Lent 2020

This is a crucial aspect of our spiritual life to consider during Lent. The pursuit of the spiritual life is the pursuit of open communication and communion with the Holy Spirit. We are seeking his guidance and direction in our everyday lives.

“Who could know what’s next?” It’s easy to get obsessed with what comes next. Was it jarring when Jesus told the disciples, “No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels or the Son of Man himself”?

Our personalities, backgrounds, and principles drive our anger in different directions. We get angry about different things. Today is a day to consider what drives our anger. Are we angry at the things that God is angry at?

Like the crowd gathered around Jesus, we are desperate that Jesus is who he says he is. But isn’t he also dangerous? When we give our life over to him, don’t we give up control of our own wants and desires?

If we are honest, there are probably people we (probably subconsciously) dismiss “their kind.” Racism remains a problem for many people. If you’ve never taken an implicit bias test, take a few minutes and take one like the one at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Just when we think we’ve got a handle on our faith and an understanding of who God wants us to be, we read Paul’s desire to “take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV). We fall so short.

Who really knows you? We all have various walls that we put between ourselves and those around us – often unwittingly. The walls between us and strangers are the highest, but some of us really struggle with allowing anyone to really get to know us.

Too often we separate the disciplines of reading Scripture and praying. We can read Scripture to study and help inform our faith, but we can also read Scripture to deepen our conversation with God. Spend some time seeing where the text leads your prayers.