Lent: An Invitation to Trust
By Ashley Weece
Lent is a longstanding tradition within the Christian church that encompasses the 40 days leading up to Easter. For centuries, some Christians have observed this season to intentionally reflect on how Jesus denied Himself for us, and to focus on denying our own distracting desires in order to grow in dependence upon God’s strength.
The term Lent stems from an old English word that means “lengthen,” and it references the lengthening sunny days that the season of Spring brings. Not only is Lent a physical season when the days grow longer, but it is also a spiritual season when we have the opportunity to invite God to lengthen our trust, lengthen our selflessness, and lengthen our faith in Him.
Whether our lengthened Spring days are filled with goodness or with busyness, Lent slows us down to the reality that we are merely human. But while we all have our limits, God reminds us He is limitless. Lent is observed over a 40-day period, and all throughout Scripture we see the number 40 appear before God’s powerful acts of redemption. Whether it was 40 days (like the days of rain during Noah’s flood) or 40 years (like the years Moses and the Israelites wandered in the desert), several stories recorded in the Bible reveal God using this significant timeframe to prepare His people for a greater work to come: deliverance, restoration, and triumph over sin.
LET GO OF CONTROL
As we look more specifically at the life of Jesus, we encounter the 40-day season of His life played out in the desert as Jesus prepared, prayed, and fasted before beginning His public ministry. It is in these 40 days of His life that we are faced with the reality of Jesus’ humanity. In His incarnation, He truly became one of us and faced the very things we battle in our own lives. He was tempted, He was tested, He was hungry, He was thirsty, His body felt weak and weary, and He was alone. The desert was a place of isolation and danger, a place that lacked resources, and ultimately a place of death. It wasn’t really a place someone would willingly send themselves, yet Jesus chose to go there.
It would’ve been easy for Jesus to find a quick fix for the hunger pangs, the isolation, the thirst, and the lack of resources. Yet instead of seeking a quick fix to escape the battle, Jesus fixed His gaze on His Heavenly Father in the midst of His battle. This desert time paints a picture of what the Lent season is intended to be for us: a time to practice the discipline of giving control back to God.
TAKE HOLD OF NEW LIFE
During Lent, we go into the desert with Jesus. We sacrifice the things we’ve taken for granted, the things that give us comfort, and the things we rely on too heavily, so that we can gain a healthy understanding of what we need most in this life. When Jesus willingly went to the desert, He went to a place that was out of His human control—a place where His Father would have to show up. Imagine what would happen if you lived so radically in your everyday life that God would have to show up. This is the life God is calling us into, where we trust Him to accomplish the miraculous even in those places that seem hopeless.
In the dust and ashes of the desert, Jesus trusted His Father to bring Him the life He needed right in the midst of a place where death was prevalent. When we accept our limitations, we begin to see the limitless God right before our eyes. This Lenten season is an invitation to sacrifice your comfort, your pride, your fears, your limits, and your control and watch how God fills the spaces that you once relied too heavily on.
Jesus released control to His Father even when it wouldn’t seem logical. He willingly went to the place that others would not when He went to the desert, and then He willingly went to the place that others could not when He went to the cross. But because Jesus went, we are living with the greatest hope the world has ever known—forgiveness of sin and adoption as the children of God!
In this season of Lent and Easter, invite the same power given to Jesus in the desert, and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, to transform the places and spaces that seem dead in your world with new, resurrection life.