Lent - Remembering who we are in Christ
Lent Poem
Remember you are dust.
It’s not an insult but an invitation.
Amidst your grasping and hiding, return.
God doesn’t meet you at the top of the ladder, but on the ground, when you’ve fallen off
What is Lent?
Lent starts on Ash Wednesday (February 26, and lasts until Easter Sunday (April 12th this year). One of the traditional practices of Lent is fasting. We are told in Matthew 4:1-11 that Jesus spent forty days fasting in the wilderness and afterward “he was starving.”
Many of us have fasted before – perhaps in advance of some surgical medical procedure, perhaps the religious tradition we grew up in practiced a Lenten fast (no meat on Fridays, e.g.), or maybe you’ve even fasted for some wild and crazy crash diet!
Christian fasting is:
Wisdom – it’s love and knowledge meeting together in a practice that avails us to God’s resources to meet our needs.
Training – it’s the indirect effort that gives us access to something we can’t try or make happen on our own.
Surrender – it’s a voluntary “making ourselves weak” so that we can know the strength and power of God (2 Cor 12:9-10).
Simply put: fasting is a way to place ourselves in the way of grace by withdrawing our reliance on earthly things so that we can feast on God’s presence and power.
Here are some questions to help you discern a partial fast that will be challenging enough to be fruitful (from Aaron Damiani’s book The Good Of Giving Up: Discovering the Freedom of Lent):
What cravings have a hold on me?
What would be truly liberating to leave behind?
Have I become dependent on a particular food, drink, substance, or activity?
What would be truly challenging for me to give up during Lent?
What is Jesus asking of me?
As you pray through these questions, try picking one food or drink and one media/comfort/habit to give up, and then share this with your spouse or a friend as a way to embrace accountability.
How do we want to walk through Lent together
Reading Luke John through Lent starting tomorrow.
Fast from a Meal - Maybe Tuesday night up to MC MEAL
Individual or family things to fast from - media, phones, food
More articles and resources….
HOW TO FAST FOR LENT
https://gravityleadership.com/how-to-fast-for-lent/
OBSERVING LENT - Getting More of Jesus
https://saturatetheworld.com/2019/03/07/observing-lent/
DIGITAL DETOX
https://www.crossway.org/articles/6-keys-to-a-rewarding-digital-detox/
Video about Fasting