My 2010 Lenten Journey!

It has been said time and time again that “fasting” is the most powerful spiritual discipline of all the Christian disciplines. Through fasting and prayer, the Holy Spirit can transform your life.

This 2010 Lenten season, I have decided to attempt to execute a duel fast. I will run a traditional fast from food over the 46 day Lenten period. This will be a complete fast, in the sense that I will only have liquids, and will be accompanied by continuous prayer. My fasting experience will contain a duel aspect in that I will also fast another item from my daily life. Facebook! Over the Lenten season, I will be fasting Facebook.

I invite you to follow my blog postings as I journal my way through an experience that is both a personal journey with God and an outward witness to the power of faith and perseverance!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

That's My Son!

The other day, I was watching a television show and the main character was a skater whose mom was seeing her skate for the very first time. The daughter performed very well and the mother turned to the person beside her and exclaimed, “That’s my daughter!” You could hear how the tone of her voice rang true with pride and such joy. She wanted others to know that the young girl on the ice was her daughter.

I can’t tell you how many times I have uttered those very words over the past few years. “That’s my daughter!” “That’s my son!” When you have lived in four different cities in the past seven years, and your four children are very active in sports and music and church, it becomes a natural sentence to utter sometimes without even thinking. It seems as though every time I turn around, my children are involved in a new activity with new people in their lives.

I want others to know that’s my son Tyler on those skates, scoring that goal or my Abby out there on that volleyball court, digging another save. I want them to know that’s my Nathan pitching that ball in the city championship and my Kate playing point guard on the basketball team. It is just natural for a mother or a father to want others to know who their child is!

But while part of me shares this news out of exuberant joy and pride, there has usually been a very base need or objective to plainly let others know who these children are in their community. Those in the community will never know who my children are if they are not told their name and where they come from.

God wanted His people to know Christ, the Messiah that would be coming! He was new to them and God wanted them to know how He would become their hope and their future. In Isaiah 52, God uses Isaiah to share the news of the coming Messiah. Isaiah presents Christ the Messiah as a servant who will be a deliverer of all humankind.

We get God’s message as it culminates in John 3:16:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16

May you know the love of God that is Jesus Christ! God is saying to you, “That’s my Son! Follow Him!”

1 comment:

jsi said...

Exceptional word today!
I love you