What I am Learning About Lent

I do intend to write on some of the more practical aspects of observing Lent as I am discovering so many exciting things but, right now, I am learning so much about the philosophy behind it that I want to share with you.

My understanding of Lent had been that people "gave up __________" for Lent and, really, I considered it to be a very "works-based" form of penance that is unnecessary since Jesus has already paid for my sins and nothing I can DO will make me any more worthy of His forgiveness. To me, that is the beautiful freedom of the Gospel: salvation is by faith alone through grace alone dependent on His work and not mine.

However, the more I study on this the more I believe that I have been missing something precious! It seems that the practice of something similar to Lent has a prototype in the life of Jesus.

"Immediately, the Holy Spirit urged Jesus into the desert. There, for forty days, alone except for desert animals, he was subjected to Satan's temptations to sin. And, afterwards, the angels came and cared for him." Mark 1:12-13

We don't know a lot about the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness before He began His public ministry. We do know that it was a time of fasting and learning to discipline his flesh during temptation...and, while not specifically mentioned, I'm sure it included prayer. When the devil came to Him, the words of Scripture were quick on His tongue so it must have also been a time of meditation on the Word of God.

Here's what I can see from this Scripture:

1. This was intentional time away from the regular routine to focus on spiritual discipline.
2. It was instigated by the Holy Spirit.
3. It was for an extended and set time.
4. It included solitude.
5. It was a time of learning to say "NO" to Satan, to the flesh, and to pride.
6. The activities seemed to have a focus on fasting, meditating on Scripture and, by inference, prayer.
7. He was ministered to and comforted by angels in the end.

Was Jesus trying to EARN anything from God in these 40 days? No...there is no evidence of that. What WAS the purpose?

My study in looking up the Old Testament references that Jesus used in combatting temptation led me to Deuteronomy 8 where I found an interesting principle that relates to the purposes of intentional "wilderness time." As the Israelites were in the desert 40 years, so Jesus was in the desert 40 days. Listen to what God said about the purpose of that desert time:

"You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry...that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord." Deuteronomy 8:2,3

The purposes here in these verses would be:

1. To cause us to remember how the Lord has led us
2. To bring about humility
3. To test the content and character of our heart
4. To test our commitment to keep His commandments when it is not easy to do so
5. To allow ourselves to be hungry so that we realize that there is more to life to desire than just the things of earth

This leads me to ask myself this question: WHAT IF I decided to intentionally take an extended and set amount of time, at the leading of the Holy Spirit, to pull away from the regular routine of life and practice intentional self-denial for the purpose of bringing the contents of my heart open before the Lord and allowing Him to take this time to show me purpose in suffering and sacrifice?

WHAT IF thousands of unified believers, all over the world, chose to do this at the same time every year at the direction of their spiritual leaders? WHAT IF we chose to do that in the weeks preceding the greatest celebration of the greatest victory over Sin, Satan, and Self? Would it be possible that the celebration of Resurrection would take on a whole new meaning as we partake of the sufferings and sacrifice of our Lord through the practice of crucifying our fleshy desires with fasting, humility, and giving?

I think I've changed my mind about Lenten observation being a "works-based penance." I think it could well be an avenue of knowing Jesus in the way Paul writes about in Philippians 3:

"I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God's righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it." (Philippians 3:9-11 The Message)

Two Churches Battle It Out with Their Signs...

I know I promised that the next blog would be about the Ash Wednesday service last week (I hope to still get to that today) but my sister sent me this and, in the interest of church unity in the broader expressions of Christianity, I thought I would share it with you.

Apparently, these two churches - one Presbyterian and one Catholic - are across the street from each other and their theological differences spilled over onto their church signs when the Catholics placed "All Dogs Go to Heaven" on their sign...

Why I Have Decided to Observe Lent...

There it is in black and white: I am observing Lent this year.

I was raised classic southern pentecostal. I wouldn't have chosen any other upbringing. I love my heritage and it's history. The stories my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather would share of the power of God always thrilled me and made me want to experience all I could of God's presence. The main things I was taught as a child were that "what God once did He is still doing." "The God of the book of Acts is the same God we serve." "When it comes to His presence never settle for anything less or for anything more." "We are to seek to be a New Testament church."

I was also raised with the belief that God had delivered us out of the apostate church of "mainline-ism" and that all of the trappings of the historical churches were not only absent from the New Testament church but were, at the least, a distraction to worship and, at worst, Satan's plan to return the church to an Old Testament concept of priests, rituals, and sacred days of rules and regulations.

My exposure to church history growing up was mostly limited to the revival movements of the past. We revered the names of John and Charles Wesley but scorned what the Methodists had become. We lauded the bravery of Martin Luther but would never have stepped into a Lutheran church. I remember listening, with fascination, to my father wax eloquent in the pulpit about the martyrdom of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley but never knew anything about their life outside of their final moments and certainly nothing of the Church of England. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were very familiar names but we always focused on the aspects of their lives as it related to awakening revival rather than what they believed about serving God in plain old ordinary day to day living.

I began this journey of opening my mind to participation in the historical churches about five years ago when I began a personal study of the history and development of the English Bible. (Extraordinary story - full of the most fascinating people and events! I'll have to do a few blogs on that sometime). As part of that study, I took a trip to England and spent two weeks with an evangelical Anglican rector. You have to understand my background to understand this next statement: I was shocked to find that he was...well...a Christian. End result: I fell "in love" with this 70-something year old Scottish man and stuck to him like glue all over the countryside of Great Britain. By the end of the trip, I am sure that he was quite ready for me and all my questions to return to the other side of the pond!

As he took me to places like St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Canterbury he patiently explained to me all the significance of the different things we were observing. I remember, at the beginning of the trip, standing with him in York Minster and asking "Doesn't all this seem rather a waste? Think of all the starving peasants who gave to build this edifice...couldn't that money have gone to better things?"

Have you ever been yelled at by an elderly Anglican minister? It's not a lovely experience. He began to point out to me how the height of the ceiling naturally lifts the eyes heavenward. Did I not think that these people who lived in mud all their lives needed something to pull their eyes upward? He gestured to the beautiful stained glass that told the stories of Jesus' life and ministry and reminded me that my precious books would have meant little to these people who couldn't read but could come and learn of God's love and the existence of beauty in the world through the architecture of the Cathedrals. Did I not realize that every aspect of this building and its services had been painstakingly planned and developed to attempt to import some of the creative majesty of the Almighty to this terrestial existence? I was sternly rebuked.

He made his point. It was on this study adventure that I began to realize that I had much to learn about God and about worship. That there was wisdom, depth, and a reverence that I was not experiencing and that, just perhaps, there might be something I could learn from the historical church experience.

A few years ago I read "Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail" by Robert Webber and realized that I am not alone in this learning process.

Now, before anyone gets too excited and writes me off as having "gone over" to the Ecumenical Dark Side and starts checking for my name at the World Council of Churches website, hear me on this: I am Pentecostal through and through. If it was reasonable, I would paint my house turquoise (only people in Springfield would get that one). I am a member of the Stanley Horton Fan Club. However, I am open to the very real possibility that God's people are much bigger than our movement and that, perhaps, resources like The Book of Common Prayer might be actually beneficial to me in my devotional life.

Anyway, I wrote all this to explain why this year I have decided to participate in the liturgical lenten season. It's a new experience for me and it may be the only time I ever do it. But, then again, maybe this will be a regular thing for me. I will be blogging on it through the next few months. I already have some great notes from the Ash Wednesday service last week at St. Cecilia's Cathedral in Omaha. I'm looking forward to sharing with you the things that I am learning on this journey.

And, I'm sure, my elderly Anglican rector friend would look down at me and say, "You have much to learn, Grasshopper."