Lent: Preparing for Easter

Written by Danny Castiglione

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. Psalm 51:17

What is Lent?

Lent is a 40-day period before Easter that many Christians throughout church history have set for aside for self-examination and repentance.

How do we practice Lent at Waypoint Church?

Practicing Lent is not required for Christians, but we think it is a helpful practice for us as individuals and a church body. So, we encourage Waypoint people to join us.

Here are some of the ways you can practice Lent:

-Ask God what spiritual disciplines you can practice this Lent season to draw closer to his goodness and his presence.

-Come to the Waypoint Academy class on Spiritual Formation

-Join us for the Ash Wednesday Prayer and Worship Service on Wednesday Feb.22

-Listen to the most recent Waypoint podcast on Lent

-Watch this short video from Kathy Keller about practicing Lent

-Read the daily 40-day Lent Devotional from Kathy Keller

-Join the Maundy Thursday (April 6) dinner with other Waypoint people in your community (the specific details about this will be announced in a few week)

-Join the Good Friday service on April 7

-Come on Easter Sunday, April 9, ready to celebrate the risen Christ and the new life we have in him.

If you have questions about Lent or anything related to it or about your spiritual life or the Christian life in general. Please reach to us, we are here to help you on the journey!

And finally, I will end this post with part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy that has been recited by Christians around the world for over 400 years…

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

the early Christians observed with great devotion

the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection,

and it became the custom of the Church that before the Easter celebration

there should be a forty–day season of spiritual preparation.

During this season converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism.

It was also a time when persons who had committed serious sins

and had separated themselves from the community of faith

were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness,

and restored to participation in the life of the Church.

In this way the whole congregation was reminded

of the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ

and the need we all have to renew our faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Christ’s Church,

to observe a period of lent:

by self–examination and repentance;

by prayer, fasting, and self–denial;

and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word.

To make a right beginning of repentance,

and as a mark of our mortal nature,

let us now kneel before our Maker and Redeemer.

Maundy Thursday Liturgy

Today Waypoint people are celebrating Maundy Thursday with a meal in homes throughout the area. This is the first year we are practicing it this way. So, we wanted to share the liturgy with everyone in case you are unable to attend one of the dinners.

Liturgy for the Maundy Thursday Meals

What Does Maundy Thursday Mean?

Christ's "mandate" is commemorated on Maundy Thursday---"maundy" being a shortened form of mandatum (Latin), which means "command." It was on the Thursday of Christ's final week before being crucified and resurrected that He said this commandment to His disciples. Jesus and his disciples had just shared what was known as the Last Supper and he was washing their feet when he stated:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35

What Was the New Commandment Given on Maundy Thursday?

One thing it did, was to raise the definition of love to a new and higher standard. A new standard that is a fixture in the new kingdom that Jesus brought. He describes it as a ‘new commandment’. Love, of course, is central in many parts of the Old Testament. The book Leviticus (19:18) commanded the Israelites to love their neighbors as themselves. But the newness isn’t so much a matter of never having heard words like this before. It’s a matter of the mode of this love, the depth and type of this love: love one another in the same way that I have loved you.

It has been hard for the disciples up to this point even to appreciate what Jesus has been doing on their behalf; now he’s telling them to copy him! As Jesus is washing their feet at this meal, they are to look back at his whole life, his whole way and manner of life, and to find in it a pattern, a shape, an example, a power. To wash someone else’s feet, you have to think of yourself as only a slave. That, as we saw, can feed all the wrong kind of thinking: it can produce a sort of inverted pride, a pride at one’s own humility. But with love there’s no danger of that. Love is all about the other person. It overflows into service, not in order to show off how hard-working it is, but because that is its natural form.

Jesus sacrificially met His followers' deepest need---that of new spiritual life and the forgiveness of sins. He even loved His enemies, and He calls us to show love to those who don't appear to deserve it. Just as Jesus loved sinners "to the end" (or "to the max" John 13:1) when He had nothing to gain from them, so must we. The Bible says that there was nothing attractive about sinful mankind that drew Him to love us. God loved us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). Salvation is not only a wonderful gift that protects us from the penalty that we deserve (Romans 6:23), but by the finished work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit we are granted spiritual strength that motivates godly action in us so we obey Christ's new command to love---to love our brothers and sisters in Christ and even to love those who we think deserve it least.

And now we will read 1 John 1:7-12, as Jesus’ disciple John, teaches local churches about Jesus’ new commandment to love,

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Take a moment to reflect on these words and the new commandment Jesus gives us.

Prayer & Fasting for Lent

by Trace Clevinger

This a repost from Lent last year.

As I was growing up, my family tried to eat dinner together most every night. On a few occasions, I recall my parents skipping a meal because they were “fasting” due to big decisions they were trying to make. Through watching them, I drew the conclusion that fasting means giving up food, and the desired result of fasting is to hear from the Lord in order to make wise choices.

The first time I personally remember having fasted was in college during Easter weekend, soon after a turning point in my faith where I began truly desiring to follow Christ. I wasn’t trying to make any important decisions at the time but was instead seeking to abstain from food in order to more fully appreciate the weight of Christ’s death and the joy of His resurrection. Over the years, as I’ve observed others and learned from experience, I’ve seen that fasting can take forms other than abstaining from food and is done for a variety of reasons.

My goal in this blog is simply to answer the questions of what fasting is, why people do it, and provide practical ways to fast in hopes that members of Waypoint would join together in seeking the Lord during this Lent season (the 6-week period leading to Easter) through fasting and prayer.

WHAT IS FASTING?

“Then I proclaimed a fast at the river…that we might humble ourselves before our God” – Ezra 8:21

Traditionally, when people think about fasting, they think about abstaining from food. In American culture today, people regularly fast from food in hopes of gaining health benefits from it regardless of their spiritual beliefs. However, to gain a biblical understanding of fasting, I think it’s helpful to focus more on the purpose behind fasting than the particular item (whether it’s food or Facebook) that one is fasting from. In my study of the topic I’ve come to see that the purpose of fasting, at its core, is to more closely align ourselves with God. This means our whole person (heart, body, and mind) knowing God’s whole person (Father, Son, and Spirit), understanding His purposes, and experiencing His pleasures more fully.

WHY DO WE FAST?

There are many reasons someone may choose to fast. Three reasons I see in Scripture for fasting are below:

1. To prepare us to hear from the Lord:

a. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’” – Acts 13:2

b. Fasting is not a requirement for hearing from the Lord, but it is an act which helps us remove other distractions for a time in order to better listen to what He has to say.

2. To respond to what God has revealed to us:

a. “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” – Esther 4:16

b. Fasting is a primary biblical way of responding to, and preparing ourselves for, something God has revealed to us or called us to do. Daniel, Moses, Elijah, Esther, and Jesus (to name a few) all fasted as a means of responding to God’s faithfulness and to prepare themselves to walk in faithfulness to God.

3. To lament (and repent) over sin and brokenness:

a. “‘Yet even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful.” – Joel 2:12-13

b. Whether you are lamenting over your own sin, or the brokenness of this world, fasting is a way to rend our hearts before the Lord, show repentance, and ask God to bring healing.

HOW DO WE FAST?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice…to set the oppressed free…? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter…and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear…and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” - Isaiah 58:5-9

Generally, fasting involves abstaining from food for a period of time. But, fasting can also involve abstaining from a variety of things, like giving up comforts or refraining from media, and in place of them, setting aside time devoted to worshiping and hearing from the Lord. Ultimately, the act of fasting is not what is pleasing to the Lord, it is the state of our hearts when we humbly seek the Lord and desire for our hearts to be made more like His that is pleasing to Him.

The elders and staff of Waypoint Church invite you to join us in fasting and prayer during Lent in the following ways:

1. Use the Prayer and Fasting Guide (available here) to pray through topics as a church body each week of Lent.

2. Join us for our prayer gatherings on Tuesday nights. The link for the prayer meeting each week will be sent out on Realm.

If you would like to learn more about Lent and the Christian Calendar see this article.