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Audio Transcript

Good morning — good Saturday morning — for this special episode of APJ in this last weekend of 2024. Thanks for inviting Pastor John and myself into your life for another year, a monumental year for us. We reached three hundred million episode plays all-time in mid-October, you might remember. A mind-bending number: three hundred million episode plays.

As we close out the year and look forward to 2025 we have a word from Pastor John today in this special APJ episode. But before we hear from him, a big thank you to you, from me, for the hundred or so emails you sent me recently about your experience this year using the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. We introduced the plan into our APJ programming in 2024 as a way to encourage you in daily reading the Bible for yourself through a structure that balances readings from the Old and New Testament books and wisdom literature — four readings per day to read the whole Bible in one year, a schedule I also used as a wire frame to organize your many great Bible questions. I just slotted your questions into the programming schedule as they came up in our readings. It worked beautifully!

Your feedback was confirming and encouraging — 73 percent of you expressed gratitude and requested that we reuse the plan in 2025. So we are!

Many of you wrote in to say you appreciated the structure’s balance and the inclusion of grace days, which alleviated pressure along the way. Paul said, “This plan has been the push I needed to get back into a daily routine with Scripture — it’s manageable and refreshing.” Mandy appreciated the flexibility, saying, “The grace days at the end of the month are so helpful; they take the pressure off without losing the flow of the readings.”

The plan’s daily variety helped many deepen their understanding of Scripture. Bethany noted, “Reading different sections each day helps me see themes and connections across the Old and New Testaments I had never noticed.” Amen. That’s a great fruit of this. Rachel said, “I’m seeing connections I missed before, like how themes in the Psalms sometimes mirror those in the New Testament — this plan is helping me put it all together and appreciate the whole Bible.” Wonderful.

The community aspect here is also important. Jennifer said, “It’s encouraging to know others are doing this with me — it keeps me accountable and motivated.”

And by far, my favorite emails have come from many of you who had never read the entire Bible in one year, but who did so for the very first time in 2024 because we walked alongside you. That was incredible to hear. Thank you all for sharing those stories.

Of course, for the other 27 percent of you, the plan doesn’t exactly suit your style. Several of you prefer a chronological reading plan, like Rick, who said, “I prefer a chronological plan to see biblical history unfold — jumping around daily isn’t my style.” Others prefer studying one book at a time, feeling that the Navigators’ structure was too disjointed. Anna wrote, “I like focusing on one book at a time to really absorb it, so Navigators feels too scattered for me.” Additionally, some of you found the pace too quick for your reflective study preferences, which is totally understandable. Jill said, “I prefer to read slowly and meditate on smaller passages — the multiple chapters daily feels overwhelming.” We saw the same sentiment from Steve, who enjoys using commentaries while he reads, and who noted that the Navigators’ pace simply didn’t allow enough time for in-depth research and study.

But all in all, the reading plan worked well enough to use again in 2025. So, print out a fresh reading list, which you can find online. Search for “Navigators Bible Reading Plan pdf” — a two-page reading list. There’s no obligation, of course. You can listen and get a lot of value from APJ in 2025 even if you don’t follow the Bible-reading plan.

So first, I wanted to say thank you for all those emails. Second, I’m here today with an update for you as we plan and prepare our ministry operations in the New Year ahead. 2025 begins in a few days. And as we change out the calendar, we’re dreaming of what we can do next as we expand our ministry labors across the globe. Here’s Pastor John.

In Philippians 2:27, the apostle Paul says something amazing about his friend Epaphroditus. He was ill and near to death. And it says, “But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow,” even though Paul said in the previous chapter, “To die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Well, if to die is gain, why is it a mercy to be kept alive? That’s the key question. And surely the answer is that Epaphroditus gets another day to magnify Christ in his body, and Paul gets another day to be loved by a precious friend. And that’s what I feel here at the end of the year at my age. To be alive and to be loved by so many people who support Desiring God, and to magnify Christ in our bodies another day on earth, is a very precious mercy.

It is compounded by the fact that I get to do my favorite thing here at Desiring God. I study the Bible. I apply it to people’s lives. I do Look at the Book and Ask Pastor John. Look at the Book is done — all the letters of Paul are done — except Romans. So, you can pray with me about Romans.

And Tony and I have been doing Ask Pastor John for over ten years — two thousand episodes at three hundred million plays.

What a privilege to be a part of this ministry and looking at the Bible over and over again day after day. And I’m not the only one, right? Our team has produced — what? — 570 resources, ten million views this year for the team. I love being a part of the team production at Desiring God.

And maybe even deeper than that is my happiness, my satisfaction in the global mindset that all the teams here have. We want to be a means of resourcing places that don’t have as many resources as we do. I think we have 850 completed translation projects that are done, with a hundred more in process.

So, the implication is that we need to make this available, and we do make it available, and we’ve made it available for thirty years without any cost to the people who use our resources. We don’t sell anything. We don’t charge anything. It is all free to people all around the world. And I just want to say thank you to those of you who have made that possible. And if you are a beneficiary of Desiring God, if you love our message — God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him — would you consider becoming a monthly supporter, a monthly partner of our ministry? That would mean a great deal to me — to us in general — and I thank you so much for considering it.

Yes, thank you for considering it. The bulk of our financial support comes directly from grateful friends like you who give monthly to our ministry. To show thanks and to invest in our future work, consider giving just $10 a month. That $10 a month adds up to help support everything we do — our work in the United States among English speakers and our work globally, as we serve the needs of the world through 850 completed translation projects in 48 different languages, numbers growing by the day because of the support we get from friends like you.

You can invest in our work by setting up monthly giving right now at give.desiringGod.org. At $10 a month, your support is put to great use.

Thank you for listening, watching, reading, and sharing our resources with friends and family and people you know in your church — and for helping us make this entire ministry possible in 2024 as we look ahead to 2025. For sharing and praying and giving — for all of it — we say thank you. We’ll see you again soon!