Make Lent Real: Read a Passion Narrative This Week | 3.11.26

Lent invites us to pray more deeply—but this week’s challenge takes prayer a step further: pray with Scripture. In this message from our Make Lent Real Lenten journey, we invite you to spend the week slowly reading one of the Passion narratives—the story of Jesus from the Last Supper to His crucifixion and death. Choose one Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) and read a small portion each day until you reach the end. As we move closer to Passiontide and Holy Week, reflecting on Christ’s sacrifice helps us remember the depth of His love—and challenges us to learn how to live not just for ourselves, but to pour ourselves out in love for others. By the end of the week, you’ll have walked through the Passion story and been reminded just how deeply Jesus loves every one of us.

Key Takeaways
•Why praying with Scripture can deepen your Lenten prayer life
•What the Passion narratives are and where to find them in the Gospels
•How reading the Passion story helps prepare your heart for Holy Week
•A simple daily practice to grow closer to Christ during Lent

Make Lent Real: Full Text
Make Lent Real: Read a Passion Narrative This Week | 3.11.26

The first week of Lent, we talked about praying for people and prayer should be a part of our Lenten journey. But this week, I’m going to challenge that a little bit and change it up about making praying with scripture part of the journey. And in particular, I’m going to challenge you this week to pick one of the Passion narratives. That’s Jesus from his Last Supper up to his crucifixion and death. You get to pick Matthew, Mark, Luke or John but to pick one of the Passion narratives, and to read a part of it every day this week, ultimately to complete it by the end of the week. As we get ready to enter into Passiontide and Holy Week, it’s great to focus on the love Jesus poured out by sacrificing himself for us and what that can do to inspire us to learn to live, not for ourselves but to learn to pour ourselves out for Jesus is well. The little bit of the Passion narrative, you get to pick each week so by the end of the week, we’ve all been reminded of just how much Jesus has loved all of us.