Following Jesus What Difference Does It Make – The Complete Lenten Series

I realize that Lent is not quite over, but with Palm Sunday coming and Holy week only a few days away, as I mentioned this morning, I want to turn my focus to reflections on this last week of Jesus life.

I hope that you have enjoyed the posts during this Lenten series as much as I have.  The depth and variety of what people have written has inspired me.  It is obvious that for many of us following Jesus really does make a difference in incredible ways.  We have contributors from Ireland, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, England, the Us and Canada. We have farmers, theologians, pastors, physicians, artists, authors, photographers and musicians.

Here is the complete list of posts:

A Good Friday Prayer

Matthew Young –  Waiting For Spring 

Palm Sunday Prayer

Palm Sunday Is Coming – What Does It Mean?

John Leech –  Thin Space

Jill Aylard Young – Suffering and Hope: A Meditation on Miscarriage and Romans 5:3-5 

Dave Perry – Imagining the Lectionary – Psalms and Passion

Jon Stevens – Re-Rooting Ourselves in the Only One Who Counts 

A Prayer for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

Ryan Harrison – Summer Breaking

Steve Wickham – Really What Difference Does Following Jesus Make?

Kathy Escobar – Humility

A Prayer for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

Melanie Clark Pullen – Rest For the Soul

James Prescott What Difference Does It Make – Surrender and Control

Prayer Knocks, Fasting Obtains, Mercy Receives – A Meditation From St Peter Chrysologus

A Season For Grief and Sorrow

Tracy Dickerson Icon

Learning to Live Without Plastics

Jarred McKenna Jesus In Japan (Libyia & Bahrain) I Was Hungry & Thirsty… & You Fought Rob Bell on Twitter

Coe Hutchison Following Jesus What Difference Has It Made

John Mitchell  Followers of the Way

I Have and Always Will Belong to God

Ryan Harrison It Doesn’t But It Should

Don’t Try and Escape the Desert

Alex Tang  Following Jesus

Theresa Ip Froehlich Thank God For Lent

A prayer for the Second Sunday of Lent

Eugene Cho – Giving Up Coffee or My Life

Tim Dalton – Following Jesus What Difference Does it Make

Paula Mitchell – The Grace to Trust

Jeff Johnson – Christ Has Walked this Path A Lenten video

Where is God in the Midst of Disaster?

Keith Giles – Nobody Follows Jesus So Why Should You?

Ron Cole – Leaving to Find Church

Jon Stevens – You Do Not Need To Go To Seminary to Follow Jesus

Earthquake In Japan How Do We Pray?

John Van de Laar – Into The Desert

Lynne Baab – Freedom From Fear of Death

A Lenten Prayer by Ignatius Loyola

Another Ash Wednesday Prayer

Ash Wednesday Prayer 2011

Back From Retreat, Ready for Easter

Tom & I are just back from our quarterly retreat and I am feeling renewed, refocused and ready for Easter.  While I was away I wrote the following prayer, the first of several I want to share as we move through the final days of Lent towards Holy week.

Holy week is the pivotal point of our faith culminating in the wonder of Christ’s resurrection, but many of us are afraid to walk this path because we are afraid of suffering. But there is no other pathway to eternal life and the wonder of God’s kingdom than through the Cross and the joy for me is that we do not walk this path alone. We walk it together with Jesus and with the great company of those who have gone before.

Let us walk the way of the Cross together
And move forward without fear into God’s eternal purposes
May we trust in God alone, follow Jesus and cling to the Spirit
May we choose rightly so that life will begin anew in our hearts.

Suffering and Hope: A Meditation on Miscarriage and romans 5:3-5

Today’s post is contributed by Jill Aylard Young.  Jill serves on the board of Mustard Seeds Associates. She lives with her husband Matthew and daughter Grace in Elysburg, PA where Matthew is pastor of Elysburg Presbyterian Church. Jill has an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is particularly interested in spiritual direction and formation.

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Suffering and Hope: A Meditation on Miscarriage and Romans 5:3-5

³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.  (NIV)

As congregants poured out into the lobby at the close of the church service on Sunday – the Presbyterian church in Pennsylvania where my husband is pastor – I made my way straight over to a young woman who had just found out at 12-weeks that the little life within her was no longer alive.  She knew that I too had experienced a similar miscarriage a few months before and so we immediately embraced with knowing and tears.  We had rejoiced together in her long awaited pregnancy. Now we were sorrowing together and processing the loss as fellow Christians with a faith and hope that doesn’t diminish the reality of pain.

My husband had just preached a sermon on Romans 5:3-5 and this was the backdrop as we shared with each other. The truths in this Scripture felt palpable as we stood together. In the course of our conversation she said both that this experience had been the worst of her life and that she had never experienced such grace and love from the people of God surrounding her. Suffering and hope were mingling.

As I came away from our conversation I realized how fresh my own sorrow from my miscarriage was still, even as I was joyful about my very new and unannounced pregnancy. Just a few hours later my second miscarriage began.

Disbelief, anger, emptiness….a lot of questions, aching disappointment!

We are not protected from suffering as we follow Jesus.  We are subject to the same risks in this life.

So how is suffering different as we walk with Jesus?  It certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t struggle, question, resist, and just simply hurt! But suffering provides opportunity for the Holy Spirit’s work within us, to grow our character and deepen our hope. I had hoped for a second child (and still do though I’m an older mom who got started later on marriage and family). I already had joyful images in my head of a family of four, of a sibling for our dear daughter Grace, of another grandchild for my dad who a year ago lost his wife, my mother.

As I struggle with this unexpected loss during this Lent, I feel that tug of the Holy Spirit within me to a hope that is deeper than my pictures of how I want my future to be…A hope rooted in the love of God, poured into my heart even in the midst of sorrow, disappointment, unmet longings… a hope in God’s love that is not dependent on how the circumstances of life work out. This I have learned through dark times in the past and this I must learn again and again.

By God’s mercy may we follow Christ in our suffering, opening our hearts to his love and staying in faith even as we doubt, ache, and resist.

Imagining the Lectionary: Psalms and Passion by Dave Perry

Today’s post was provided by Dave Perry and was first published on Visual Theology.  Dave is a Methodist Minister who has been the Chair of the Lincoln and Grimsby District since 2000. He had his first taste of Christianity and Methodism whilst an undergraduate and became a member of the Methodist Church at Selly Oak.  His hobbies include fell walking, rambling, running, reading, art, photography, model railways, red wine and watching movies on DVD. Dave is married to Sue, who is Deputy Head of Dietetics for the Hull and E. Yorkshire NHS Hospitals Trust. They have two daughters, Bekki (online merchandising designer) and Judy (final year Communication and Media student).

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Whichever way we look at it, the final phase of the Lenten journey towards Easter is the supreme test of our mettle as disciples. Do we continue alongside Jesus, or do we gradually fall back and move to the periphery, melting into the crowds of bystanders where we will find anonymity and little to mark us out as ‘different’?

With each passing year Jesus walks an increasingly lonely road through our culture to the events of Holy Week. The palms are fewer, the passion less. Those who dare to follow him closely can no longer take for granted that the bystanders understand what they are doing or appreciate the significance of this pathway to Easter. The increasing strangeness and oddity of the spectacle bear an inverse relationship to the cachet of being a Christian in our society.

There is no celebrity or glamour on offer here. Staying close to Jesus offers no enhancement of our personal status in the eyes of others. But then it is not about us. It never has been. It is about Him. And he eschewed all such self-serving interests for the sake of being utterly God-centred and passionately people-focussed. So the journey he makes goes from acclaim to resentment, and from there to ridicule, ending with the final excruciating good riddance of the Cross. And in his rejection the divine odd-one-out calls his disciples to stay close all the way through.

By abandoning the aggrandising power which the world craves for a life lived in and for the apparent powerlessness of love, Jesus demonstrates a completely subversive understanding of the whole concept of power. And as he does so the full potential of humanity shines within him as a countercultural beacon of hope. The power of such divine love is the energy which brings God’s Kingdom alive in and through those disciples who determinedly stay close to him, come what may.

The Christian Faith may indeed seem strange to those who watch from the sidelines today – and in a sense if it is true to itself it always will – but in love our homecoming, our belonging and our true identity are always to be found. These truths we discover in Jesus. And there is nothing odd or strange about the deep authenticity which comes from knowing one’s whole being is centred upon them, through his presence with us on life’s journey. As we follow him and serve others these life-giving holy truths come alive within us and empower us to fulfilled living in a way that makes sense and gifts meaning to every waking moment.

Jesus needs his disciples to trust that this is more than enough for anyone. It was for him, why shouldn’t it be for us?

Re-Rooting Ourselves in the Only One Who Counts – Lenten Reflection by Jon Stevens

open gate farm

Today’s post is the second submitted by Jon Stevens who farms on Camano Island at the Open Gate Farm

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Farmers around the world are a different group.  They are not like the business people who shuttle into the canyons of commerce to wrestle with the bears and bulls that hide behind the rocks.  No, farmers seem to be a more placid, gentle, peaceful people.  They are a people who can look through you without doing much damage.  In fact, sometimes it’s even a healing gaze you get.

This is because of what they do.  They bump up against the realities of this world, the hope in the seeds, the doubt in the weather, the hope in the growing plants, the doubt in the weather, the hope in the harvest, the doubt in the weather, the peace of full larders and cheer filled Christmases, the doubt in the weather…it never ends.

It is that contact with the never ending which leaves the lines in their souls.  It is that daily contact with the doubts and the hopes, it is that living in the tension of wondering will God actually provide? which forms and shapes them into who they are.  It is that contact with the hope of birth, the finality of death, the eating of what they have had to kill, whether it be beast or plant, which gives them contact with God in ways the rest of the world has forgotten.

It’s not that God isn’t in those canyons of commerce.  It’s just that He is a bit harder to find.  So if you are looking for someone to follow, say for example Jesus, it might be easier to do so as a farmer.  You might discover your gift is not just raising lettuce or beets or beans.  It might be your gift is finding the only one worth following…and the path to Him.  That’s how it’s been for many of us who have left the cities to re-root ourselves in the only life that counts, a life with Him.  It’s o.k. to leave where you are.  He’s waiting for you just over the hill!

Happy Hoeing,

Jon

Summer Breaking – Lenten Reflection by Ryan Harrison

Today’s post is the second by Ryan Harrison who lives in Denver, Colorado but her heart is in Morocco. She fills her days with reading, teaching, and ministering in the city. This post was first published on How We Spend Our Days

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It happened eight years ago, but I can’t stop thinking about it. One moment, melted into forever, into my eternity. It’s become that which I look for in my life: that one breath, sigh of relief, of burdens being lifted and the true meaning of his words. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden for my burden is easy and my yoke is light. Come to me, full of grief, of sorrow, of hopes unanswered. Come to me, full of anxiety, of pride, of an empty desire to control.

Eight years ago I sat on a beach in North Africa. It was hotter than hot and we sat– the foreigners and the locals alike, heavy with sweat and stiff muscles, the way we craned our necks to reach out to the breeze that wasn’t there.

Children tucked in at their mother’s feet not daring to run to the water’s edge– too hot anyway for jolly. The birds would flitter across the slow, short waves, the waves themselves too tired to roll.

And then it happened. Slowly the hair on the back of our necks lifted, unmatted from the skin. Women’s veils, the ones with fringe on the end, started to tussle.

The breeze. Summer’s chains clanging against fall’s relief; summer breaking. That’s what they call it.

When a season breaks, everything right in the world matters ten thousand times more than everything wrong. The children stretch, cool wind breathing life into their lungs, and they shout for joy, for the hope that is the breeze–no longer stranger, but friend.

Women start to laugh again. These sometimes women, sometimes product to be used, purchased for a time being and worn hard– they have life coursing through their veins again. Tomorrow seems closer, seems sweeter and softer than ever before. They lay back and float on the sand, their bodies light with the expectancy of a birth easier than they have ever known.

Tomorrow is sweet, but the shadows on the horizon dance, a harbinger of the coming pain. The next day? Not as sweet. Heavy. Sticky with pain. A cruel desert.

But again, God will bring the wind. He leads us out of our deserts, our skins hardened and wind-blasted. The wind polishes away the sand, the weight of the heat. He breaks them, those chains of ours. Those seasons of never-ending heavy grief.

And so we follow, through the desert.

 

May I Touch the Heart of God

Reaching for God

This morning I wrote a short prayer for Light for the Journey on facebook and I have found myself mediating on it throughout the day.  Tom and I are getting ready to go on our annual Lenten retreat on Thursday and this has been great preparation for me, especially in the midst of what is turning out to be an extremely busy season

May all that is within me sit quietly before God

May my soul rest and listen

May I touch the heart of God and be transformed

As I say repeating this refrain today the story of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment came to my mind and it struck me – she wasn’t just touching his garment, she was indeed touching his hear,.  and as a result she was transformed.  From a woman who was ostracized and abandoned she was once more embraced and included and not just included back into the society that had rejected her but included even more incredibly into the family of God and society of God’s resurrection world

Oh the joy of touching God’s heart.  All of us have some area in our lives where we feel ostracized or abandoned.  All of us need to touch the heart of God and be transformed so that we can become God’s people in every part of our being.  My prayer for this retreat time is that I may be able to touch the heart of God in a place where I have not been before and so be transformed.

Really what Difference Does Following Jesus Make?

This morning’s post comes from Steve Wickham.   Steve is a Registered Safety Practitioner (BSc, FSIA, RSP [Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min).  His blogs are at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/and http://inspiringbetterlife.blogspot.com/ andhttp://tribework.blogspot.com/.  His Facebook page is: http://www.facebook.com/stevewickhamauthor

This post was first published as Really What Difference Does Following Jesus Make? on Epitome

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According to gospel tradition, the first words Jesus ever preached were these:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

~Luke 4:18, 19, 21 (NRSV).

The first five lines were read from the scroll of Isaiah (61:1-2) and the final line was Jesus’ summation — that was his sermon! And it created quite an impact (Luke 4:22-30).

Of course, the rest of the gospel accounts lay out the Jesus-story in ways so diverse their truths are everlastingly deep. But, just what personal benefit is there in following this ‘Saviour’?

Well, Jesus himself has answered that question above.

Needing Jesus – The Anointed One

It’s clear in reading the gospels that Jesus is the promised Messiah. But he’s not the sort of Messiah that the Jews were expecting; they’d misread their Scriptures. No military or political ruler, but a saviour redeeming a sinful world.

The truth is we all fall short of the best we’re capable of (Romans 3:23) in both theoretical and practical ways; how we think and therefore act.

It’s only from the acceptance of this fact — that it’s even a problem — that we can make the most of troubled circumstances as we embrace a once-calamitous truth.

Acceptance of our need is the end of one hopeless journey and the creation of a new one — one worlds better.

Why do we need to follow Jesus?

Because we need him to live anything close to a truthful life. Will we be like Pilate and say, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) or will we understand the impactful reality of this premise upon which all of life exists?

Discouragement, helplessness and hopelessness are now recoverable, through Jesus.

Good News to the Poor – Release to the Captives etc

Though this pithy passage from Isaiah is thick with theological meaning, our purpose — right now — is devotional.

The general truth is we’re all spiritually poor; by circumstance and disposition. There are times we’re poor and there’s the generality of our poorness. Our spirits are bereft — at truth — without God. With Jesus we’re promised not only redemption from the terror of the abyss we were to ourselves, but we have reconciliation with ourselves and, therefore, restoration.

This is a God-engineered reality; something we cannot do for ourselves.

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The good news is release from the spiritual dungeon entrapping us to lies, and the healing of all varieties of otherwise irreconcilable spiritually-mandated maladies.

That’s a day-by-day reality that is lived out by the person truly following Jesus — as the Number 1, and only effective, pre-emptive strike against fear upon life.

What difference does Jesus make?

The overwhelming evidence bellows: all the difference in the known world! — Even to the point that we’re in awe of how indescribable and unfathomable the difference is.There’s no veritable limit to the grace of God to sanctify and heal us.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

What Difference Does It Make? Surrender and Control a Lenten Reflection by James Prescott

Today’s Lenten reflection comes from James Prescott.  James is a 30 plus year old living in Sutton, south west of London in the
 UK. He is part of Vineyard Church Sutton, a community trying to
explore what doing church means in a post-modern context. His interests include films, music, anything by Apple, superheroes,
football and reading, and I am currently working on a book. I’m
passionate about exploring the true nature of church and what it
means to be a disciple of Jesus.  His heart is to change the 
perception of church, and of being a follower of Jesus from one of 
division, judgementalism, religion and hypocrisy to one of love,
 grace, unity and justice.  He blogs at http://jamesprescott.co.uk/blog/

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What difference does it make?

Surrender & control

Rhythm.

We all have one.

Right at the core of our being there is a rhythm to our lives. On a purely physical level, there is a heartbeat. The pace of that heartbeat, the rhythm of it, depends on what we do with the rest of our lives, what rhythm our lives beat to.

Lent is a time when we stop and rexamine that ryhthm. It’s an opportunity to go back to the core of who we are and what we believe, and reexamine what our life is really about, and where we honestly are with God.

This Lent I have given things up – a common theme during Lent – but I have also taken something up.

Two years ago I took part in a discipleship programme, a mission into your own life if you will, which involved carrying on with my regular life – job, church, hobbies etc – but with one subtle yet crucial difference.

Jesus would be first.

For 40 days, I would live intentionally for Jesus, deliberately orientate my life around Him – and part of that included daily prayers and Bible studies, on top of regular serving, tithing and regularly attending group meetings.

It was a very fruitful process, during which I grew closer to God and realised I could do the spiritual disciplines each day if I wanted to. My rhythm changed, life seemed to have purpose, and I was actually dissapointed when it finished.

This year, I decided to for lent to do something similar – to do the Bible studies, daily prayers every morning – which is the worst time of day for me to do that, as I’m definitely not a morning person, so it would require self-discipline.

Not quite the same intensity as two years ago and not such a big commitment, but enough to be different to what I was used to.

So in doing this I took up something new for lent.

I also gave up things for lent. Most prominently, chocolate (which of course no one ever does), and take-aways.

Now I’ve managed to stay off the take-aways so far, but I have given in to the chocolate – and staying off the take-aways is proving tough, though I’m being successful so far.

But in taking up something new, I’ve done fine so far. The decision to read the Bible each morning and say a set prayer at the start of this day, and have hourly prayer reminders, is working so well. My day is starting much better, I feel more positive about each day and a real sense of peace when I go to work or church or anywhere.

God has been speaking into my heart and giving me a peace.

There is another side to this. It’s also allowed God space to get in and really deal with some difficult, painful issues as well. I have found at various points God speaking to me about His grace, about my own failings, and its been somehow easier to sit down and examine myself and deal with those issues.

Most of them being about control.

You see I like being in control. I think on many levels we all do.

It’s one of the things many of us struggle with, giving control of our hearts to God, dying to ourselves and allowing Jesus to raise us up to a new life hidden in Him. I have found that giving into temptation to eat chocolate for example is something that I do to exercise control, because there is a part of me that doesn’t want to give up control.

Because giving up something for lent involves giving up control.

In the end, the difference giving up certain things and beginning new habits make over lent is that they help us confront our issues of control.

Lent leads up to Easter, which is all about the ultimate giving up of control, the ultimate surrender on the cross – a surrender we are all called to model.

Surrender is at the heart of our faith, giving up control and surrendering it to Jesus who Himself surrendered all for us. And in the process, like what I did when I first did my discipleship course, and in what I have already experienced this year, we can end up being transformed more into His likeness.

How much are you willing to surrender to Jesus this lent?

 

 

Prayer Knocks, Fasting Obtains, Mercy Receives – A Meditation form St Peter Chrysologus

Pat Conley posted this today and I thought it was so good that I needed to share it with you.  It certainly makes a great addition to our lenten reflections.

This is from today’s Office of Readings. A great Lenten meditation!

From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus, bishop

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.

Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.

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