Introduction

Introduction to Lent

INTRODUCTION TO LENT…

From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have held with great reverence the forty days of Lent. An annual invitation to a time of reflection, Lent is a season for self-examination and penitence. It is a season of honest evaluation as we confess who we are and who we are yet to be. These forty days ask us to go on a journey; they invite us to travel through the darkness of Calvary’s pain so that we might celebrate the joy and love of Easter morning in new light and in new life.

To do this, though, we must prepare ourselves. Lent, then, is a time for prayer and fasting. It is a time for silence and for the studying of God’s Holy Word. It is a time when we are asked to take seriously the call of the spiritual disciplines. More, though, it is a time for us to be mindful, a time for us to be soulful… a time for us to be honest about what keeps us from following the way of Jesus Christ.

8 PERFECTLY WOUNDED

INTRODUCTION TO THIS YEAR’S SERIES...

In the midst of everything we’ve experienced in the past year, the Church – the very body of Christ – can learn much from the actual, literal, physical body of Christ. With rancor all around us, with tension within and without, this year, we get back to the basics. We go back to the Gospels, back to Jesus Christ, our Lord. For He gives us our hope. He gives us our courage. He gives us our purpose and message and worth. He is our way forward as He gives us the strength to purposefully look back.

As always, our purpose is simple: to elicit a response. It is for us to be inspired, to be challenged, and to be changed. Our purpose, hope, and prayer is that our hearts will be “strangely warmed” as we reflect upon the Bible’s truth and the Savior’s call.

Dr. John McKellar Dr. Todd Renner 2021

“Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

– Isaiah 53:1-7 –

WEEK ONE:

The Body of Christ

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by his wounds you were healed.”

– 1 Peter 2:24 –