Real Encouragement for You During this Season of Lent

Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.
You, God, know my folly;
my guilt is not hidden from you.
Lord, the LORD Almighty,
may those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me;
God of Israel,
may those who seek you
not be put to shame because of me.

–Psalm 69.1-3, 5-6 (NIV)

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

–Romans 8.31-39 (NIV)

Anyone who takes his or her faith seriously and whose eyes are wide open to the realities of this mortal life will instinctively relate to the Psalmist above. If you have lived long enough, you have doubtless experienced those times in your life when you feel that you are drowning in the sea of life changes. Likewise, it is possible for those of us who are taking the season of Lent seriously to feel the same way. Ridding ourselves, with the Spirit’s help, of everything in us that keeps us in exile from God is hard and can get quite discouraging. We look at the fruit of our behavior and what we see more often than we wish is the fruit of our selfishness rather than the fruit of the Spirit. All this can tempt us to abandon our faith journey and fall into despair.

But fear not. Fortunately it is not about you. It is about God’s great love for you in Jesus as Paul so poignantly articulates in today’s passage from Romans (my favorite passage in all the NT). Yes, we have (and can count on) the Spirit’s transformative Power and Presence in our very being. Yes, the Spirit is working to transform us into the very image of Christ so that we can be the restored Image-bearers for the Lord. But this is slow and gradual work, and we often experience setbacks and detours along the way, not to mention a myriad of distractions that life throws our way.

It is not that the Spirit is incapable of changing us into the the image of Christ. Rather it is the fact that we are so thoroughly infected with sin. This–combined with the fact that in changing and healing us, the Spirit is careful not to violate our core personality–can make the dynamic of growing to be like Christ seem like a long, arduous, and sometimes agonizing process. It typically takes a lifetime for the Spirit to accomplish his work in us and this can leave us more than a bit nonplussed at times.

That is why we need to heed and take seriously what Paul reminds us in today’s passage. If God is for us, who can be against us? Answer? Not even ourselves! Sure, we can choose to consciously walk away from God and never return, and God loves us enough to let us do that. But as Paul reminds us here, God is faithful to us and good to his promise. He has become human and suffered his holy justice on our behalf on the cross. He has defeated evil and invites us into a renewed relationship with him (see, e.g., Colossians 2.13-15). And he has poured out his Spirit on us to help us along the way. What’s more, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing, in all creation that can separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. The only thing that can separate us from God’s love for us is our conscious, deliberate, and ongoing rejection of that love.

If this passage from Paul does not give you strength, purpose, and encouragement in your infirmities and struggles, I don’t know what can. Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Moreover, as we have seen before, our faith in Jesus must result in changed behavior. In other words, our actions will be commensurate with our faith. But here too we can become discouraged like the Psalmist in the passage above. We are called to be Kingdom workers for the Lord. He calls each of us to deny ourselves, take up our cross each day, and follow him. When we do, we will inevitably suffer and I have written about that elsewhere.

What’s more, we have the capacity to get it wrong in our Kingdom work. We don’t always follow our marching orders to the best of our abilities. We are fallible and finite. We sometimes do the wrong things or misunderstand God’s word in Scripture. Just look, for example, at the pastor in Florida whose congregation burned the Koran recently. Hardly an act of Christian charity. Hardly an act of grace toward those whom he considers to be his enemies. But we don’t have to look as far as the daily news for examples of failure. We only have to look as far as our own lives to see that we have not always acted faithfully to our higher call in Christ, and that too can be quite discouraging.

Here again, we must come back to what Paul reminds us. It isn’t about us and our faithfulness. It is about God and his faithfulness. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us. Not even when we screw things up badly. When we do, we must lay them at the foot of the cross and ask Jesus to forgive us. We must ask him to once again bear our weakness and infirmity so that we may be healed. In doing so, we remember the words of Isaiah, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53.4-6), and we thank God for his great and wondrous gift to us in Jesus. We give thanks that we have a God who is for us, not against us, at least those of us who do not want to remain in open revolt against him.

And we remember not only the cross of Christ but the fact that he is now at God’s right hand–biblical language that expresses the fact that Jesus is now Lord of the universe who rules over all things–interceding for us. Let your mind wrap itself around this for a good while so that you can begin to appreciate what Paul is telling you. How often do we appreciate the prayers of fellow believers! What a difference those prayers make in our lives! Now consider the fact that you have the Lord Jesus praying for you, interceding to God directly on your behalf!! It is nothing less than a mind-blowing show-stopper if you really believe this promise in Scripture. Again, who cannot get much needed encouragement from this? What kind of God is it that would love us this passionately, even with all of our warts?

Here is real encouragement for you as you go through this season of Lent. Here is real encouragement for you as you seek to go through life as a faithful servant of the Lord.

As we rapidly approach Holy Week, now is a good time to stop and not only count the cost of following Jesus but also count the resources available to help us in our journey. As Bishop Tom Wright reminds us in various places throughout his writings, the most common commandment of Scripture is “don’t be afraid.” The next time you are tempted to be afraid or to fall into despair, pick up your Bible and read (or reread) Paul’s great statement about God and affirmation of faith in today’s passage from Romans. It will remind you why you have no need to be afraid. It will help you be faithful to this particular commandment of God.

And if you are still living your life in exile from God, why would you possibly want to do that in light of the great truth found in today’s passage from Romans? You have a God who loves you and created you to have a relationship with him. Why would you not want to connect (or reconnect) to the only life support system that matters? Now is as good a time as any to discover (or rediscover) the jaw-dropping love of God that is waiting to embrace (or re-embrace) you. Do yourself the biggest favor of all and fall into the waiting arms of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your life will never be the same again.