“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power, and idle talk…But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant…Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sin and not to judge my brother, for You are blessed from all ages to all ages. Amen” ― Ephren the Syrian

I Need Lent

As I mentioned this past Sunday I did not grow up with this practice, and it is still new to me as I live into this Lenten season year after year. But as I grow up in Christ, I look forward more and more to the Lenten season.

I need Lent.

 Why?

Well an introduction to one of my Lenten Devotionals answers saying; “Lent is a season of preparation, but it should never be morose – an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, it ought to be approached as an opportunity. After all, it is meant to be the Church’s springtime, when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges.”

Might we say in light of the current sermon series in Ephesians, that a resurrection reality emerges!

“Lent is a time to let go of excuses for failings and shortcomings; to stop hanging on to whatever shreds of goodness we perceive in ourselves; a time to ask God to show us what we really look like…And yet our need for repentance cannot erase the good news that Christ overcame all sin. His resurrection frees us from ourselves. His empty tomb turns our attention away from all that is wrong with us and the world, and spurs us on to experience the abundant life he promises. “Christ must increase and I must decrease,” the apostle John the Baptist declares.”

And this season of Lent which kicks off with Ash Wednesday (please join us Wes. night) and continues through Holy Week and culminates on Good Friday and Easter is a season to be intentional in dying to self.

 Christ must increase and I must decrease. 

But let’s be honest with ourselves. The only way for a Christ increase to happen, is for something in our life to die; sin.

Here is how Edna Hong describes this look within ourselves during this intentional season of Christ increase and our decrease.

“Lent is not a time to starve one’s sin but to get rid of it. And then – Then comes the spiritual energy, spiritual activity, spiritual eloquence…Forgiveness of sins is what Christ’s death upon the cross is all about. The purpose of Lent is to arouse. To arouse the sense of sin. To arouse the sense of guilt for sin. To arouse the humble contrition for the guilt of sin that makes forgiveness possible. To arouse or motivate the works of love and the work for justice that one does out of gratitude for the forgiveness on one’s sins…A guilty suffering spirit is more open to grace than an apathetic or smug soul. Therefore, an age without a sense of sin, in which people are not even sorry for their sins, is in rather a serious predicament…’I have found only one religion that dares to go down with me into the depth of myself’, Chesterton. And its true. No other religion dares to take me down to the new beginning. Lent is not a tediously long brooding over sin. Lent is a journey that could be called an upward descent (or downward ascent). It ends before the cross, where we stand in the white light of a new beginning.”

I need Lent.

And my guess is, you need Lent too.

So please, join us as we arouse and ascent from the depths of our ourselves to the light of a new beginning.