Today is Ash Wednesday and that marks the beginning of the Lenten season for us. Those familiar with this know that today they’ll see people walking around with ashes on their forehead. Something many people may have a general understanding of while others may not. The ashes that you see today represent the reality that “All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” Ecclesiastes 3:20 ESV. Representing our mortality and the reality that we all need reconciliation with God and must repent of our sins.
So Happy Ash Wednesday my fellow sinners. Today is the first day of the 40 days leading up to Resurrection Sunday. We as a church all will be fasting and it’ll all look different. Some will choose to fast breakfast, lunch, dinner (the brave soul), or even something else if their health does not permit it. Some of you probably haven’t even figured that part out yet, you got time! But one discipline should remain consistent, the thing that we do in place of that consumption. Prayer. Abiding in God.
John Piper says it like so “Fasting is a way of saying with our stomach and our whole body how much we need and want and trust Jesus. It is a way of saying that we are not going to be enslaved by food as the source of our satisfaction. Jesus is more needful than food.”
These 40 days are to resemble the 40 days that our Lord and Savior spent within the wilderness.
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.“ Matthew 4:1-2 ESV
Just like Jesus in the wilderness you will find yourself being tempted, it will seem hard and there will be an easy way out for your flesh and a good way out for your soul. You will be tempted to simply eat that meal because you have the means to do so but the Lord is waiting there to satisfy your need through communion with Him in prayer. This is the goal. Letting go of the consumption of things to come before God hungry to spend time with Him through prayer. Hungry to confess, reflect, repent, and most importantly ready to mourn the sin that sent Him to the cross on Good Friday. Because of course that’s what Lent leads us to, the remembrance and celebration of what Jesus did for us on that rugged cross and did in that tomb.
Lent then is about giving ourselves to prayer and crying out for the help that we need from the only one who is able to give it and who has given it fully in the sacrifice of Himself. Joy Way, let us fast fully and spend intimate time with Jesus joyfully.
Scriptures On Fasting to Consider:
Matthew 6:16-18 (ESV)
Daniel 10:3 (ESV)
Ezra 8:23 (ESV)
Scriptures to Encourage You:
Psalm 119:10 (ESV)
Psalm 119:39 (ESV)
Psalm 119:103 (ESV)
Romans 8:26 (ESV)
