Lent is to be a season of fasting, spiritual discipline and growth, penitence, conversion, and simplicity. The word “Lent” comes from the Germanic word for springtime and can be seen as spiritual spring cleaning.
It is a time to take a spiritual inventory, cleaning out those things which hinder our personal relationships with Jesus Christ and our service to him in his Body. This is why Lent begins with repentance – on Ash Wednesday. But the whole season of Lent and its disciplines can transform us, body, soul, and spirit. Disciplined diet cleanses the body, providing for a simple spiritual journey, that brings us into a closer walk with God. Thus our emotions can get rid of obsessions, fear, sadness and emotional pain.
This happens when we focus on becoming more and more like Christ. Eastern Christians call this process theosis, which Athanasius, an early church father, appropriately described as "becoming by grace, what God is by nature."
There are very basic Christian tasks associated with the season of Lent. These are fasting, almsgiving, prayer and contemplating the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When we consider his bodily and emotional suffering and his torment when he carried all our sins and was punished for all our iniquities, even forsaken by God his Father, we find his light in the Father’s love, who gave his only Son for us – and we find the love of Jesus to be strangely familiar, as of a friend who gives his life for us. There is no greater love, than to give your life for your friends.
The purpose of Lent is to once again find assurance of faith, by the grace of God. The wealth of spiritual renewal that comes through grateful sacrifices, renews my understanding of the love of God and of being his child. Within the simplicity of Lent a renewed relationship with Jesus comes to pass. I am redirected onto the way of God’s purpose for me to only live for his glory. And by grace, through faith, the Word of God rejuvenates my servant’s heart through grateful love for what Jesus my Lord and Saviour did for me!
The Lenten season comes to an end with great joy and happiness - with the feast that rejoices in the victory of Christ over my enemies – the Easter Sunday!
And this joy continues every Sunday for the rest of my life, when I worship and praise, and learn to walk with the risen, conquering Lord every day, until the end.
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