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)