Faith & Love: A One Year Bible Reading Plan - Part 3Sample

Let us begin with a bit of a look forward to John 3:16 (NET)

“For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

The reason we’re creating this link is that Mark 14 sets up the climax of the Gospel narratives. Every event documented in this chapter precedes the ultimate expression of God’s Love, so sacrificial in nature, where God (Father, Son, Spirit) sent Jesus (The Son) to die for our sins so that we may be reconciled to God. This is the fruit of the love God desires us to express to our world, that those who experience it would be reconciled to God, whether it be at the point of expression or the next.

This kind of love isn’t cheap and would sometimes ask a lot of us. We may also find ourselves at a point where our spirit may be willing to express it, but the conduit of expression, the flesh, is weak.

In this narrative, we see a myriad of responses to this state-of-being. But it is Jesus’ advice to his disciples (Mark 14:38) and his practical response (Mark 14:32-42) that we can glean from when we find ourselves here in the mission of loving others.

His advice is to “stay alert and pray that we might not fall into temptation.”

How we approach that posture of prayer is to:

Submit our state of weakness to Him earnestly, then

Submit and entrust ourselves to Him and His will.

This would allow Him to go beyond us, to work through us.

Where then in your life do you find your spirit willing but your flesh weak, and what would entrusting yourself to God’s will look like?