This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season. Starting today, the Companions devotional series will follow the plan for Lent that is described below. We will return to our regular daily devotionals on the Monday after Easter.
Depending on your church background, you may or may not be familiar with Lent. In this post, I'd like to describe my understanding of Lent and to describe PRF's plan to walk together on the Lenten journey. We are hoping that the next seven weeks will be a remarkable time in your walk with God. Our prayer is that the God of Life will set you free from sinful, selfish habits and will lead you into a life of absolute freedom and abundance in Christ. Please read below and join us on the Lenten journey…
WHAT IS LENT?
Lent is a period of 46 days (40 days not including Sundays) between Ash Wednesday and Easter, originally a period of preparation for those to be baptized at Easter. It later became a time of peni¬tence and self-examination for all Christians. Lent is a word that many people associate with depri¬vation, self-denial, and drudgery. But this is far from its actual and intended meaning!
The word "Lent" actually means Springtime! Faithful Christians through the ages have always used the 40 days of Lent to restore vibrancy, life, passion, and vision in their walk with God. The tradition of Lent reflects the wisdom of our Christian ancestors who understood that we seem¬ingly can’t help ourselves when it comes to accepting substitutes for God.
C.S. Lewis, in his famous book/sermon The Weight of Glory said it well: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
The forty days of Lent are meant to be symbolic of the forty days spent by Christ in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. By observing Lent, we follow Jesus into the wilderness, resist temptation, pray, and proceed “on the way” to Jerusalem and the cross of Good Friday. However, unlike Jesus, our Lenten journey is one of repentance—that is, changing directions from selfish, self-serving patterns and a myopic focus on our own life, toward the others-focused way of life. On this journey, we follow Jesus in laying down ourselves for others and trust that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is enough to guide us in repentance and renewal. The intervention of God’s gracious Spirit makes life-long changes become possible. Turning from the old self and experiencing a dying of old ways prepares us to truly experience the joy of Easter.
In the season of Lent, our prayers have repentance as their focus. First, we own our sin as it shows itself in the different aspects of our being—wrong thinking and attitudes, wrong affections and aspirations, wrong behaviors and actions. Second, we turn from our sin to Christ for forgiveness and strength to change and grow to be more like Him.
Lent is a sober reflection upon our condition, which leads us to faith and fresh trust in and leaning on the finished work of Christ. The reflection on our sin, our brokenness and all the ways we are tied to and contribute to the brokenness in the world, should serve to increase our gratitude and wonder at the love of God.
For so many, Lent only carries connotations of fasting and self-denial. To be clear, there is a place and call for fasting—from food, from situations, from elements of our environment. However, the best remedy for the rooting out of sinful elements of the world is best accomplished by replacing that desire with something more powerful and desirable—the Gospel. Maturity is not just turning away from sin but rather it is the declaration of a dependence upon all that God is for you in Jesus… it’s the power of grace becoming a renewed affection for you.
You can never replace something with nothing. With that in mind, it is better to not be so caught up in the idea of giving things up for Lent as much as leaning into the disciplines of grace—prayer, fasting, acts of mercy, meditating on the Word of God, the sacraments and the communion of the saints.
Whether you grew up observing Lent or this tradition is new to you, we would like to invite you to join us on this journey of drawing near to the risen Christ. On the back of this handout, we have provided an outline for prayer and reflection is intended to assist you along the way. This outline is not meant to be a new legalism. But let’s face it, we often need help in focusing on what is truly important and in laying aside distractions... and this guide is designed to provide that help. Use as much or as little of this as seems appropriate for you.
May this season be a "springtime of faith" for us all!
OUR LENTEN RHYTHM
A New Twist on an Ancient Practice
This season let’s try something new... not for the sake of new or because the old way is broken. But in an effort to be more holistic and intentional, let’s strike an intentional rhythm to the steps of our journey to the cross. This year our Lenten journey will look like:
Weekly Fasts
Each week, we’ll be fasting from a particular pleasure. Lent Sundays are “Feast” days when in celebration of the goodness Jesus brings, we break our fasts. Do each fast for the week and only for that week; or, consider letting them build on each other, so that by the end of Lent, you are doing all six weekly fasts at the same time.
Daily Readings and Prayers
Our daily rhythm will be reading & reflection one day, prayer the next. On one day, you’ll read a passage of Scripture and reflect on a specific aspect of it. On the next day, you’ll use the Lord’s Prayer as a guide to pray through what you’ve discovered about your heart the day before. For example, on Day 1 there is a reading on relationship with questions designed to help you reflect on your relationship with Christ. On day 2, you would pray through the Lord’s Prayer with the intention of experiencing a deeper, more personal and intimate relationship with the risen Christ.
Corporate Prayer/Feasting Days
On Lent Sunday, feast days, we will all be using the Lord’s Prayer as a guide to pray for PRF. When possible, do this with members of the PRF community in connection with feasting in anticipation for the "great feast" that is Easter.
As we observe Lent, here are some other helpful practices to put into the rhythm of your daily life:
- Read through one of the Gospels between now and Easter.
- If you don’t already journal, begin now. Reflect on your readings, prayers and questions.
- Find a way to go to bed earlier, get enough rest and rise earlier.
- Make a list of people with whom you need to be reconciled. Pray for them and let Jesus guide you in our thinking and feeling toward them.
- List the priorities in your life at the beginning of Lent. Revisit at the end.
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