Entering the Wilderness: Lenten Ashes and Prayer Journey

Tonight, we're going into into the wilderness because we are beloved. Not to become beloved. That's what it says right here. Jesus is called the beloved and goes into the wilderness. He doesn't go into the wilderness to receive anything. Remember five weeks ago, I said, ask the question, do you need to love god before god loves you? No. God loves you and because god loves you, we get to do great things together. [01:19:53] (46 seconds)  #BelovedIntoWilderness

A part of the journey through Lent that we start tonight is to acknowledge that we make mistakes. We we've talked about this. Sin is the, of creating the distance between us and God, not God creating the distance, us creating that distance. Yet God brings to us grace and forgiveness. And the point of receiving the ashes on the forehead or on your hand in the sign of the cross is to remember that, yes, we are made from dust, yet we are made from dust that has the breath of God breathed into us. And as we moved away from God and as we sinned, there is a cross that brings back this whole redemption and wholeness back to the created beings we were meant to be. [00:14:04] (52 seconds)  #DustAndDivineBreath

What I gather from this story and what from maybe Saint Anthony was all about was that we need to take moments to be still, to not do so much, not to overload ourselves in the strictness and the rigidity of what the world wants from us, that we end up missing the point. That when we draw ourselves too wide, we stretch ourselves too thin, we're exhausted. We can't do anything else. Our takeaway is to begin what I think this series is about as we start with just this little bit of wisdom from Saint Anthony is this, we need to begin this Lenten journey by not doing so much. [00:48:23] (59 seconds)  #BeginWithStillness

Theologian and author Richard Foster wrote, in contemporary society, our adversary, meaning Satan, majors in three things, noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in muchness and mininess, he will rest satisfied. See, if we are kept in a constant state of maybe, doing and doing and doing and doing or a constant state of bombardment of sound and things of this world. We're not being in the presence of god so much as maybe there's a tempter that's trying to keep us away from the presence of god. [00:56:48] (63 seconds)  #ResistNoiseHurryCrowds

But I say that to say this, in the midst of when we might think that our journeys into the desert might not go the way we want them to go, something does come from it. And as we go into this journey of the Lenten season and it might not go the way we expected to go starting tonight, but something will come from it. Don't lose hope. Don't give up. Because who knows? You might run into Jesus like I ran into Jesus Saint Saint Cuthbert's cave. Because I will guarantee you that woman was Jesus to me that day. [01:08:31] (43 seconds)  #ExpectUnexpectedEncounters

instead of doing all the excess, it's by doing what we can, What we have the ability to do so that we still have the energy to grow in faith. Just a thought that just came to our mind. Maybe we put so much pressure on ourselves on what this faith thing is or what I gotta do and how I gotta do it and I gotta do this and I gotta do that. That that's why so many people feel like they can't follow the faith because the expectation is so hard. The load, whatever you're saying about that, is so heavy that we don't feel like we can carry that yoke because we forget to say that it's not us carrying the yoke. It's Christ. [00:50:10] (64 seconds)  #DoWhatYouCanChristCarries

It's being reminded that spiritual growth isn't a sprint. No one runs the Saint Cuthbert's Way. It's like, literally, I swear to you, one of the hills mountains we had to walk up was like if you were in Hickory and you were looking up at Grandfather Mountain and you're like, I gotta make it up and over that thing by the end of the day because that's where the next hotel is. Yet, it's not a sprint because you can't sprint up to that. It's a journey and we have to take the necessary and intentional time to be present with god in it. [01:10:28] (45 seconds)  #FaithIsNotASprint

What is it we're gonna do as the community? What is it we're gonna do as the Appalachian Wesley Foundation community as our journey in this Lenten season? It's not just this sermon series. It has to be a little bit something more that we're doing together as a community. And our focus for the next several weeks through this series and through, I'll get to in a second, through I wanna keep jumping to it, don't I? Is prayer. It's gonna be prayer. This place has gotta pray, and I think we gotta do it together. So we're gonna devote our time as the Wesley Foundation intentionally in prayer, making it a priority in our lives over these next several weeks together. [01:11:17] (62 seconds)  #WesleyCommunityPrayer

This place has gotta pray, and I think we gotta do it together. So we're gonna devote our time as the Wesley Foundation intentionally in prayer, making it a priority in our lives over these next several weeks together. [01:11:59] (20 seconds)