Living All In | Lent Week One

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

     Welcome to the season of Lent. Lent is a season for reflection and repentance. You know, you and I are shaped mostly by the American culture, the culture of consumerism, a culture of marketing, a culture of pride and success and sometimes power, and yet the life that God calls us to, the culture that God calls us to, is something different. It is a culture of humility, and justice, and mercy. It is a culture of kindness. It is a culture of servanthood. And yet you and I show up each week in this place in which we are partially this and partially that.

And Lent is a time for us to repent from the ways that we don't fully lean into this other way that God has for God's people. And reflect on why that is, and to turn ourselves, and to put us, ourselves, back on this other path that God calls his people to.

We're gonna work through some different passages from the prophet Isaiah, who's calling out to Israel, saying, turn, listen, repent, seek God, to get direction on how we might do that as a people.

So in the beginning of chapter 56, Isaiah says, Why do you buy food that isn't wonderful? Why do you buy the wrong stuff, when in fact, what I have for you is rich and good? And I think this is true for us. We're always chasing after the wrong things. We often chase after things that we think will bring us life, but don't.

It's like when we show up at that continental breakfast. And we go up to the line and we grab that Danish, and it might look like a Danish, but it's ultra processed and it's more like a flavored cardboard than a homemade Danish from a bakery. And yet we settle for it. In fact, we maybe go up again to try it one more time in hopes that it'll taste better this time.

That's what it's like in our life as we chase after the counterfeit things. When we chase after success, or that next job, or having the right house or the right car, these are things that we chase after in hopes that they will give us the life we want. But in fact, they don't give us that rich life that God promises.

And so we want to be a people who reflect on that and understand why is it that we seek after these things. And how might we repent from that and turn and begin to walk another way.

The second part within the passage, Isaiah says, Listen! Listen! Twice. Listen to my call. And so here, it's this reminder to us that God's people are to be a listening people.

As a friend of mine likes to say, God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. That ultimately, we want to be a people who listen a little bit more than we talk. You know, we're often hard charging and ready to just move on ahead. Like we know what we're doing, but God tells us that part of living this other way is to be a people who allow our identity to be informed by God.

So we want to be a listening people. Well, how do we listen to God? Well, we listen to God through prayer, through time in the scripture, maybe doing some journaling. Maybe showing up to church, but there's this sense where the way we want to operate at home and in our workplace and at school and our neighborhood is we want to listen.

How do I be a person of justice here? How do I be a person of humility? How do I offer mercy? What does it look like to be kind? What does it look like to offer forgiveness? These are all ways that we want to listen to God and then live that out. And I think if we're honest, it's a mixed bag of how we do that.

Sometimes we're living that way and other times we're just doing the thing that our culture at work or the American culture or the culture at school tells us this is what you should do and this is how you should behave. But allow this season of Lent to be a season of listening. And so how might God be calling you in this Lenten season?

Lastly, Isaiah challenges the people. And it says, Seek, Call, Forsake, Return. Four great Lenten verbs. Seek God. Call out to God. Forsake the ways that take you away from God's kingdom. And return to this other way. You know, often the way our lives work is that we're shaped by our personal motivations, our personal abilities, the social systems that we're in, what they enable, what they encourage.

We behave because we're incentivized towards some things or penalized towards another. Our roadways and our shopping systems and our voting systems, all of these are structures that we live within and sort of break out of them are really hard. And so rather than letting those things be our influence, what we want to do instead is say, Hey, I want to be a person- I want the goal to be that I'm going to be a person of faith. That pursues mercy and humility and justice in all the arenas of my life.

And the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to live these behaviors. I'm going to regularly have habits of prayer and reflection. I'm going to be a person of forgiveness. I'm going to seek to serve the community around me. And then I'm going to look at all these different things that influence my life and I'm going to set them up in such a way where I'm going to remind myself that my personal desire is to experience rich food and full life. And that's going to be found in this other way that God calls me to.

I'm going to surround myself with some of my friends who are on this journey with me so that they encourage me and enable me to do it. And lastly, I'm going to build some structures in my life. I'm going to show up to church. I'm going to give some time to reading. I'm going to put my bank on auto payment and some giving.

I'm going to set those things up so that it helps influence me to be this person of faith that I desire to be, that I know is where life that is truly life is found.

And so what is it, your goal, to be for this Lenten season? Maybe it being more specific. Maybe you want to think about it specifically in your work or your home or your school.

But create that goal, identify the key behaviors, and then shape the different things that influence you so that you arrive there, versus just allowing the influences of life to shape you as they do. I look forward to continuing through this season of Lent, this season of reflection and repentance, as we return to the God of grace and experience rich food and life that is really life and abundance.

Have a great week. Talk to you soon.