Hi, friends. I'm Annie F. Downs. Let's read the Gospels. The Gospels are the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

These are the stories of Jesus Christ's life on earth, the friendships, the parables, the sacrifices, the meals, and the miracles.

Here at the beginning of the month, you know I love to say this if you've been around with us.

Welcome! If you're new with us in September, welcome. We're so glad you're here. Each month we read all four books. It equals about three chapters a day.

But this month, since we're reading in chronological order, it is not exactly three chapters, you know, but go ahead and subscribe today.

Join us as we read the Gospels together. We're just making this 30-day commitment just the month of September to this rhythm for this one month.

And I cannot wait to see how we are changed by the time October gets here.

Just a reminder, we've got two resources for you besides the Staley podcast, the September reading plan outlines what we read every day,

which is really helpful this month when we're going in chronological order.

And the other is the Let's Read the Gospels guidebook. It's got some extra fun stuff in it.

Notes for me, journal prompts, questions to take the experience deeper, and we release new pages every month.

So when you purchase the September guidebook, you'll get the PDFs of all the previous months.

Whole punch them, put them in a notebook. I think you'll really enjoy it. You'll get crossword puzzles, journal questions, word finds, a coloring page.

It's a really great guidebook. I'm so proud of it. Y'all can find all that at anyfdowns.com slash Gospels and thanks to our team for making all that possible.

So here's how this works. This month we're reading through the Gospels chronologically and we are reading from the new international version or the NIV.

We've done chronological before. We've done NIV before, but we've never done them together and I am already loving it.

So we'll be reading the stories in the order that they took place, which means we mix up all four books most days.

Okay, it's a little simplified, but I'll share the references with you here at the beginning. You can find them in the show notes as well or in the guidebook or in the reading plan.

You can listen or read along in your own Bible and then I'll pray and that's it.

So today is September 2nd and I'll be reading Luke 139 through 80, Matthew 1 18 through 25, Luke 2 1 through 40, and Matthew 2 all from the NIV.

Mary visits Elizabeth from Luke. At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and allowed voice she exclaimed,

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