Beginning the Lenten Journey
Lent: Living in the Wilderness
The season of Lent has a lot to do with wilderness. Designed to imitate the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, Lent includes the 40 days (minus Sundays) between Ash Wednesday and Easter. In this season we are invited to enter instead of avoid wilderness. We are encouraged to embrace discomfort, instead of letting it be a deterrent...trusting that there is life there.
For our sermon series, Lessons in the Wilderness, we will look at scripture stories where people experienced the wilderness and consider what God revealed to them there.
We’ve created this blog for us to journey in the wilderness together through this season. Each week will include scripture reading, “Stories from the Wilderness” written by FPC elders, and suggested activities to help us embrace the wilderness experience with an openness to what God wants to reveal to us there.
Beginning Scripture Reading: Matthew 4:1-11
As you read this scripture passage in Matthew, notice how Jesus relied on scripture to withstand the temptation to prove his power. In Jesus’ wilderness experience he is stripped of the basics that sustain life: food, human companionship, shelter. He is sustained by the Word of God.
Notice that the devil also used scripture. What’s the difference between these two uses of scripture?
Reflect on the role of scripture in your own life. In what ways has it sustained you or enabled you to withstand temptation? How is it instructive or a guide in your life? Have you ever felt that someone manipulated scripture to influence you in the ways of the devil? Are there ways you may have unintentionally done this yourself?
Additional Suggested Scripture Reading: Psalm 51:1-17 & Genesis 3:19
Practice:
We invite you to embrace the wilderness experience during this Lenten season.
This week, embrace the wilderness experience like Jesus did. Make space in your life and choose a new way to engage with and rely on scripture. You might make space by choosing to approach a life sustaining task in a different way: fast for a meal, wake up early, spend less time in meal prep by eating more simply, etc.
Suggestions for Reading and Engaging with Scripture:
Set aside 15-20 minutes at a consistent time each week to open up this blog to read the scripture for the week and reflect on it using the prompts, reflections and suggestions here.
When you read scripture during Lent plan to read it out loud and pay attention to how actually saying the words effects how you hear and receive them.
Read a Bible Commentary alongside your scripture reading.
Engage with scripture using the time-tested method of Lectio Divina.
Memorize a verse or phrase from your scripture reading. Speak it to yourself frequently through out the day; relying on it to sustain you.
Act II Community: How Do We Interpret the Bible? Sundays, February 25 & March 3, 17, 24 @ 11am
Join us for this opportunity to discuss and share how we have been biblically discipled in the past and how we interpret and allow scripture to be internalized and directive in our lives.
Stories from the Wilderness
Beginning next week this blog page will include a story, written by one of our elders, in which they reflect on a wilderness experience in their life.