Alcoholics will resolve not to drink another drop or at least bring their drinking down to a level that will make their addiction acceptable to their spouse, friends, r3elatives, boss or coworkers. 

Smokers, especially those with young children or relatives who must avoid smoke for serious health reasons will resolve to stop smoking. 

The philandering husband or promiscuous wife will resolve to be faithful to their spouse. The gambler will resolve to quit gambling and the list could go on and on. The bratty, disobedient teenager will determine to "turn over a new leaf." We all know, though! We all do or have gone through the New Years' Resolution bit many times. 

Of course, true Christians are determining to read their Bibles more, pray more, love the Lord Jesus more, be more faithful in church attendance,  to Forgive the brother or sister in the church who offended them and against whom they have been holding a grudge. To show more Agapé love more compassion and caring for those less fortunate so as to show them the Love of Jesus Christ. 

All of these are great resolutions and a such are goals of a sort. They SHOULD be real goals, but all too often, they are not genuine goals. We KNOW we are expected to change our lives and live more like Jesus christ and His original Apostles, but our resolutions are not truly a part of our planning and thinking. They are not the speck of light at the far end of the tunnel; not the REAL goal.  Too often, they may have been forgotten by January 7 and likely even before that. We all tend to go back to our habitual routine and habits, whether good or bad. ReAL goals in our lives are on our mindsday in and day out and we really work to reach them. But when we think of these goals as New Years' Resolutions, we somehow seem to place a lower priority on seriously trying to attain that goal. 

So instead of a "New Years' Resolution, " this year, think of serious goals you honestly want to reach and then take the kind of motivational steps to reach those goals that you would take if your goal was to go on a cruise ship for your next vacation or to earn a certain realistic dollar amount by a certain date. 

But the sheer length of the Bible and certain somewhat boring chapters of "Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Esau and Jacob and Esau begat..." tend to break the habit of daily reading a chapter or more daily. And it does take reading more than one or even two chapters every day to complete reading the Bible through in one 365 day year.

 At a goal of two pages a day in my full-sized Thompson Chain Reference Bible, in which the Old Testament contains 876 pages and the New Teatament contains 268 pages for a total of 1144 pages. To read them all in one 365 day year would require reading 3.14 pages daily.
The Old Testament contains 929 chapters and the New contains 260 for a total of 1189 chapters.  Thus it would require reading an average of 3.34 chapters per day to read the Bible completely through in one year.

There may be a few persons who would stick strictly to a schedu;le that will produce the goal of reading the whole Bible in one year, but for me, I have found that a goal of one chapter a day is more realistic, although at that rate, it requires almost three years to complete. Of course with that goal, if you are serious and you are in the Psalms,  you read several short Psalms instead of just one. 

The very first time you ever read the "begats," you will doubtless stumble over all the unfamiliar names and may think, "Why is this important? Why on earth did god include this in the Bible?" But there is a reason. It shows the continuity of the generations of mankind and although there are those who attempt to dispute the validity of some names, such disputes are usually thr result of translational variations in names. For example, my name, Samuel, in English is something like Schmuel in Hebrew and in Hawaiian, which language has no "s" sound, becomes Kamuela.  Since my name was given in its English variation, that is my legal name, but to a Hebrew, they will think of me as Schmuel and a Hawaiian as Kamuela.  The Old