My pastor wrote this about Lent in
his post about Ash Wednesday service and I'm posting it here because I couldn't say it better myself:
[Today] the majority of Christ followers around the world....will, like the first Christians, join in a Great Fast,
an annual 40-day season of self-examination, repentance, self-denial,
prayer, and meditation on the saving acts of Jesus Christ.
Lent reminds us that when we come to
Jesus we do not come to him alone. We enter a community of his disciples
who, like the first Christians, share common spiritual disciplines and
practices, including fasts we undertake together.
Jesus doesn’t need our fasting, of course, to save us. He paid our sin debt already
in his body on the Cross. But spiritual disciplines—holy practices that
involve our minds, wills, hands, ears, eyes, knees, and feet—attune our
hearts to God’s already-granted forgiveness and to eternal relationship
with Christ.
God doesn’t want our pious or petty denials of self (be it food or
creature comforts or whatever), he wants our hearts! Lent is not about
fasting or self-denial; it’s about serious participation—here and
now—in God’s divine forgiveness with all his people. It doesn’t change God, it changes us. It changes our hearts....
I invite you to dive into the deep end of Lent, to join this global,
ancient, and cross-denominational adventure in sweeping the houses of
our hearts, inventorying their shelves, and throwing out the debris and
idols we find there; of turning away from fallen habits, the ways of the
world, and the spirit of this age. Jesus waits with joyful expectation for your greater participation in his body, in his gift of forgiveness, and in his divine life.
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