We are one day away from beginning the observation of Lent in our community and in much of the Christian Church worldwide.  This past Saturday we began tuning our hearts toward what God may be wanting to do in us as we examined Jesus teaching at Nazareth and how Jesus challenges us to see him in ways that we don’t often expect.

This year we are joining with Spring Hill United Methodist Church for Ash Wednesday and will then journey together through Lent using this guide that my friend Brody Harper help me put together. Feel free to download it. Use it and journey with us.

Maybe a good framework to use is examining your intent and practices as you see them played out in your rituals, your story and your relationships.  In other words what are the things you do over and over again and where do they say that your allegiances lie (rituals)?  What are you involved in that says who you are?  What would a biographer say is the arc of your life (story)?  How are you relationships – with God, yourself, your family, your friends, your community (relationships)? Is there work that needs to be done in these areas?

Remember Lent is not just about giving something up? It’s about laying down thins that are keeping you from being everything that God created you to be and picking up things that do this. I’ll be honest Lent is a struggle.  It is hard work. It takes commitment but just like the exodus, the exile the 3 days in the tomb, the waiting of the church there is redemption in the end and how we handle the waiting is as important as how we handle the victory.

Praying that you join the journey with us.

Peace ~

William

2010 Lent Book

Parallel factors are destroying the church in our context. We have pressing
needs and we don’t know how they will be met. Where will I get my significance?
What can I do to make myself feel that I count? Who cares about me and
understands me? Where can I find intimacy? We are a well-fed prison camp. We
have everything we need materially – housing, food, computers, cars,
entertainment, travel – but inside we are isolated and empty.

Worship then becomes the way we try to deal with our emptiness and our
isolation. The point about our worship is to make us feel better; the point
about God is to make us feel good. So we abandon scripture reading, because
that’s boring. We abandon the gospel story, because that happened a long time
ago and doesn’t look very relevant. We can go through a whole worship service
without hearing any reference to the fact that God created the world, delivered
Israel, sent Jesus to live and die for us, and raised him from the dead. The
Israelites forgot the gospel and gave up on God’s written word because they were
so concerned with their personal needs. The same thing has happened to us.

There is a tragic paradox here. We need to be brought outside ourselves by
seeing our lives in the context of a bigger picture, a bigger story – the gospel
story. But we are so overwhelmed by our emptiness, isolation, and insignificance
that we don’t pay attention to the bigger story. All we want to do is think
about ourselves in need, so we turn God into someone whose focus is on meeting
our needs. We make God a quick fix.

But quick fixes don’t work. The only fix that works is the gospel story and the
scriptures where we find that story. But we have given up on these. A New Age
person could visit many of our worship services and find everything we say and
do quite acceptable.

Read the Rest Here.