Journey of Worship

It’s been said that our life betrays what we believe. Or that our beliefs are betrayed by our life. Either way, most, if not all, Christians say that Christ is the most important thing to them, but their living says they are more concerned with life, work, status, homes, cars, retirement plans, etc. Most aspects of life reflect a forgetting of our Maker, Redeemer, and Savior. I’m not here to tell you how a life that has Christ as the most important thing will be played out in you specifically, but to simply cause you to think.

This aspect of drift and forgetting is a common occurrence in all of our lives. The issue isn’t so much if it has happened (because it will at some point), but recognizing it and making appropriate course corrections.

The season of Lent, at its core, calls us back to God, back to basics, and back to the spiritual realities of life in Christ. Back to the things that we say we believe in. It’s a time when we can ask Christ to once again put to death sin and indifference toward God and others so that we might fulfill the Greatest Commandment to love the Lord our God with all of who we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can once again enter fully into the joy of the Lord Who is our strength.

Lent has much spiritual significance. Its duration of the 40 days leading up to Easter (excluding Sundays) is designed to remind us of the 40 days that Christ spent in the wilderness before beginning His public ministry. In the early church days, Lent was a time of preparation for those who would be baptized on Easter Sunday. It was also a time of restoration for those who had repented of significant sin to the fellowship of believers.

Despite the spiritual significance, Lent has been seen as many as threatening and scary. Some of that comes from misunderstanding, unpleasant past church experiences, or the fact that Lent themes are not as prevalent in modern church practice like the themes of Advent at Christmas time. For many, Lent has been a dark and foreboding time of works based effort that is joyless and unfulfilling.

In most protestant and evangelical church traditions, we prepare for Christmas by recapturing the sense of longing in the Advent season. However, most don’t prepare for Easter (beyond buying a new outfit) even though Easter can be considered the climax of Christian belief. So beyond the rituals and such, what is the true spiritual intent and value of Lent?

David the Psalmist wrote, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin…Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me…The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:1-2,10-12,17 niv).

In Lent we have the opportunity to consider and meditate on our own sinfulness and separation from God and others. We can ask the question, “Why would Jesus step into that?” The idea is not just a general sense of sinfulness, but the recognition of and wrestling with our sin personally. In that battle, we see the personal connection with the passion of Christ and an identification with and participation in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a period of renewal through repentance.

We have the opportunity to again seek God in a fresh way and to see the need for Him to be in every area of our life. We see again the basics: God’s unconditional  love for us and our response to that love. We can experience again the first love of our faith. We take time to re-evaluate and re-order our relationship with God.

In Lent, we are invited to carry the temptation and sin that continue to torment us to the cross and to confront the sin there, allowing Christ’s presence to be fully in control. We might need to deny the sin or the righteousness that we think we have. Perhaps we will need to experience a breakthrough in areas of sin and relationship that are out of alignment with God.

The thing about Lent that is often missed, though, is that it isn’t so much about giving up as it is about taking on. It is a time of transformation and renewal where we prepare to encounter Christ’s sacrifice again as we continue in the journey of sanctification. As we once again come face to face with our sinfulness, we can open ourselves more fully to the presence of God in our lives so that we are more fully shaped by God’s grace every day.

As we look ahead to another celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection, are we living out and embodying the belief system we agree with intellectually? Lent is an excellent time to reconsider and reflect.

I’m thankful to the writings of the late Robert Webber and his book Ancient Future Time, the work of Dan Wilt of worshiptraining.com, and the writing of Julie Clawson in the preparation of this article.

Additional Scriptures for consideration: Joel 2:1-1,12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 and Matthew 6:1-6,16-21.

Related posts:

1. Why Good Friday? Part 1
2. Why Good Friday? Part 2
3. “Worship demands purity”