Lent Season
The season of Lent is upon us. The word “Lent” is derived from Old English lencten, meaning ‘spring’. In the Christian calendar, Lent is a 40-day period of penitence and self-discipline beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending with the service on Holy Saturday which marks the start of Easter. Sundays falling within this period are not counted as part of Lent but as days of celebration. In Christianity, Lent is a time of penance, prayer, preparation for or recollection of baptism, and preparation for the celebration of Easter.
This Lent I am preaching a sermon series that focuses upon the characteristics of congregations that are highly effective in making disciples for Jesus Christ. The up-coming sermon series continues, in many ways, to focus upon the characteristics of Jesus, which is the focus of our current sermon series.
Since I do not have time to discuss everything we’ll cover in the sermons to be preached during Lent, I want to talk a bit in this article about two major characteristics of highly-effective disciple-making congregations. Congregations who are highly effective in making disciples understand what it means to live under God’s grace, and because they understand what it means to live under God’s grace, they show grace freely.
The second important theological characteristic I want to address is forgiveness. One cannot fully understand the power of grace until one understands to power of forgiveness. Jesus knew the importance of forgiveness and conveys this to us when he teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses (or sins) as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Notice that Jesus says “forgive us” not “forgive me.” Could it be that Jesus had the Church in mind? Of course this applies to the individual, but it is also so important for the gathered people of Christ.
Forgiveness, however, seems to be one of the most difficult of God’s gifts for us to get our minds around. Forgiveness seems like a wonderful thing when we are the ones receiving it, but not so much when we are the ones who need to give it. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the theology and practice of forgiveness. This endeavor showed me two important things. First, forgiveness is a process that is embarked upon intentionally (this is called mind forgiveness) where you make up your mind to forgive someone and then make your mind up to forgive that person or persons again and again, usually for the same infraction or hurt (think seventy times seven). Second, forgiveness is a process that takes time to come to completeness. This is called heart forgiveness. Heart forgiveness is not something one makes up his or her mind to accomplish—heart forgiveness is discovered. It comes upon you by surprise. One day you realize that you really have forgiven.
As we make the journey together through the season of Lent, let us not only repent for things we have done or for things of which we need to let go, let us also be determined to become ever more aware that we live under God’s grace, and as a people who live under God’s grace, let us also become determined to show grace by intentionally working together to be a loving and forgiving people.
Blessings,
Pastor Steve