DAY 55 - My Desolate Place

Today’s Reading: Mark 6

(Please read Mark 6: 1 – 56 and listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ would like to tell you before reading my Spiritual Journal below. If you would like to learn a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please read my “Count Down 5” from this blog. You may click this link directly for the method: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf . (You may begin with a song to praise the Lord and complete you devotion by singing another praise song.)

Please click the links below to Mark 6:
ESV: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%206&version=ESV
NIV: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%206&version=NIV
Message: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%206&version=MSG

“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. Mark 6:31

Jesus leads me to meditate on the word “desolate” today. NIV uses three words to translate the same Greek word as “quiet”(v.31), “solitary”(v.32) and “remote”(v.35). ESV gets that more accurate by using just one word like the Greek one - “desolate”.

Why did Jesus want them to go to a desolate place? That was right after Jesus sent the twelve apostles two-by-two to practice what they learned. The second part of Mark 6: 31 gives us a good picture of the busy-ness of the coming and going of people that they had no leisure even to eat.

Jesus asked His apostles to go to a desolate place to rest. It was in the desolate place that they didn’t get any rest but had to feed five thousand men. It was in the same desolate place that Jesus performed His miracle of five loaves and two fishes.

We don’t want to go to “desolate” places but to stay in our own places to work, to play, to have entertainment or just to be busy. Most people don’t need Jesus nor His mighty work in their lives for we do not have time to have that. How sad! Do you know Jesus is calling you now to a desolate place to meet Him more daily?

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help me to be willing to go to the desolate place daily to meet you and experience the power of your presence. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

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