Please use one of the prompts below to get your journaling started.

• Explore your fears and what’s behind them.
• Write about a relational conflict you are experiencing.
• List out all that you are grateful for.
• Recall a significant reaction, conversation or event.

 Here are some tools to help you with the devotionals:

• A Guide to Journaling & Prayer
• A Guide to Self-Reflection
• A Chart to help articulate feelings

¹⁸ Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. ²⁰ The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. ²¹ No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. ²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

Questions

The gospel of Mark opens with these words:

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  

And Jesus’ first message to the world was:

Mark 1:15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Please choose from one or more of the prompts below to reflect over and apply today’s text.

• What do I need to repent of? 
• What false beliefs do I need to reject? 
• What do I need to believe? 
• How is the gospel good news for me?
• What does this text reveal about Jesus?
• What does this text reveal about me?

Prayer