Lent 2020 - Jeremiah's Vow

Lent 2020 | Day 6: “Enter”

The Apostle John records Jesus saying these words in John 10:9, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”

One of the great promises of the gospel, and one of the great promises of Jesus Himself, is that God genuinely desires for all to be saved. But he places an important condition on this salvation. It is not a condition of works or self-righteousness. It is a condition of surrender. It is a condition that says that if we desire to have the blessings which God promises, we must enter in, by the way he has ordained.

This is not designed to be a rigid situation. Or even an impossible one. It is designed to help us see that in order for us to attain that which our heart and soul long for, we must go to the one who has given us access to the one who can fulfill that longing.

The image of a shepherd is one that is very familiar to us as believers. It is something that calls our attention to King David, the great Shepherd King. But more importantly, it reminds us that we all require leading, as we saw last week, and we’re all in need of surrendering ourselves to the call of God to enter into His pasture.

One of the things that happens in life is that we sometimes forget that in spite of ourselves, we truly need God to lead us. And so God calls us to Jesus and says, “Trust in him, look to him as your final and ultimate hope.” And when we do, we will receive that which he has promised from the beginning, our eternal salvation.

Lent 2020 | Day 5: “Signs”

As we continue our journey in the season of Lent, we turn our attention to the focus of today, which is “signs.”

Jesus said something very interesting about signs. He said that there will only be one sign given in order to confirm that he was the Messiah, the one sent by God in order to establish the kingdom here on earth. He said that that sign will be the sign of Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish, so he would spend three days in the ground. This is a great mystery. Because many of us are living in a time where we are looking for more signs and more wonders. We are constantly hearing calls from across the Church for God to do something new, to do something fresh in our midst.

But Jesus Himself said that only one sign was needed in order for us to know that God is who he claimed to be. This is one of the great challenges that we face today. We must make sure that we are not asking for god to do more than he said was necessary in order for us to understand who he is and what he desires for us. In order for us to truly understand the power of the resurrection, we must see it as the most glorious and ultimate reality that God has bestowed upon us. This is the keystone of our faith.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ marks God’s greatest achievement in bringing about the salvation of the world. Each and every person who hears the gospel and who turns their life to Christ has witnessed the fulfillment of the greatest sign that has ever taken place, the transformation of the human heart.

Too often we ask God to do more, to say more than what he has done or already said. I think this is a very dangerous way of living our lives. And, I believe it reveals a kind of shallowness to what we understand about the Gospel.

In this season of Lent. We should turn our attention to the great sign of the cross, and remember that it is in the resurrection that we find our great hope. It is not in the temporary appeasement of our heart’s desires. It is not found in an ever-increasing number of demonstrations of God’s power or in renewed calls for God to manifest his goodness. We must allow the truth of the resurrection to serve as our guiding light on our journey.

This is the power of Lent. It calls us to stop looking for something new. And it forces us to look back at that which has already been done. Something that is as old as God himself.

Lent 2020 | 1st Sunday in Lent: “Celebrate”

Today’s the 1st Sunday in Lent. Every Sunday in Lent is not technically a part of the season of Lent. It serves as a reminder of the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ because every Sunday is a celebration of what the gospel proclaims. So this Sunday, and every Sunday in the season of Lent, we will celebrate what it means to have been saved. So, rather than an extended devotion, I would like to offer you a song that can help us to focus our attention and to give worship to God for the sacrifice, ministry, mission, and purpose of His Son our Savior, Jesus Christ. As we celebrate the renewed life that we have in him. Let us celebrate today, for He is good and in all things he is faithful to us.

Lent 2020 | Day 4: “Serve”

My father’s often said that we live in an upside down kingdom. And most days, this doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s just that there’s something unusual about the idea that the world in which we live is upside down, and the kingdom of God is right side up. But that is part of the mystery of what we are having to deal with as followers of Christ in this world.

The word focus for today is “serve.” Jesus said that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. He told the disciples that if any one wants to be the greatest in the kingdom, he must become the servant of all.

One of the great mysteries of the Christian faith is that service is the highest goal. Service is the measure by which we determine who has properly understood and who has properly received the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus is a king. When he was born, he was born King of kings and Lord of lords. On the inscription over his cross as he was crucified, it listed him as the King of the Jews. But the world did not receive him as a king, because the world did not understand that he was a king of those who lived in service to each other.

One of the most amazing passages of Scripture that Jesus ever told His disciples was when he said to them, that the world will know that they were his disciples by their love one for another. How is this love supposed to be expressed? How is the world ever going to know what this love looks like?

The reality is that the love that God has given to us in and through the person and ministry of Jesus Christ can only be expressed in service. When we give of ourselves to one another we are serving and embodying the fullness of what God desires for us. When we surrender our rights, and we look for the good of others, even if it costs us something that we are not ready or even unwilling to give, we are truly serving one another.

This is the power of this season of Lent. We are going to be challenged each and every day for the next few weeks to consider, what is it that we are unwilling to surrender in order to serve one another? The greater the challenge, the greater the opportunity for us to demonstrate what we have learned, how we have grown, and how God has transformed us into persons who are more willing to give than to receive. This is the great wonder of the gospel.

The Gospel challenges us to consider that there are things greater and have greater worth than we could ever have ever imagined. If we would just surrender ourselves to the reality and maybe even the possibility that what God has for us is so much better than we could ever have accomplished for ourselves. But because our imaginations are so small, all we can see is what’s in front of us.

I don’t know about you, but I want to serve better. I want to serve more intentionally. I want to serve more deeply. But if that’s going to happen, I have to let go of what I think it means to be a servant. I have to look to Jesus as the primary example of my life. I need to turn to him and trust in Him to teach me, to lead me, to help me to see that service is not just something I do. It is who I am becoming.

Lent 2020 | Day 3: “Command”

The focus for Day 3 will be “command.”

One of my favorite moments that took place in Jesus’s ministry was when he encountered the Centurion (Matthew 8:5-12). The man comes to Jesus and asks him to heal his servant. And as Jesus says that he will, he says that he will go with the centurion to his house, but the centurion stops him and says to Jesus, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.”

What makes this story so impactful to me and the reason that I love it so much is because, in it, Jesus makes an amazing and bold statement about the faith of this centurion. He looks at the centurion’s faith. And Jesus says that there is no greater demonstration faith in all of Israel except the faith that is seen in this Gentile soldier. In this simple action, faith is both demonstrated and defined.

Why?

Why does Jesus say this about the Centurion’s faith? Because of the way the Centurion defined what it means to believe. The Centurion said to Jesus, if you would just say the word, it will happen. The Centurion was a man under authority. And the example that he gave was that if he commanded one of his servants to go, he would go, and if he commanded him to come, he would come.

It is amazing to me, that in this simple exchange, we see one of the most important aspects of faith. Faith is grounded in our obedience. It is grounded in our willingness to accept that which we have been commanded to do. When we surrender our will to the will of God; when we surrender our desires to the desires of God; when we surrender all that we are to become more and more like Christ; we accept in faith, by faith, through faith, that who we are is who God has designed us to be from the very beginning.

The issue of command can sometimes be a burden because we do not want to submit to the one who has given it. But that is the heart of the problem. We have to recognize that in order for us to receive all that we desire from God, we must first surrender all that we desire in ourselves. This is the challenge of being a disciple of Christ. This is the challenge that we are being asked to confront in this season of Lent.

As we move forward, preparing ourselves to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, we must remember that we also like the centurion are those who ought to be under authority. We must submit ourselves to the commands of God, as John tells us in 1 John, that the “commandments [of God] are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). So if they are a burden to us, we should ask ourselves a simple question. Why? what must I do to relieve myself of this burden? The reality is the answer is quite simple. We must obey. And in our obedience, we will see the faithfulness of God manifested as he speaks the word like he did over the servant, he can do that for us even today.

Lent 2020 | Day 2: “Wilderness”

The focus of today is the idea of wilderness.

Whenever I hear this word, I am always reminded of the journey that the people of Israel took after the exodus into the wilderness. They were on their way to the promised land. And in the middle of that journey, they would find themselves face to face with their God, who would proclaim His Word and His truth to them, and give them instruction for how they should live and exist one with another.

What is difficult about the wilderness is not that it can be harsh, or even that it will test you. What makes the wilderness difficult is that we have a hard time accepting its purpose. The purpose of the wilderness is to break us from the patterns that we have previously developed.

One of the great examples of this is when the people of Israel went to Moses and they complained that it would have been better for them to stay in Egypt, in slavery and captivity, than to die out in the wilderness. But God had to break them of the patterns that they had developed over 400 years of indentured servitude. God had to break them of the identity that they had developed in the time that they have spent as slaves, and as servants, to unkind and unjust masters.

The truth of the matter is that the wilderness is not supposed to be easy. It’s not supposed to be something that we enjoy. The wilderness is the place where the things that we have accepted, that are wrong, are exposed. And the way that God works his miracle in us is to reveal to us that we can survive, that we can make it, that we are not alone, that he is with us.

God wants to show us that if we would submit to being his people, he has promised to be our God. That when we are in the place of our greatest need, he will provide his greatest supply.

This is the power of the wilderness, it exposes that which is wrong in us, and that which we have accepted and must now reject. The wilderness sheds light on all those areas of our lives that are not who we truly are. And it takes us to that moment where we can trust, truly trust, maybe even for the first time, that the God who has saved us, who has delivered us, has brought us into the wilderness for this very reason: that we might come face to face with who we thought we were, and actually discover who we are supposed to be in him.

I hope that you will continue to follow along in this season of Lent as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Lent 2020 | Ash Wednesday: “Led”

As we begin our journey into the season of Lent this year, I would like to begin by posing a question. What does it mean to be led? What does it mean to follow someone else? What does it mean to submit to the leadership of someone whom we consider to be an influence, a mentor? Someone who provides for us an example that we can truly follow.

One of the most interesting realities of the Christian faith is that being a follower is a key aspect, a key identity to being a disciple of Christ. To being a Christian in the fullest sense of the word. We are called to submit. We are called to obedience. We are called to allowing ourselves to be influenced by someone, namely Jesus, who will provide for us the example that we need in order to become the people that we ought to be.

As we begin this season of Lent, I want to encourage you, I want to encourage myself, to remember that one of the most important tasks we have been called do is to be led.

To be led to repentance.

To be led to grace.

To be led to the cross.

We have been called, and we are admonished over and over again in the scriptures that we are followers. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with us. That doesn’t mean that there’s something missing in us. What it means is that we have recognized that in order for us to achieve our greatest aims, we must follow the one who is leading us to the place where we longed to be, whether we realize it or not.

We all have a longing to fulfill our purpose. But we don’t know how to discover it. We all have a desire, to have a purpose, to have meaning, to be fulfilled in everything that we do. And so we must follow Christ, who is the ultimate example of goodness, the best model for how we should conduct our lives in this world. And the more we follow, the better we are at seeing and being who Christ wants us to be.

We discover that our truest and deepest identity is in Christ. That our desires should be those of Christ. And what we have longed to be should be given to us by God in Christ.

And so in this season of Lent, as we begin this journey, I encourage you to ask yourself, are you being led? Are you allowing yourself to submit to the leadership of Christ as he strives to lead you to where you should ultimately long to go?

Lent 2020: Shrove Tuesday

Today is Shrove Tuesday.

If you don’t know what Shrove Tuesday is, it is the day before Ash Wednesday. If you don’t know what Ash Wednesday is, that is the first day in the season of Lent. And if you don’t know what Lent is, then you probably are not familiar with the liturgical calendar of the Christian church. But that’s ok, I wasn’t either.

That being what it is, the season of Lent is the season that comes right before we celebrate Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday, as some prefer to call it.

Why is this day important? Shrove Tuesday helps to prepare the Christian church and all believers who are obedient to the gospel and Jesus Christ, to prepare the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

Shrove Tuesday is also known by other names. Probably the most famous is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, because it marked the last celebration before the season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday. It is typical to observe the season of Lent with fasting and prayer. It is a time to reflect on what it means for us to be saved, to be redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

And so as we prepare for the celebration of Easter with the season of Lent. During the next 40 days of reflections, I look forward to exploring more what it means to anticipate and to celebrate the reality that God came in the form of a man in the person of Jesus Christ so that we might have eternal life.

I became exposed to the liturgical calendar during my time in the Methodist Church, and they have put together a daily reflection guided based on a daily word. I liked the idea so much they will serve as the focal point of the devotions that I will be writing over the next few weeks.

I hope that you would join me as we prepare and anticipate the miracle and wonder of the death and resurrection of Jesus this year.