As I start to write this I’m on my way to my girlfriends to enjoy Shrove Tuesday, yes I know it’s Monday but plans tomorrow prevents us from having it together then (the pancakes were great by the way).
For us this will be an important moment in our journey’s – it starts the build up to Easter.
Our Easter this year will be momentous for personal steps in our relationship but also because we will celebrate Our Lord, the man who paid the ultimate price for us. As a side note, I know that if I was the only person who needed saving he would’ve gone to the cross just for me. But he didn’t do it just for me, he died for each and everyone of us.
Anyway, here’s the deal – this is not only my first Easter as a child of God, it is also my first lent. So what am I going to give up, well sweets.
But this isn’t about giving something up- this is what I’m going to take up and why.
I have recently hit a wall. A spiritual wall, I have a rather delicious problem. I have a problem of breaking into the presence of God. It’s not that I don’t know God, it’s not that I don’t believe in God, it’s not that I don’t know that once I breakthrough it’ll be amazing- its just fear holding me back, it’s reprogramming my brain to accept a new identity. actually it’s not my brain at all, it’s my heart.
You see I’m not a bench-warmer and I haven’t ever really felt that way, I don’t believe God found me just so I can sit on my backside and keep it all to myself. Now, I’m not suggesting I’m going to be found at the front of a Church preaching because you don’t need to be a preacher for Jesus to use you to change someone’s heart. You don’t need to be a theologian or ordained to be in the presence of God. You don’t need to have been a Christian all your life. It’s not a special right held for some people, it’s open to all, as long as your willing to make that jump in faith.
The move from head to heart will be a challenge and the victory will come when my heart accepts I’m not the one who will do it but Jesus. I can tell you, I can tell my family I have broken through to God, I can tell my friends God will cure me of my ills, I can tell the Pastors at my church that I know I can only do it with God, I can believe it in my head, I can accept it in my head. But in my private time with God he will know whats heart and whats not. I will know where I stand, what I believe upstairs and what I truly believe downstairs.
I will know when my world view has totally changed for that of God’s, I will know when I accept an identity in Christ and when I won’t be holding on to tiny bits of my past. I will know when my heart has pulled the rest of me into God’s presence. I know this because I know what it’s like for God to change your heart. He’s done it before, in big, huge, massive ways and now I have to trust Him and hand the little bits over to Him. The niggily engrained splinters of past that still stick around in my freedom.
So for lent, I am taking up a better relationship with God, I am taking up a commitment to spend more time with Jesus, I am taking up the truth that is God, I am taking up the Holy Spirit and I AM GOING TO BREAKTHROUGH and I AM GOING TO BE EVERYTHING I CAN BE. Not through my actions, not through my deeds, not through my words but through his Grace, through his Love, through his Power.
I will use His word as my ladder, I will use His love as my rope, I will use His blessings as my strength to scale my wall. And then I will be there to hold your ladder for you, as many people have held mine.
So, what are you taking up for lent?
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