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Lent Resolutions

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I’m terrible at New Year’s resolutions like 90% of the rest of you. For 7 years now I’ve resolved to juggle 5 by the end of the year, and only this year did I actually buy 2 more softballs to add to the 3 I can already juggle. New Year’s Day is a terrible day to start anything new anyway. You are tired, the day is short and cold, you aren’t in your groove because you have the day off work, and it’s rarely a starting day like Sunday or Monday.

Instead, let me present to you the ancient practice of Lent.

Lent is the period of time where traditionally, the church has fasted and prayed and repented in order to prepare for Easter. A period of treating yourself severely to make yourself more holy in preparation for Easter Sunday. Some people fast from chocolate, or red meat on Fridays, or social media. It’s like many other fasts, where people typically abstain from something that is really a good thing to abstain from. You’d be healthier and better off to lay off the chocolate and steaks on Fridays anyway!

Lent offers you a chance to change your life for better reasons than the changing of the year. You can change habits in your life because Jesus has risen from the dead! With an eye toward Easter Sunday, you can choose what stuff to give-up and add to your life in a different way than you would on New Year’s.

It’s not about holiness. Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection have fully completed all of our need for holiness. It’s not about self-improvement, because Jesus is using the Holy Spirit to work inside of you to make you as improved as He wants you to be. It’s about habits and preferences and the little things we do in the day that either stall life or point it toward the Lord.

Take these bright and getting brighter days leading up to the anniversary of the greatest event ever and give your habits a jolt. The increased time with the Lord will grow you and the time away from whatever you fast from will make you healthier. And then on Easter, your celebration of Christ’s resurrection will be richer because you aren’t just marking it on the calendar, but in practice.

How I’m Doing Lent This Year

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The funny thing about Lent is that I’m the most motivated to celebrate it because of an incredible Ramadan I celebrated one year. 

I lived in a 99% Muslim country, and many of my friends were Muslim, so though I am a Christian I participated in the fast along with them out of respect. 

The purpose of the fasting of Ramadan is to try to court Allah’s favor so that the coming year will be good for you. On one night during Ramadan, it is the night of power, when Allah decides everyone’s fate for the coming year. Of course, you’re not sure which night that is, and you try to be really really good on that night!

The Bible says  

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  
(2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV)

and 

even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—[6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus
(Ephesians 2:5-6 ESV)

So we don’t have to struggle and strain to please God, we are freely saved by grace!

So in secret, without offending any of our Muslim friends, in our house we celebrated in a different way. 

We feasted on ice cream every single night. 

When I bought the 5 gallon tub of ice cream from the store, everyone on the bus asked me if I owned a restaurant! Well I might as well have, because our party and nightly celebration of God’s grace shown to us in Jesus was more fun than owning a restaurant. 

When the final days of Ramadan came, we spent the whole day feasting with our friends and partying. They were happy then too (because the fast was over, and it’s happy like Thanksgiving). 

Of course when I came back to America, I was different. I noticed that the only reason we celebrate Christmas for a month is because of the sales and that Lent is only celebrated by Catholic people in a surge around Ash Wednesday and then every Friday for those that go to the fish fry. (I need to write about the awesomeness of the Lenten fish fry somewhere else, but not today.)

So here we are, saved by grace, and we have an opportunity to celebrate for weeks (47 days in 2015) before Easter, and I want to take full advantage of it! 

And so, the Lent party. 

The other thing about Lent, is that it is traditionally a time of preparation for Easter with penance, grieving, etc. You can’t even say Hallelujah during Lent. I don’t have the emotional fortitude for that. I think I’ll err on the side of joy and celebration if I have my choice.

So, celebrate the Lent party with me. Give up being a jerk for Lent, of being discontent with your walk as a Christian. Fast from self-judgment and condemnation!

They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, [19] thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.  
(1 Timothy 6:18-19 ESV)

Fasting for Lent

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I know that Jesus said that our fasting should be in secret, but I’m going to at least talk about it a little bit here. LENT is coming, and I’m preaching both Sundays around Ash Wednesday at a protestant church. The funny thing is, when we think that we can beg God’s favor and force His hand, we are acting more like Islam than Christianity. I hope to flesh this out more in the coming weeks, but until then, let’s start things off with a baseline definition of fasting. It’s Isaiah 58.

[1] “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.

[2] Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.

[3] ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.

[4] Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.

[5] Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?

[6] “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

[7] Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

[8] Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

[9] Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

[10] if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

[11] And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

[12] And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

[13] “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

[14] then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 58 ESV)

 

Easter – A Defining Day

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This is what it means to be genuinely human. Easter offers us the direct route to be the people we were made to be. God’s people. Jesus’ people. People of love.

N.T.Wright, Lent For Everyone, via YouVersion.com

N.T.Wright was the guy that said you should celebrate the 40 days AFTER Easter a ton more than you mourn and weep the 40 days before Easter. I’m going to try to think about the 40 days after more than I thought about the 40 days before. This seemed like a good quote to kick that off.