Matthew to Mark - Christmas Reading Plan
It’s hard to believe that we are already five days into December and have already finished the first book in our 35 day readying plan. Time feels like it’s flying and that is the exact reason why I developed this reading plan in the first place, to force me to focus and slow down.
Today marked the beginning of the book Mark in our reading plan and we can already see some differences from the book of Matthew. For starters, the breadth of detail between the books is quite different. Matthew not only started with Jesus’ birth, but went deeper by showing us the genealogy of Jesus. We also see Joseph’s side of the story more than Mary’s, we’ll read Mary’s side later on in Luke at the end of our reading plan. Mark starts us off with John the Baptist and quickly moves us to Jesus’ ministry by chapter 4. Matthew is a much longer book, while Mark is just 16 chapters. Both books are important, both focus on Jesus, but we will see a different intended audience and style for each individual book. Matthew was written to the Jews, while Mark was written to the Christians in Rome. Mark was believed to be written first and in chronological order while chapters 4-25 of Matthew were written topically. The main point, Jesus, of each book does not differ, but the narrative and style do as they were written by two different men. The uniting theme between Matthew and Mark is the truth that Jesus was fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life and died the death we deserved and was raised to life again on the third day.
As I read through Matthew, the word faith kept standing out to me. There were several times that Jesus said, if you just had faith, or you of little faith. We see Jesus’ faithfulness lived out through the verses of Matthew and I began to wonder, do I doubt God’s faithfulness? Am I faithful? Am I living my life like I want to live or am I seeking God’s will for my life? Do I really believe that miracles still happen? Do I trust that God can do the impossible?
Often, my honest answer is not what I would like it to be. I want to say that I never doubt God’s faithfulness and I am always, always faithful. I would also love to claim that I live every second of every day for God’s will and not my own. And that I of course never doubt God works miracles and can do the impossible. But, I am human and too often my humanness gets in the way. I can be controlling, fearful and give into doubt. I don’t always keep my word or follow through…here’s the honest truth…I have had to play catch up with my reading plan this past week! I fight and often lose the battle of living life my own way, I can be selfish and prideful and think I know best. And most honestly of all, I do sometimes doubt that God can do the impossible, especially when I have been praying for something for years.
But, I serve a God who is faithful, who loves me in spite of my sin and my selfishness and disobedience. I serve a loving and gracious God who is growing me and challenging me to change. There’s another but…I have to have an open heart. I have to protect my heart from getting hard by not just being a hearer of the word, but also a doer of the word. I have to be willing to confess my sin and fall on my face before my God and ask for forgiveness. Because here is the truth, I am a sinner, but I am a sinner saved by grace and since I still have breath in my lungs my God has a purpose and plan for my life and I want to do everything in my power to live out his purpose for me on this earth. It is always all about HIM and never ever about me. So this Christmas season, my prayer is that I will be faithful in both the big and small things of life. And I would ask you this…where is God calling you to be faithful?