Mike Triem talks with Alan Huth, president of the Ezra Project, about how believers can get back into God’s Word when their Bible reading has stalled. Alan encourages listeners not to give up if they fell behind, but to simply start again—whether by picking up where they left off, choosing a shorter New Testament book, or trying a different reading plan. He also explains why books like Leviticus, though often challenging, are deeply valuable for understanding God’s holiness and growing in faith.
The interview also highlights the Ezra Project’s mission to connect God’s people to God’s Word through practical tools
Well, hey, it’s Mike Triem with Crawford Media Group. I’m here with Alan Huth, the president of the Ezra Project. Alan, thanks for taking time with us. Mike, it’s always a pleasure. So tell us what we do if we’re one of those people that started out strong in the Bible. We started reading and we stopped. And we haven’t gone back to it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. What do we do? Well, a lot of people listening might have started their reading January 1 in Genesis, and they’re clipping along through Genesis, which is exciting, a lot of good stuff. And in Exodus, and by the way, that’s what I did. I started in Genesis, so I’m in Exodus. And we all know, though, Leviticus is coming. And in my plan, it’s coming in April.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
So… I’ve just heard many, many times that Leviticus is like a Bible reading stopper. And I hope if you’re clipping along with Genesis and Exodus and you’re really being blessed, you give Leviticus a good chance this year. And we have a… book about the writings of Moses. Our second book, it covers Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, which is going to be some pretty tough sledding if you’re going to keep going. Yeah. So you may want to get, you know, we call it loving Leviticus. Now, that might be a little extreme for some of you listening that you would ever think you could love Leviticus. But I have learned Leviticus is the most holy book in the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
Why do you say that?
SPEAKER 01 :
The word holy is like 95 times in the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
Interesting.
SPEAKER 01 :
And it teaches us how to have a relationship with the holy God. And God is holy. So we need to understand holiness. And Leviticus, believe it or not, can help us understand holiness. So I hope people will just keep going this time. Genesis, Exodus, go through Leviticus with excitement and anticipation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Someone who might say, I stopped, I just now, you know, I’m cheating. If I start back up again, I want to stay through the Bible the entire year. It doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, just get back on the horse, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Right, yeah. It never matters where you stop. It matters where you get back in. And so, you know, for me, I don’t have that problem because I read every day. It’s just been a habit of mine for decades. I don’t know why I wouldn’t. I just love the Word, and I love what it does with me and for me. So I’m in it all the time, but those who kind of jump in and out, If you’re out, jump back in. And you can jump back in where you got out. Or if it wasn’t exciting enough, get back in with some other book. Use a short book like Galatians or Ephesians. That’s good. So you don’t have to go consecutive. No, necessarily. Yeah, you don’t have to read the Bible cover to cover. That’s a challenge for most of us. So just find a short book in the New Testament, get back into the habit, and then you’ll find other books and just keep going. The Bible is full of treasure everywhere.
SPEAKER 02 :
If somebody is tripped up by Leviticus, I mean, honestly, maybe at some later time, God pulls them back where they say, okay, I’m ready now. And I got to read that because that’s part of the Bible. That’s part of God’s word.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I have an operations manager, and she got involved with the Ezra Project probably a decade or so ago because she was not consistent in the Word of God. And now she is, and she’s on a different plan. She’s reading chronologically. And so she’s already been through Leviticus this year. And she said, one, she enjoyed Leviticus more than she ever has, two, Leviticus makes numbers really good. It’s really good. That’s a good point. So she got through Leviticus, now she’s in numbers, and she’s saying, man, I’m getting a whole lot more out of numbers because I got through Leviticus. That’s awesome.
SPEAKER 02 :
That speaks to the different Bible reading plans you have with the Ezra Project. For some people, chronological might fit. For others, just straight through the Bible. For others, it might be, I think you have one that’s some of one book, some of another book, some of another book.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, there are lots of plans, and we have them all in our journals, which can be found on EzraProject.net. And in the journals, there are Bible reading plans, and there are lots of plans that you can choose from. So, like you said, if you stopped and you wanted to start over… One plan is just read a book at a time. Just start with a book and then read a book until you finish. Maybe it’s a chapter a day, and then you finish. I would alternate old and new. Go back and find a book in the Old Testament, read that, go back to the new. Just use that as your plan this year, just a book at a time.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now, if somebody wants to get your website, let’s give this a couple times, first of all, right now.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, EzraProject.net, and there what you’ll find is resources. Our whole mission in life is to connect God’s people to God’s Word. So we have resources. We have an audio, like AdBible, where you can just download a free app on your phone and listen to where we are, which is in Exodus right now, going through Leviticus and then Exodus. We won’t stay the whole year in the Old Testament. We’ll get into the New Testament. But if you just want a plan that you don’t have to think about, you can go to Add Bible, load it on your phone, and it’s about 10 to 15 minutes a day. Other resources are books, and we have a book that’s going to cover Leviticus. It’ll be on sale now. So that would be a good choice. It’s our series called Day by Day Through the Bible. And then there are journals. We have Bible reading plans on our website. We have videos. We have lots of tools to just encourage people to stay in the Word.
SPEAKER 02 :
EzraProject.net We feel so strongly that we’ve kept AdBible on KLTT. People can catch it in the 6 a.m. hour. I think it’s 645, but go to 670KLTT.com and you can find it. We want people in the Word. And you shared some stats about how many people are actually in their Bible and what’s defined as in the Bible. Talk about that a little.
SPEAKER 01 :
Every year, American Bible Society and Barna Research team up and do a study on the state of the Bible. And I have the new study I just got on 2025. And it’s shocking. It’s a bit, a lot disappointing, but then there’s also good news. And just imagine, all of you listeners right now, what would you think, how many Americans read the Bible every day? What percentage? It’s 9%. Doesn’t that give us a clue as to what might be going wrong in our country if only 9% of the people read the Bible daily? Weekly, or depending on how you want to spell that, weekly, it’s 25%. But those people that say they read the Bible weekly, most of them, over half of those, are less than four days a week. Okay. And there was a study a long time ago, Mike, that said if you don’t read the Bible at least four days a week, it won’t change you. It just doesn’t do much for you. The threshold seems to be four days a week. And then there’s 38% of Americans who don’t read the Bible ever, never. So those are the latest statistics. Interestingly, the trends, and this is what we were sharing before we got on the air, Barna considers somebody engaged in the Bible if they are in it three times a year. That blew me away. A year. That doesn’t count. Forget it. Yeah. So now we look at these and we say, okay, in 2019 to 2021, which was the pandemic years, guess what? Bible reading went up. Okay, people were at home, people were maybe panicking about what was going on, and they turned to the Word of God. Well, since then though, it’s gone back down. And that’s a sad trend too. That’s what we seem to do. We go to the Bible when we have some problem, some crisis in our lives. And it’s like a magic wand, and we want it to fix everything. And then when it does, all right, we go back to what we’re doing. That was the trend across America through COVID-19. People went back to the word. Now they’re back to their old habits. Interestingly, 92% of what we call practicing Christians, and what are practicing Christians? Those who attend church at least once a month. That’s what they consider a practicing Christian. Still Christian definition, right? Yeah. 92% of them read the Bible, though. 60% of casual Christians, which means faith is not all that important to them. but they jump into the Bible, 60% of them. And then 32% of nominal Christians, we hear that term once in a while at church, what’s a nominal Christian? Nominal Christians are those who say they’re Christian, but they don’t really ever attend church. So, you know, we got these, we got very few people Even churchgoers.
SPEAKER 02 :
Consistently. Five days a week or more. Yeah. Bottom line. I think the positive for our listeners is you can be incredibly special by just staying consistent five, six, seven days, ideally, in God’s Word. And it doesn’t have to be pages and pages and pages and pages. You have guides that make it really simple to be, okay, here’s a couple passages. And it’s 10 or 15 minutes. You invest that time. Have your prayer time. Think through what Scripture is really telling you. Do some of those things, but still, it doesn’t have to be onerous, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
You know, it’s not I never read the Bible because I have to or I should. I read it because I enjoy it. I love the stories. I’m in Exodus. I was in Genesis. The story of Joseph, I still am amazed at Joseph. And you probably read that how many times? Oh, many, many, many times over my life. I’m still stunned. Forty, fifty. at his life and how remember the scene with pontifer’s wife where she says lie with me lie with me and he goes he says day after day he could resist sexual temptation that’s what the word of god can do for young people right now how do i resist sexual temptation there’s an example now i’m an exodus and i’m just today reading the parting of the red sea God brought them to the Red Sea. Remember, he said there was an easier way, but he didn’t do it. He brought them to a no way out situation. And then he looks at Moses and goes, why are you crying out to me? Go forward. Where’s forward? Water. There’s nowhere to go. Right. How many times in our lives are we like that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. The panic of, I don’t see a way out of this. But God knows. He knows. And he’s crafted a way. You just have to take that step.
SPEAKER 01 :
So many listening may be right there at the Red Sea in their lives. It might be a big crisis. It could be a health problem. It could be a work problem. It could be children. It could be parents. You’re there. You’re at the Red Sea. God brought them there. Maybe He brought you there. Now, what are you going to do? He says, go forward. What does that mean? Depend on Him. Trust in Him. Have faith in Him. See, I need that kind of encouragement. And I get it every day in the Word. These stories are beautiful stories. And we think these are biblical heroes. They were people just like us. Remember Moses said, no, I’m not doing this. He was 80 years old when God used him to do this.
SPEAKER 02 :
If people are not in the Word, they just don’t think of those things. And I think that’s the beauty of that Bible, because we hear the audio devotional, but we also hear then kind of you saying, hey, here’s what the Bible spoke to me at that moment. And, of course, that changes every year. So, well, we’ve got a couple minutes left. What would be your kind of your final admonition? I’m not saying that very well. What would you say to those that just haven’t been in their Bible or just really didn’t get started this year?
SPEAKER 01 :
I’d say start again. What I just shared out of Exodus, what God would say is go forward. Don’t look back. Don’t be condemning yourself. Just go forward and pick up the Bible, find something. And the Barna research shows, too, though this is a trend we wouldn’t think, people of all generations, Gen Xers, Millennials, baby boomer, still prefer the Bible in writing. Isn’t that amazing? Because we have so many loading it on their phones, which is fine. But so many, I’d prefer still the Bible in text. And I think many of the listeners may too. So get back, pick up your Bible, go to a book, start again and watch God work in your life. He speaks through his word.
SPEAKER 02 :
and go to EzraProject.net, all those resources that are there. You’ve been such a faithful partner. Some people may not realize that that are listening to this, but you’ve been partners with us for over 20 years. Yeah, amen. It’s been a long time. So do that. If you want to listen to Add Bible, go to 670KLTT.com. It’s Alan Huth, president of the Ezra Project. Alan, thank you. Thanks, Mike.
