I used to use eBible for my online Bible reading, but they changed their website and lost my loyalty. It just isn’t as cool as it used to be. YouVersion has a lot of the features I used to like about eBible that are no longer there.

YouVersion lets you easily switch between Bible versions, to read and study out of whichever version you prefer. It allows you to add people as friends so that you can follow them. You can write contributions…your thoughts on a passage or whatever…and other people, including your friends, can read them. YouVersion has a search feature that makes it super easy to look things up.

My favorite thing about YouVersion is that you can subscribe to a daily reading plan. They have over twenty reading plans that you can choose from. The thing I like so much about their reading plans, is that they have a lot of variety. I usually end up quitting on the “read the Bible in a year” plan, no matter what order they have me read it in. YouVersion offers plans that are finished in a much shorter amount of time. I am currently doing the “New Testament Epistles and Acts” reading plan, and it lasts 85 days. One neat feature is that you check a box when you do the day’s reading plan, and it has a progress bar that shows you how far through your plan you are. It’s pretty neat.

Another cool thing about it, is that you can read your Bible reading on your mobile phone, and everything syncs together. So, you can read it on your computer, and it will show it as read on your phone…or vice versa.

So, anyway, that’s my short review and recommendation of YouVersion. Try it out, and let me know what you think.

It is amazing how much hope you can find when you look hard for it, and hope is a desperately needed power in our lives. It is the river of joy that flows back to us from the final triumph of God, and “the joy of the Lord is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). We simply cannot live without hope—let alone flourish in the cause of God.

So maybe we should go harder after hope than we do. I have in mind specifically the most exhilarating hope of all—namely, the hope that God’s saving purposes are now triumphing in the world and will one day hold sway over all creation.

How shall we go harder after this hope? First of all, we can’t do it alone. Without each other’s cheering exhortations we sink. God saves one from despair by giving another a vision of hope. He does not always come directly. God’s work of encouragement in you saves me. His work of encouragement in me saves you.

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