaan; “a land flowing with milk & honey” (Ex. 3:20, Num. 13:27, Deut. 6:3, etc.).
In the Ancient Near East, you have to appreciate that milk and honey were highly-valuable indulgences. We consider them minor additions to a nice brunch, but in an age before refined sugars, milk and honey were big deals. God used this imagery to convery to the Israelites “a paradise-like land”.
I once had a Bible college professor read us a piece of scripture and, afterwards, encouraging us to see that scripture was sweet like honey on our lips. I think he was quoting a piece of scripture, but I couldn’t tell you exactly. That image has always stuck with me: to encourage myself to enjoy scripture like it was a sweetness I was fortunate enough to indulge in.
When I read “milk and honey”, I’m reminded of the sweetness not only of the promised land, or of scripture, but of God himself.
The new observation around “milk and honey” this read-through: it appears (directly or in allusions) throughout the Old Testament; primarily recurring again in the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel later. I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a “major theme” of the Old Testament (like some of the ones below), but it definitely highlights the goodness of the promised land.
God “remembers his covenants for thousands of generations.”
Alright, this one is a silly “literal” interpretation of a figurative expression in scripture, but it sort of adds context (at least for me) to an idea expressed in scripture; particularly in the earliest books of the Old testament.
God is quoted as “remembering his covenants for thousands of generations” (Deut. 7:9, 1 Chron. 16:15, Ps. 105:8). I did some back-of-the-napkin math and, if we conservatively estimate:
The “thousands” (plural) of generations to be a single “thousand” generations, and
Conservatively estimating that each and every generation births the next generation at 20 years of age,
That means that God would remember his covenant for 20,000 years. Wowsa. Human history, since the time of Christ, is only a little over 2,000 years. Humanity nowadays can’t even remember or believe things God said 2,000 years ago.
List of my Favourite Psalms
In no particular order (and with varying degrees of explanation), here are the Psalms I wrote down as some of my favourites from this recent shred:
Psalm 1
Psalm 19
Psalm 20 • A prayer for the success of another
Psalm 22 • An all-time favourite Psalm of mine. It’s quoted significantly throughout the rest of scripture; most notably when Christ cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” on the cross… the opening line of Psalm 22. This would’ve, undoubtedly, elicited Psalm 22 in the minds of the Jews (and possibly Gentiles?) in the crowd crucifying Christ, who would’ve been familiar with all of the Psalms
Psalm 23 • “The Lord is my shepherd…”
Psalm 34 • “No one who takes refuge in him will be condemned”
Psalm 37 • About generosity
Psalm 56 • When enemies attack, “What can man do to me?”
Psalm 78 • Recounts the history of Israel
Psalm 89 • God re-commits to never violating a covenant
Psalm 94 • “Does he who fashioned the ear not hear?”
Psalm 104 • The Creation account
Psalm 119:103 • “Sweeter than honey to my mouth”
Psalm 127 • The blessing of having many kids
Psalm 128 • A blessed man, wife, and their kids
Psalm 139 • A recent favourite that describes the sanctity of the womb: that God knit us together in our mother’s inmost being, that before a day of our lives came to pass, he knew every one of them and laid them out in the book of life. What an incredible God that knows us so intimately and loves us!
The New Heaven & New Earth
Isaiah 65:17-25 paints a picture of the new heaven and new earth that God will one day create for us. It speaks about how God will live among his people and how things like infant death, weeping, crying will be no more. Anyone who fails to reach the age of 100 will be thought of as young. “They will build houses and dwell in them, they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”
I’m not pretending to be an expert on the End Times, nor do I have a super clear idea of what life will look like in eternity. This passage, however, seems to shed a little light on what followers of Jesus can expect.
It’s a beautiful picture; and if we (in all of our present fallenness and brokenness) can imagine a world teeming with perfection and purity, then how much sweeter it must be when it actually comes to fruition.
If you’ve ever wondered about life after the Second Coming would be like, this is a great passage to give you a taste.
A Description of a Quiet, God-Honouring Life
I’m not as big of a CS Lewis fan as I ought to be (I have read Mere Christianity at least), but I’ve caught a portion of his reflections in “On Living in the Atomic Age” (1948). My understanding is that, at this point in history, progress had either been made on the atomic bomb, which — if you’ve watched Oppenheimer — proved to be an irreversible point-of-no-return in human history. The movie makes parallels to Prometheus, who is the Greek mythological figure who gave fire to humanity. Fire, and the atomic bomb, both representing “the ability for humanity to destroy itself rather quickly.”
As the atomic bomb became more prevalent, there was widespread panic about how to live in such a world. In response to this, CS Lewis famously wrote:
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
And what I love about that passage from Lewis is that it echoes (to me, anyways) the words found in Jeremiah 29:5-7:
Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
This passage in particular was written to the Jews who were held captive by Babylon. God was telling them, “Buckle up. You’re going to be here a while. But while you’re here… carry on as you ought to.”
To me, it feels relevant to where we are right now in human history: The Kingdom is the already-not-yet. The Kingdom of God is coming but it’s also here.
I love this description of a “quiet, god-honouring life” that we can all take inspiration from.
Prostitute Israel vs. Daughter, Virgin Israel
In the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, we see God comparing and contrasting — in all kinds of different ways — the current, historic behaviour of Israel compared to the covenantal promise that God makes of restoring her.
In various passages (Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 16, for example) we see God contrasting “Daughter Israel” or “Virgin Israel” to “Prostitute Israel”. God spares no gory detail in explaining just how adulterous (metaphorically; although I’m sure at times literally) Israel was to the nations around them (Babylon, Assyria) that did not follow the Lord.
The purpose of these verses — and the way they contrast each other — clearly illustrates the depth of depravity that the Israelites adopted, contrasted with how beautiful, perfect and fulfilled God will make Israel in time.
This should be incredibly grounding and uplifting (simultaneously) for Christians. We are reminded how sick and sinful we all are, contrasted with how gracious and forgiving God is. These themes we see throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, but to me they were hardly more clear than in the books of the major prophets.
“Give thanks to the LORD, His love endures forever”
Not a ton to add onto this one other than how often you see it repeated throughout the Old Testament (in particular).
According to a quick Gemini search, the phrases:
“Give thanks to the LORD, His love endures forever” occur 10 - 12 times
“His love endures forever” appears 40 - 45 times
in the Old Testament.
This is another thing I think we lose a bit in modern day Christianity. It seems like such a big, recurring theme throughout the entirety of the Old Testament. It’s not that we don’t ever mention it… I just don’t think we bring it up enough.
Isaiah and Jeremiah (in Particular) are Quoted Extensively in the New Testament
I always knew that “Jesus says a lot of things that reference the Old Testament scriptures” (thus validating their value and importance for teaching). I don’t think I realized how extensively the entirety of the New Testament writers quote the Old Testament — in particular Isaiah and Jeremiah.
I’m not even going to attempt to give a list of examples. There are too many. The entire book of Matthew has Old Testament littered throughout. The apostle Paul certainly knew his scripture as well. As does John in Revelation. I can’t even begin to describe it.
The connection between the Old Testament (as a whole) and the New Testament was made completely anew (and deepend extensively) for me this reading.
God’s Worth: 30 Pieces of Silver
This was a pretty wild realization and prophecy that I noticed this time around:
Zechariah 11:13 (emphasis added): “And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord.”
Matthew 26:14-15 (emphasis added): “Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver.”
Later, in Matthew 27, we see the writer attribute the betrayal of Christ as being a fulfillment of this prophecy.
Without doing any more research to fact-check this, thirty pieces of silver was the price paid for a slave (who had been gored by an ox).
I believe the intentional comparison is supposed to be the lack of value that both parties placed on God (in Judas’ case, Christ). May we all recognize how we do this in our hearts and repent!
Contrasting the Two Cups
Cheating again with another thing I’ve noticed prior to this Shred, but still something I find a really interesting contrast.
Matthew 26:27 - Christ takes the cup (during the Last Supper) and offers it as his blood of the covenant for his apostles. This cup contains contents that saves Christ’s people
Matthew 26:39 - Christ, in the garden of Gethsemane, moments prior to being betrayed, in anguish, calling out to God the Father, asks him to “take this cup from me”. The contents of this cup are the wrath of God that Christ knows he must embody
That contrast of these two cups — one that gives life, one that takes it — is something (as a visually-oriented person) I find super powerful. I can’t help but feel like it’s intentional. Hopefully I’m not projecting.
Was Jesus Hesitant to Publicly Reveal His Messiahship?
This one’s for me to dive into in greater detail in the future: Christ, throughout all 4 gospels, seems slow to have his disciples recognize (publicly) that he is The Messiah that has been prophesied about. Of course, we see people like John the Baptist not being super conservative about this, but I feel like Christ telling people he’d healed “Don’t tell anyone about this” early on in the gospels has to be for a specific purpose.
Midway through the Gospels, Christ asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” and they answer something to the effect of “The Messiah.” After that, Jesus seems to open up way more about what he’s on earth to accomplish. I don’t totally understand the reasoning behind all of this, but it seemed consistent. Definitely something I want to explore more.
What Defiles a Person & the Fruits of the Spirit
There are a few different passages that compare and contrast the good things and bad things of a person. There are two passages (3 lists) in particular I really like:
From Mark 7:21, when Christ is describing the things that come out from within a person that defiles them, here’s the list:
Sexual immorality
Theft
Murder
Adultery
Greed
Malice
Deceit
Lewdness
Envy
Slander
Arrogance
Folly
Later, in Galatians 5:19-22, we see these lists:
Acts of the Flesh:
Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;
Idolatry and witchcraft;
Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy;
Drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
Fruits of the Spirit:
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-control
While all 3 of these are great lists, what I really find something worth exploring further is the Galatians passage seems to contrast the “Acts of the Flesh” with the “Fruits of the Spirit” directly. I don’t think it’s a 1:1 line-item-by-line-item, but I do think there’s got to be more behind those particular lists. Definitely more to return to later.
The Gospel of John’s 90% Original Content
One of the unique things (among many) about the Shred is reading so much scripture in such a short timeframe. It is all quite fresh in your head (even if you’re drinking from a fire hydrant) that you subconsciously compare and contrast different things more than you do when you’re reading devotionally. It’s actually, arguably, the best part of the Shred.
When you blast through the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke — which all have different emphases but are called the “Synoptics” for how much overlap they have — you really see how different the Gospel of John is. Something like 80% - 90% of that content doesn’t show up (at least in the same way) in the other 3 Gospels.
The craziest part of this is, if we believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture (which every professing Christian ought to; lest your entire belief slowly unravel), all of these aspects of the Gospels must be true.
Reconciling all of that is not necessarily a challenge (skeptics would say it is), but it is a fascinating exercise. If nothing else, reading the Gospel of John helps you appreciate seeing Jesus through a very different lens than the other 3 Gospels offer us.
Even Non-Believers Prove God in Their Behaviour
Have you ever heard someone describe humanity as having a “God-sized hole in their hearts”? If not, that’s a fantastic way to explain something that Christians hold to be true: That all who are without God — by nature of their being created by and in the image of God (Gen. 1:26) — all have a natural bent towards having a relationship with our Creator. Whether or not we choose to respond to that deep inclination is another thing, but Paul makes it clear later in Romans (1:20) that none are with excuse if we choose to reject God.
I love the way this is specifically articulated in Romans 2:14-15:
(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
It’s just so succinct and encompassing. A verse of conviction for the non-believer. May we pray that they repent and come to Christ! There will be no excuses; no “I didn’t know any better.” Your conscience betrays you.
Abraham, Galatians, and a Foreseen Prophecy
Read this scripture from Galatians 3:7-9:
Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
I mean, that pretty well summarizes it. It puts the Old Testament in a new light by explaining that God promising “All nations will be blessed through you” extended as far as God ordaining repentant Gentiles in the New Testament.
I love this verse because it illustrates that God knew exactly what he was doing all throughout history. I’ve had conversations with friends who have… wandered from the faith (how near or far I am not qualified to say), that have questioned the necessity of Christ dying on the cross for humanity. A verse like this, for me, formalizes that God has always been in control and was orchestrating all things long before any of us ever knew what was happening.
Philippians 2:5-11
The passage in Philippians 2:5-11 speaks to the humility of Christ (being the very nature of God but “making himself nothing” as a human, taking the posture of a servant, becoming obedient to death) contrasted with the highness of God (that one day every knee will bow and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord).
If you’ve been even mildly familiar with (or aware of) Jesus growing up, it’s (horribly) easy to become disenchanted with the depth of what Christ did for us. It is hard to comprehend that the Word (as described in the opening verses of the Gospel of John, which was there before the world, whom all things were created through) would become flesh as us.
We see this pattern of contrasting something dark with something light, something sinful with something holy, all throughout scripture (The Acts of the Flesh & The Fruit of the Spirit, for example). This is such a powerful visual that helps us understand just that little bit more what price was paid for our salvation.
Babylon as Another Major Theme
I’ve been guilty of equating “Babylon” with “The Tower of Babel” and not really understanding or appreciating that… those are not the same thing.
A literal place at times — a kingdom at war with God’s peoples — and in the book of Revelation, Babylon takes on an especially symbolic meaning as Christ’s enemy. Reading through the book of Revelation would clearly illustrate
Babylon is another major theme that we see not only in the Old Testament, but again in the New Testament. She is literal at times but also symbolic (as visible in Revelation) of a people that have walked away from God, that do evil, and that need to be dealt with.
In Revelation, we see how Christ’s return will be to deal with Babylon once and for all. It’s a powerful book that, although fantastical at times, is actually not that difficult to comprehend in terms of “Bad guys vs. Good guys”.
The next time I do the Shred, I’ll be paying more careful attention anytime Babylon is mentioned. It won’t always hold prophetic weight for the End Times... but I’m not convinced that it can’t.
Revelation 21: Description of the New Jerusalem
Finally, my last major learning from this trip through Scripture over the course of 29 days: The description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21.
Truly, it’s worth reading the entire chapter (if not the entire book). I would encourage you to go and catch a small glimpse of all that God has in store when Christ returns and reconciles the world (and all of human history) back to himself — for good.
Despite the fact that the End Times still sort of confuse me (at least a lot of the minor details in between the major brushstrokes of what God has planned), reading a chapter like Revelation 21 reminds me that God has it all figured out. I needn’t be afraid as he knows exactly what he is doing.
Closing Thoughts
If you’ve actually made it this far… I commend you. I’m impressed anyone has.
God revealed many of these incredible things to me by reading through the entirety of the Bible in 29 days. I would love to learn about whatever it is God wants to teach you should you feel like taking on this challenge yourself and doing the same!
As I reflected on Revelation 21 in particular, and the uncertainty of the life before me (never mind the End Times), I find comfort in knowing that my life is dedicated to serving God and making his glory known.
Because I have accepted the gift of salvation, I can have assurance that my name is written in the Book of Life! I can find my refuge in the knowledge that Christ died for my sins to save me from an eternity apart from him — a place of darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
Hallelujah!
If you don’t yet know God, reach out to me. I would love to buy you a coffee and share about my faith.
Maybe one day it’ll become yours too.
