Written for First Baptist Church, Aurora, IL, for the 2015 season of Lent.
Introduction to the Season of Lent
Since ancient times, Christians have set apart the weeks before Easter to prepare themselves to remember, honor, celebrate, and rejoice in Christ’s resurrection. Don’t let the place and time we live in deceive you—Easter is the most important and central holiday for Christians, despite the attention everyone gives to Christmas. Easter is the reason we can be Christians at all. Easter is the Gospel. And since Easter is so incredibly important, we do well to give it the attention and preparation it deserves. This is the purpose of Lent.
Lent is a time for us to purposely slow down and look at ourselves and our lives in light of our identity as followers of Christ. Lent is all about consciously and deliberately making room for God in our hearts and lives. Consciously and deliberately clearing other things away in order to be more present with God. Consciously and deliberately taking steps and engaging in practices to help us open more of ourselves to God. These practices are known as spiritual disciplines.
Spiritual disciplines should be a part of every Christian’s life, not just for the season of Lent. But Lent gives us the opportunity to try something different—to seek God in a way we never have before. When we do, we open ourselves to the possibility of connecting with God, hearing God, and loving God in ways we would never have experienced otherwise.
So during this season of Lent, we encourage everyone to seriously consider engaging in some spiritual discipline. To help you do this, we are going to provide some information about different disciplines—the whats, whys, and hows. Every Sunday during Lent, a different discipline will be featured in a short guide intended to help you begin practicing that discipline. If you don’t find a spiritual practice that clicks for you until the 3rd, 4th, 5th week of Lent, that’s okay. Start where you are and move forward. The most important thing is actively and intentionally seeking God, and seeking to make more space for God in yourself and your life.
Practices create openings in our lives where the grace, mercy, and presence of God may be known to us.
Craig Dyksta, qt in Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, p. 218