Lent Week 1- An Intro and Waiting

Small Portion

Here is where you can start. Watch this reflection video and once you have refer to the prayer in the Lent guide that you can pray each day this week. From there you can decide to do more reading or reflections, either in the prayer guide or using some of the written thoughts below the video.

Daily Prayer

Father, give me the eyes to see and the ears to hear. A heart that can recognize both your great love for me and my desperate need for you. My greatest desire is to be found in you, but I am continually distracted and detoured from your path and your plans. So take again today, this very moment. All that I am, all that I have. Spirit lead me and guide me in the paths of the new life you give me. Continually teach me of my great need for your great love. 

Medium Portion- Use note space in Lent guide to write down what God is speaking to you.

Read Psalm 25

How does this Psalm strike you?

What lies at the centre of the Psalmists security?

How does the Psalmists idea of who God is shape their prayer?

Where does his hope lie? Where does your hope lie?

Large Size- Further Reflections:

"Though it might be argued, theoretically, that a Christianity in which men know how to picket, but not how to pray, is bound to wither, theorizing is not required, because we can already observe the logic of events. The fact is that emphasis upon the life of outer service, without a corresponding emphasis upon the life of devotion, has already led to obviously damaging results, one of which is calculated arrogance. How different it might be if the angry activists were to heed the words found in The Imitation of Christ, 'Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be'.

The essence of pietism, by contrast, is the limitation of primary interest to personal salvation. Even today, by the highways, we can see signs paid for by somebody, which urge us to 'get right with God.' The evil of this well-intentioned effort lies not in what it says, but in what it so evidently omits. The assumption is that salvation is nothing more than a private transaction between the individual and God and that it can become an accomplished, dated event."

-Elton Trueblood in The New Man for Our Time

Go through the questions below and then refer to the Lent guide for some directed prayer instructions for this week:

Questions:

1)We talk about personal faith but how does our faith reveal itself publicly?

2) When you are upset or challenged about the state of things in the world is your first thought to complain or to pray? Why do you think that is?

3) How does your own need for grace impact how you offer grace?

Actio Steps- How will you respond this week?

What is one thing you will actively attempt this week to practice what God has revealed to you. Write it below. 

Pick one person to pray for this week that God lays on your heart.