We are here to help people love and worship God. We aim to be, and encourage others to become, committed and active disciples of Jesus,
who love God and worship him, who know the power of the Holy Spirit and who show God’s love in every part of their lives.
Merciful Lord,
grant your people grace to withstand the temptations
of the world, the flesh and the devil,
and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The month of March this year takes through the season of Lent. Lent began on the last Sunday of February, and it ends on Palm Sunday, 29th March, when we enter Holy Week.
Most of us think of Lent as being all about giving up something, usually something that we enjoy -it might be chocolate or alcohol. But Lent is not some sort of season of sacred dieting or de-tox!
The word ‘temptation’ has acquired almost comic overtones in recent decades; we associate it with ‘naughty but nice.’ What the word really refers to are the things that test us, the things that draw us away from our true and better selves.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert (see Matthew 4:1-11 & Luke 4:1-13), it was a questioning of His very self. Would He live by trust in God and God’s call, or would He live life for Himself. The temptation was to live independently of God, to avoid the Cross.
In Lent we take the opportunity to look seriously and honestly at our lives and our priorities. What are the actions or attitudes which deny the deep truth of who I am, namely a child of God filled with the light of Christ (see John 1:9) called to recognise the face of Jesus in others, especially those in need (see Matthew 25:31-end)?
Once we can see something that is hindering us from following Christ, then we know where we have to begin in our struggle against “the world, the flesh and the devil.” In a culture which sees self-restraint or self-denial as strange and wrong Lent can be very counter-cultural!
Christ calls us to follow Him, it is a call to take up our cross and walk with Him. His way, the way of the Cross, is the way to true peace and fulfilment. It is the to live more and more as a true child of God, made in God’s image and made for God for eternity.
In Lent we may well have to give up things or ways of living and thinking to which we are very attached. It will be a struggle, a path of self-denial, but it is our false self that we have to deny. As someone once said, we are called to surrender things that we cannot keep in order to gain what we cannot lose!
May God grant you a holy and life transforming Lent.
God bless,
Tim.
St Mary's Church, Priory Road, Ecclesfield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S35 9XZ, United Kingdom
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