HABITUAL FAITH

“Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”  (Romans 13:14 NIV)

Faith is a habit. Confidence comes from habitual -- or daily-disciplined -- faith… Christians gain confidence and motivation by “putting on the mind of Christ” -- breaking through their own egos to see themselves from God’s point of view -- habitually. In other words, the confident, mature Christian views life by the light of faith -- not by the light of their own self-gratification. 

-- Adapted from David Yount

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PLOWED UP AND RE-SOWN

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV)

The almost impossibly hard thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is remain what we call “ourselves” -- our personal happiness centered on money or pleasure or ambition -- and hoping, despite this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you cannot do. If I am a grass field -- all the cutting will keep the grass less but won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat… I must be plowed up and re-sown. 

-- C.S. Lewis, from an essay entitled “Is Christianity Hard or Easy?”

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THE RESPONSE TO GRACE

“From then on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.’”  (Matthew 4:17 NLT)

The more deeply one enters into the experience of the sacred the more one is aware of one’s own personal sin and the destructive forces in society. The fact that one is alive to what is possible for humankind sharpens one’s sense that we are fallen people. The awareness of sin is the inevitable consequence of having met grace... This grace-judgment dynamic reveals that the center of Christian life is repentance. This does not mean that the distinguishing mark of the Christian is breast-beating. Feeling sorry, acknowledging guilt, and prolonging regret may be components of the human condition, but they are not what Jesus means by repentance. Repentance is the response to grace that overcomes the past and opens out to a new future. Repentance distinguishes Christian life as one of struggle and conversion and pervades it, not with remorse, but with hope. The message of Jesus is not “Repent,” but “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” 

-- Adapted from John Shea in “A Star at Its Rising”

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TURNING FROM OUR OWN WAY

“Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ He said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”  (Mark 1:14b-15 NIV)

Repentance is turning from our own way to God's way.  The evidences that we are going our own way are manifested in religious, moral, material, or social spheres.  We must repent specifically of these sins, for until repentance gets down to the specifics, it is not repentance.  But our basic sin is that we choose our own way rather than God's.  When we repent we say to God that we hand over to Him the reins of our lives.  We do what He wants us to do, not what we want to do. 

-- Ajith Fernando in “The Christian's Attitude Toward World Religions” 

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LENT BEGINS

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV)  “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NIV)

The Season of Lent is like a roller coaster ride with emotions that are down and up again and again as the story of our salvation makes plain our sinful ways and the cost of redemption. We begin with Ash Wednesday where we roughly bump up against our own mortality. Here we know that sin and death are real, and they are real not just for someone else. Sin and death are real for us. This is where we begin the Lenten Season, with our face pressed hard against the reality of our sin and our death. If we did not know how the story ends, this would be a dark and depressing journey. But we do know how the story ends and therefore in the midst of austerity and fasting we remember our faithful Savior and the Easter declaration that life is always victorious over death, always! 

-- Norman Shawchuck and Rueben P. Job in “A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God”

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