Thirsty in the Wilderness: Seeking Living Water in Lent

Lent is not the point, but Lent has a point. And if it is going to mean anything to us, anything at all, it has to be more than an annual occasion for trying to prove that we feel especially sorry for our sins, or to prove our ultimate dependence upon God by giving up a minor indulgence. Our souls need it to be something more than a second chance at our New Year's resolutions. This is not about Diet Coke. It's about water. It's about declaring that God is Lord even of the wilderness, of our every wilderness. This is the time when we give the wilderness the space to do its work in us. [00:44:39] (46 seconds)  #LentWithPurpose

It is there where we have no choice but to tell the truth about our lives and wait for God to meet us in our weakness, and it is there where we throw out the fluffy theology of the prosperity gospel for the sturdy theology of the cross, where we have explicit permission to feel impatient with pithy platitudes that don't stand up to the real challenges of human living and are invited instead to show up thirsty for living water and let that be enough. And if we do that if we do that, we just might encounter Jesus himself, who walked through our barren lands in order to bring us life in the midst of death, and who cried out from the wilderness of the cross, I am thirsty, as he died for our sake. And my friends, that's the point. [00:46:05] (57 seconds)  #ThirstForLivingWater

Lent is not the point, but Lent has a point. And if it is going to mean anything to us, anything at all, it has to be more than an annual occasion for trying to prove that we feel especially sorry for our sins, or to prove our ultimate dependence upon God by giving up a minor indulgence. Our souls need it to be something more than a second chance at our New Year's resolutions. This is not about Diet Coke. It's about water. It's about declaring that God is Lord even of the wilderness, of our every wilderness. [00:44:39] (41 seconds)  #DeclareGodOverWilderness

In the wilderness, God is the God who draws streams in the desert. It is there that we discover a God who cracks stones open that the stuff of life might flow from them even if those stones are our own hearts. It is there where we have no choice but to tell the truth about our lives and wait for God to meet us in our weakness, and it is there where we throw out the fluffy theology of the prosperity gospel for the sturdy theology of the cross, where we have explicit permission to feel impatient with pithy platitudes that don't stand up to the real challenges of human living and are invited instead to show up thirsty for living water and let that be enough. [00:45:49] (46 seconds)  #StonesYieldStreams