I will show you a still more excellent way

Lent is still a few weeks away. Yet I have been pondering and praying for some time about the meaning Lent 2022 could have to the body of Christ and to the world. How often in the past have I looked at this as 40 days to kick a bad habit, develop a good one, and in the process hope to take my spiritual life just a bit more seriously? All of this is good, necessary, and expected of us as taught in God’s Word. Yet a critical piece is missing: intentionality. 

How much of my intention is to do this for God and how much is to do this for me? 

While each of us is unique and unrepeatable, and formed by our own life circumstances, we are also very much alike in our brokenness. Picking apart Lenten goals to identify those intentions aimed to satisfy ourselves can be enlightening. It is natural in our brokenness to, in part, make goals out of fear of what others think of us, feelings of inadequacy, or hate of some aspect of our body or mind. These intentions are hidden but typically run throughout the tapestry of our life in one way or another. They manifest into self-thoughts we attempt to ignore, yet these still resound.

The answer is found in Scripture where God speaks to us personally. Consider a Lenten habit of using 1Cor 13:1-7 to examen each day. You might first want to sit with it in prayer, reading each phrase or statement slowly giving the Holy Spirit time to touch your soul. 

I will show you a still more excellent way:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never ends

(1Cor 12:31-13:8)

Now with a sure sense of God’s presence, examen your day looking for the ‘noisy gongs’ in your life: those in your self-talk and those in your speech to others. Look not just at relations with others but also at how you related to yourself each day. In mental prayer thereafter, speak candidly with God about your fears, even the fear of speaking candidly with Him! Begin and end each day asking Him to see yourself and others from His perspective which is pure love. In the Gospels, Jesus often speaks for those who have ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear’—beg God now for this gift. Perhaps most importantly, believe that He will come through for you. 

Each of us is an incalculable force in the world when we permit God to use us as His instrument. Together let’s make this a life-changing Lent for ourselves, for the body of Christ, and for the whole world. Let Him show you a still more excellent way.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam 😊

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