It's Gotta Be the Spirit (Friday Devotional)

“If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you.”

- Romans 8:11

In a popular series of ads in the 1980s and 1990s, filmmaker Spike Lee reprised his role as Mars Blackmon, a character from his 1986 movie She’s Gotta Have It, in order to ask NBA superstar Michael Jordan an important question: “What makes you the best player in the universe?” Mars had all kinds of ideas: it could be Jordan’s haircut, his shorts, maybe even his socks. But again and again he returned to his chief theory, which His Airness dismissed every time: “It’s gotta be the shoes!” Mars knew that Michael Jordan was an incredible basketball player, and he could see that there were plenty of things about Jordan that made him unique—but he got so hung up on Jordan’s style that he missed what truly makes him special.

When you look at the lives of fellow Christians, it’s normal to repeat Mars’s mistake on a spiritual level. You admire another believer’s life in Christ, marveling at their peace in times of crisis, their compassion for others, and their forgiveness of others’ failings, and you look closely to figure out what it is that makes them different, what give them their spiritual power. Is it the way they pray? The books they read? The people they associate with? The things they spend their money on? The music they listen to? The closer you look, the more things you find to imitate, yet none seem like the secret to their sanctification.

New life in Christ doesn’t come from cosmetic changes in behavior, however well-meaning they are—no matter how much you try to look like the model believers in your church and your community, all you are giving yourself is a new lifestyle, not a new life. New life can only come from the one who raised Jesus from the dead, the one who wants now to dwell in you and offer you life in Him. If you are in pursuit of that special something that seems to set some believers apart, look deeper than what you see on the outside to the one who rules their hearts. As Mars Blackmon might say: “It’s gotta be the Spirit!”

Carrying the Bags (Friday Devotional)

“For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.”

- Ephesians 5:8-9

It is an archetypal story in professional sports, as true for the minor league soccer goalkeeper as for the NFL linebacker. It begins on the initial road trip of an athlete’s rookie season. As he steps off the team bus for the first time, he pauses to soak in the moment, only to have his reverie interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. Turning around, he is confronted by the glare of one of the team’s veterans. “Rookies carry the bags,” the teammate says gruffly.

That instruction is the precursor to a season’s worth of minor, hopefully harmless hazing. Over the course of his rookie year, the young athlete will be expected to pick up the check at team dinners, occasionally pick up a teammate’s dry cleaning, and, yes, carry the luggage on every road trip. By the end of that long season, his rookie obligations have become as much a part of his routine as lifting weights.

So when his second season starts and he steps off the team bus, he naturally descends to the luggage compartment to retrieve his teammates’ bags, just like he did on so many road trips the previous year. But as he starts to pull suitcases out of the compartment, he is interrupted by a familiar tap on the shoulder. When he turns around, it’s the same elder teammate as the year before, but this time smiling instead of glowering. “What are you doing, man?” he asks. “Rookies carry the bags. You’re a veteran now!”

The change in status from darkness to light, from being an unbeliever to a Christian, is like going from being a rookie to a veteran. In both cases, the change takes time and growth. Yet in both cases, when the change happens it is instantaneous—you are either rookie or veteran, unbeliever or believer; there is no murky space in between. And most notably, in both cases, your change in status necessitates changes in your old behavior.

Just as the team veteran in the story found it ridiculous for his teammate to continue exhibiting rookie behavior, you ought to find it equally ridiculous to continue living the way you did before you came to know Christ. Living only for yourself and disregarding the needs of others made sense when you “were darkness.” But now that you “are light”, you are called to live like it, to strive for “all that is good and right and true.”

Like the rookie, you may find yourself drawn by habit into your old behaviors, and may need a gentle reminder about your new role from those who have been in the game longer than you. But as you grow in faith, may you cast aside the old self and embrace your new life in Christ. Your old life may have been loaded down with sinful baggage, but rejoice in this good news: in Christ, it’s not your job to carry it anymore.

Hungry (Friday Devotional)

“Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to complete His work.””

- John 4:31-34

Have you ever been so focused on your work that you skipped a meal? Maybe it happened when you were a student and needed every last minute to finish a paper before its due date. Perhaps it was a more recent occurrence, when a deadline at work left you feeling like even a lunch at your desk would be 15 minutes wasted. Or maybe it happened the last time you hosted a big party or family gathering—between making sure everyone was having a good time and serving them food, you neglected your own appetite. Whatever the case, sometimes it’s possible to get so intensely focused that even something as fundamentally important as eating gets pushed to the back burner.

In John 4:31, the disciples seemed to be concerned Jesus was doing just that—neglecting his own needs for the sake of his ministry. “Rabbi, eat something,” they pleaded. But Jesus’s response puzzled them: “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Seeing their bewilderment at that declaration, Jesus elaborated, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to complete His work.” Jesus, in other words, hungered for something richer and more satisfying than food—doing God’s will.

How closely do you resemble Jesus in that regard? Virtually every Christian recognizes the importance of doing God’s will, but the passion and the energy we are willing to give to that pursuit varies widely from person to person. For the busy, doing God’s will is a compartmentalized, scheduled part of the week—they think about God’s will on Sundays and the occasional Wednesday night, and that’s about it. For the flighty, doing God’s will may be something that occupies every waking thought—until the new passion project rolls around and it is tossed to the side. Even those perceived to be ‘super saints’—ministers, missionaries, Christian nonprofit workers, etc.— fall into the trap of making God’s will just another job requirement, something reserved for when they’re on the clock.

But the call of every Christian is for God’s will to be something that permeates every part of your life—it’s not just for church, but work, family, and community life; it’s not just for Sundays, but for all seven days of the week. As followers of Christ, we are called to imitate his single-minded focus on doing God’s will, to devote ourselves to serving the Lord in every aspect of life. So may you not just hope to do God’s will, not just approve of doing it—may you hunger to do God’s will.

Family Resemblance (Friday Devotional)

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

- 2 Corinthians 3:18

As a new parent, there are certain questions I’m getting used to answering: “How’s he sleeping at night?” “How much does he weigh now?” And, of course, “Who do you think he looks more like, you or Lindsey?” To that last question, I sometimes want to sarcastically reply, “He kind of just looks like a baby.” But when I obligingly study his eyes, hair, nose, ears, and cheeks, I start to see features that resemble mine and Lindsey’s. In subtle ways, he’s already starting to look like us.

Faith in Christ has a similar effect—as you grow in faith, you start to resemble Christ more and more. The old temptations, habits, and priorities that once seemed to define you are shunted to the side, suddenly unimportant compared to your pursuit of Christ. While the flesh calls you to selfishness, faith calls you to righteousness; while the flesh calls you to satisfaction, faith calls you to love; while the flesh calls you to idolatry, faith calls you to the cross.

The great struggle of discipleship is determining every single day whether you want to craft your own flawed, ugly portrayal of yourself or be conformed to the perfect image of God in Jesus Christ. When people look at your life, they will see resemblances, either to your old self and all its influences or to Christ—so who do you want to look like?

Finding Your Safe Place (Friday Devotional)

“Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

Psalm 32:6-7

In every classroom of the child development center where Lindsey teaches, there is a designated area in the corner of the room called the “safe place.” Whenever a child starts feeling overwhelmed, angry, or otherwise upset, they have the option of removing themselves from whatever situation is distressing them and going to the safe place for some time by themselves. Whether they close their eyes, read a book, or just sit, the safe place is a refuge from their anxieties, an area where no other child is allowed to bother them and where they can stay until they’re calm enough to leave.

The adult world offers a few space places like that—the lake house, beach resort, and deer blind all offer varying degrees of relaxation and escape from ‘real life.’ But even those temporary getaways, handy as they are for physically removing you from the worries of daily life, cannot protect you from your own stress, doubts, and fears. Even when you try to leave life’s struggles behind, they have a way of keeping you up at night.

Where you can truly find security in your time of distress is in prayer. Too often the first approach to the problems that plague you is to apply your own slapdash solutions without ever bringing those concerns to God first. Too busy or too rushed to pray, you take the problems into your own hands—and then wonder why things aren’t getting any better and why you are constantly worrying.

In prayer, God has provided a hiding place for you, a refuge from the storms of life. When you trust God with your concerns, when you seek His will instead of trying to bend life to yours, He grants you a peace that even the circumstances themselves cannot overpower. While there is no promise that your problems will magically disappear, seeking God in prayer ensures that those problems will not overcome you. So may you find your security today not in the temporary respite of escape or the limited grasp of your own solutions, but in the enduring power of prayer.

February Reading Log

I read six books this month--one theological text, one literary novel, one historical memoir, and, for a palate cleanser, three goofy collections of superhero comics. Enjoy the reviews and let me know what you've been reading!

ETHICS by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One of my favorite books from seminary, which I've since reread, was The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was then and remains now a formative text for my understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ in the world, and is a book I immediately go to anytime I'm studying the Sermon on the Mount. So at the beginning of February, I decided I'd give Bonhoeffer's more academic, unfinished opus, Ethics, a try. It took me all month, but I walked away with a new understanding and appreciation for the great theologian--and a few things to chew on.

The central premise Bonhoeffer makes is that Christian ethics cannot be decided on a purely philosophical, academic basis, they must be based in the world, because Christian ethics are fundamentally about how the disciple follows God in the world. Christian ethics, in other words, are not about determining what is theoretically right and wrong, good and evil, but about determining how to obey God, since the Christian conception of good fundamentally comes from God, not from vague and shifting universal principles. I suspect that definition of Christian ethics may frustrate some of my more academically inclined friends looking for grand unifying ethical theories, but this practical pastor ate it up.

With that as the framework, Bonhoeffer draws virtually any question of right and wrong back to the incarnation, cross, and resurrection of Christ. Any moral quandary must, in Bonhoeffer's view, be seen through the lens of the gospel--seems simple, sure, but numerous examples show how difficult that proves to be. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer argues that the only indisputable, universal ethical rule is to do what glorifies God the most...beyond that, the situation of the real world must be taken into account for an answer to be given about what is right.

Ethics was not nearly as readable as The Cost of Discipleship, nor as readily applicable, but it gave me deeper insight into his theology and, especially regarding church-state issues, offered a perspective that challenged my Baptist understandings of religious liberty and the separation of church and state. For someone looking for an academic but not completely overwhelming ethics text, this is a good place to turn.

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

I can't decide if no new father should read this novel or if it should be required reading for all new fathers. Definitely one of the two.

In what has been labelled Cormac McCarthy's most popular and most readable work (and, having read All the Pretty Horses, I suspect the latter is true), the world has been reduced to a post-apocalyptic hellscape, presumably after a nuclear holocaust, though no explanation is given or needed. The story follows a father and his young son, both of whom go unnamed throughout the entire story, as they try to survive a world in which food is scarce, no one is to be trusted, and they are utterly alone in their quest to survive.

Having read two McCarthy books now, I am a huge admirer, if not necessarily a fan, of his writing. I have never read an author as capable as he is of creating a setting and a mood with so few words--when he describes a desert, you feel like you're in the desert, when he describes a creepy abandoned house, you can practically hear the floorboards creak. It's a remarkable talent that is better experienced than explained.

This book is oppressively dark--the two biggest enemies are starvation and roving bands of cannibals--but the innocence of the son shines a light that keeps you reading and caring about the protagonists. The relationship between the father and son is at various turns empowering, terrifying, and heartbreaking, and it is ultimately the foundation of the story. I defy anyone to read this all the way through without your eyes welling up at some point.

The Road won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, and I can see why. Highly recommended.

COUNSELOR by Ted Sorensen

For the 3 years of the John F. Kennedy administration (not to mention the seven years prior to that), no adviser but Robert Kennedy was as close to JFK as Ted Sorensen. As an aide, speechwriter, and special counsel, Sorensen shaped American history behind the scenes, most famously as the writer of Kennedy's greatest speeches, including the inaugural address that demanded of Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do or your country." So when his memoir caught my eye at a used bookstore recently, I had to give it a try.

Strangely enough, the stuff about Sorensen's time in the White House (which understandably makes up the majority of the book) may have been my least favorite part of the book, though obviously the most significant. I've read my fair share of books about the Kennedy presidency (including 1965's Kennedy, Sorensen's historical account of those three years), so my disinterest in Sorensen's personal account may have been due to my familiarity with the typical beats of a Kennedy book: campaign, inaugural address, Bay of Pigs, Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress, Cuban Missile Crisis (always the longest chapter in any Kennedy book), civil rights, Vietnam, assassination. Sorensen's take on the events themselves is neither particularly enlightening nor objective, which he freely admits--he's the Thomas Malory of JFK's Camelot, and proud of it. However, I did enjoy reading about Sorensen's personal contributions to those events, including an anecdote about Sorensen finishing Kennedy's 1963 televised speech on civil rights 5 minutes before airtime. It may be the West Wing fan in me, but I always enjoy learning about the contributions of the behind-the-scenes players.

The parts of the memoir I found most fascinating though were about Sorensen's life after the abrupt end of the Kennedy presidency, from his contributions to the ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kenned to Sorensen's ill-fated 1970 run for the U.S. Senate to his ill-fated 1977 nomination to be Director of Central Intelligence (do you detect a theme?) Eventually settling in at a law firm where he could still engage in matters of public policy, Sorensen found himself in the uncomfortable position of knowing the pinnacle of his professional career had come at age 32, yet still believing he had contributions to make. All of Sorensen's achievements and associations post-1963 were brand new information for me, and I was fascinated to learn more.

As befits arguably the best and most famous speechwriter in American history (excepting Lincoln, who wrote his own speeches), this book was an easy and interesting read, full of insights about the past and hopes for the future. While not an objective history of the Kennedy years (something, in fairness, it never claims to be), this was a fascinating look into the life and work of one the 20th century's most famous and influential presidential advisers, and I'd definitely recommend it for the history buffs out there, especially those with a soft spot for Kennedy lore.

FIGHTING AMERICAN by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby

In 1954, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were feeling a little peeved. Timely Comics (later to be known as Marvel, maybe you've heard of it) had relaunched their classic character, Captain America, with a series of Cold War adventures that, in their opinion, didn't do the character justice. So they promptly ripped themselves off and made 2 new, creator-owned patriotic characters, Fighting American and his sidekick Speedboy to fight those rotten Commies.

Look, these stories are not Simon and Kirby's finest--there's a reason the series only lasted 7 issues. But boy are they dumb fun, featuring villains like Rhode Island Red, Invisible Irving, and, my personal favorite, Super-Khakhalovitch, a superpowered and super-smelly Russian who was basically Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip with superpowers. Fair warning, there are some ugly stereotypes within--it was 1954, after all--so any time a Chinese character is featured, prepare to cringe. But overall, Fighting American is the kind of goofy propaganda you can simultaneously roll your eyes at and chuckle at.

One thing that I found interesting was observing Kirby's art style as it transitioned from its sparse look from the 1940s to the more dynamic and polished work that would make him an icon in the 1960s. You can definitely see elements of both in these stories, and it's fascinating to compare them to Kirby's more famous work from the Golden and Silver Ages.

Would I recommend this to anyone? Probably not. It's very dated, both in style and substance, and is substandard work for two masters of the medium. Nevertheless, it makes for a fun artifact. If you like comics history, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than skimming through these stories and taking in all the corny Commie bashing you can handle.

X-MEN VS. AVENGERS/FANTASTIC FOUR by Roger Stern, Marc Silvestri, Chris Claremont, and Jon Bogdanove

When it comes to comic books, my heart belongs to the Fantastic Four. Despite their repeated failures to achieve big screen success and their lack of a current series, there's no team's adventures I'd rather read. In fact, I have read--whether in comic form, trade paperback, reprint issue, or PDF file--every single issue ever published of their main title. So when a friend of mine alerted me to a used $5 trade collecting the 1987 miniseries Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men, I jumped on it. There aren't many new (to me) FF stories left; I was excited to dive in.

I guess they can't all be winners.

This trade actually collects two different miniseries, both designed to pit the then-extremely-popular X-Men vs. another Marvel team they weren't used to encountering often. In the first miniseries, the X-Men and the FF feud when Mister Fantastic, leader of the FF, refuses to use his scientific genius to help the X-Man Shadowcat, whose phasing powers have left her permanently intangible. Why does he refuse, you ask? His confidence is shattered by a journal of his that turns up out of the blue, a journal that reveals to himself and his teammates that he may have actually known about the cosmic rays that forever changed himself and his teammates before he sent them all into space. If that sounds ridiculous to you (why wouldn't he remember knowing that? why would he have forgotten his journal? why did the journal suddenly turn up now?), well, that makes two of us.

Anyway, with the FF on edge and Reed Richards too scared of himself to be a scientist, the X-Men turn to Doctor Doom, the archenemy of the FF and the only man in the Marvel Universe who can reasonably argue to be as smart as Reed. The X-Men know there will be strings attached to asking Doom for help, but they figure, hey, what do we have to lose? At that point, Reed gets his mojo back, the team flies to Latveria to confront Doom, there's a big fight, and Shadowcat is saved. Oh, and throughout this whole story, Franklin Richards, the mutant son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, is having premonitions of the FF and the X-Men dying at Doctor Doom's hands, premonitions that have nothing resembling a payoff and seem to basically be forgotten by the end.

If the story seems like a mess, well, it is.

The second (X-Men vs. the Avengers) is a little better, but it's not great either. This time the plot revolves around the recently reformed Magneto, who has gone from being the X-Men's greatest enemy to their mentor, replacing the late Professor X. When he finds the remnants of his old base, Asteroid M, he thinks it may hold technology that can help bridge the gap between mutantkind and humanity. But being Magneto, he doesn't tell anybody that and just enigmatically takes off without an explanation. The Avengers encounter him and try to bring him in (he is, after all, a mass murderer), but the X-Men stand in the breach to defend their new ally. As the story progresses, the Soviet Super Soldiers make an appearance (I could explain, but honestly, they're exactly what they sound like), Magneto goes to trial before the World Court, and he secretly saves his life by using his Asteroid M technology to mentally influence the judges to exonerate him. This story was pretty crazy and had its own plot holes, but overall was a lot more cohesive than Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men.

Overall, this book reminded me of something I learned as a middle schooler buying cheap back issues: 1987 was not exactly a golden age for superhero comics. If you find this book for $5 like I did, knock yourself out, but there are literally hundreds of stories you should read before pulling this from the pile.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: BICENTENNIAL BATTLES by Jack Kirby

In last month’s review of Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 2, I mentioned a fun, silly story from that book in which the good doctor goes on a rollicking adventure through American history. Apparently in 1976, our nation’s bicentennial, that was a run-of-the-mill concept, because my final comic collection of the month featured a similar story, this time starring Captain America.

The first story makes up half the book and gives the collection its title. With the bicentennial on everyone’s minds, in 1976 Marvel turned to Jack “the King” Kirby, one of Cap’s original creators from the 1940s, to write and draw an 80-page standalone issue starring the star-spangled superhero and celebrating America’s history and ideals. No small task, but Jack Kirby is no small creator. Anyone who’s ever read a comic written by the King knows that his dialogue is, um, stilted, and this book is certainly no exception. But the art is as dynamic and action-packed as ever. Over the course of the story, one in which a bald, mystical figure named Mister Buda (yeah, I know) sends Cap hurtling through time to different periods of American history, our hero encounters everyone from Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross (who design and sew the original American flag based on Cap’s costume!) to Geronimo to soldiers fighting in the trenches of WWI. Ultimately, Cap reaches the conclusion that the meaning, purpose, and hope of America is found in its children. Saccharine? Yes. But somehow resonant for me nonetheless (I blame my 2-month old baby.)

The second half of the book is undoubtedly there just to stretch the collection’s page count and justify a higher price tag. It reprints Captain America #201-205, all written and drawn by Kirby, issues that have nothing to do with the bicentennial in general or the preceding special issue in particular. Nevertheless, the stories are wacky fun, one featuring a cast of asylum inmates with dimension-hopping powers (“the night people”) and another starring Agron, a hulking monster. Not much to say about these stories—if you’ve ever read a Jack Kirby issue of Captain America from the 1970s, you know what you’re getting here: exciting but not exceptional art, laughable dialogue, veeeery dated romantic plotlines, and mostly forgettable villains. Fun though!

Why I Practice Lent

As you may already know (or otherwise would have realized when you got to work and saw a few coworkers with smudges on their foreheads), today is Ash Wednesday. As recently as 5 years ago, that would have meant nothing to me. Having been raised in a relatively conservative Texas Baptist church (the same church which I now serve as pastor), Ash Wednesday and Lent, the season it inaugurates, were not part of my faith tradition. Frankly, I thought Lent was just a Catholic thing, in the same vein as transubstantiation and the veneration of Mary.

So when I saw that my seminary was hosting an Ash Wednesday service in 2012 (my first year there) in conjunction with Baylor’s department of religion, I chalked it up to a gesture of ecumenism and didn’t give it another thought. But the next year, when my covenant group (a small group you’re required to meet with for four semesters) decided our focus for the semester would be on the Christian calendar, that worship service suddenly became an important part of my educational experience.

What I found in that service was something often neglected in evangelical worship: confession. For a solid hour, everyone gathered in the chapel sang hymns, recited readings, and eventually received ashes, all in the service of one fundamentally Christian message: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. There was no talk of salvation, sanctification, or resurrection—all that, it was understood, would be preached soon enough. For that hour, we solemnly reflected on our own inadequacy before God and cried out for mercy and forgiveness. Having initially planned to just observe, instead when the time came for the bestowal of ashes, I went forward with everyone else, bowed my head, and received a blessing and the sign of the cross on my forehead.

Since that day, I have counted Lent as an important part of my relationship with God and a crucial time of preparation for Easter. Just as Advent and its weekly themes of hope, peace, joy, and love prepare the heart for the remembrance and celebration of Christ’s birth, so Lent prepares the heart for the agony of Good Friday and the surpassing joy of Easter Sunday through the practice of intentional self-denial.

In Matthew 16:24, Jesus told his disciples (and so, by extension, Christians today), “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus was talking about a holistic, complete denial of yourself, about turning your entire life over to him, from temptations to actions to goals. While most evangelicals think of this as part of your initial profession of faith and baptism, the honest Christian recognizes that making Jesus your Lord is not something you do once, but on a practical level is something you have to do every day, every hour, every time that the siren call of “what do I want?” beckons. Denying yourself is not easy, is perhaps even unnatural in our fallen state, but for those called to be “crucified with Christ,” it is part what it means to be disciples.

So Lent is a time when, as an isolated move toward that more holistic self-denial, you intentionally take something away from yourself. That something doesn’t have to be sinful—if you struggle with a habitual sin, I would hope it wouldn't require the arbitrariness of the calendar to draw you to repentance—but neither should it be something you can give up easily. My personal measure of whether I’ve chosen my Lenten sacrifice well is if, after thinking about giving it up, I say, “Oh, but I really like doing that. Maybe I should pick something easier.” The point is that, whatever you choose to take away, it be something habitual, something difficult for you to imagine going without.

Giving something up for Lent is not about punishing yourself or doing penance for your sin—your sins are already paid for and you have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Neither is it about self-improvement, though that often comes as a fringe benefit. It’s about taking concrete action toward making less of yourself and more of Christ. Just like the biblical practice of fasting, it’s about removing the distractions of the day-to-day and giving your full focus and faith to God.

The benefit of practicing Lent, I have discovered, is that it amplifies the power of Easter and spiritually prepares you for its joy. Instead of spending just a weekend thinking about the cross and the empty tomb, you spend a month and half absorbing their meaning. Instead of just hearing about sacrifice, you experience it, even as it pales in comparison to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Instead of being simply a consumer of Easter worship, you can truly count yourself as an intentional participant. When Easter arrives, Lent ensures that it comes not just as one holiday of many, but as the glorious culmination of a season of deliberate discipleship.

If Lent has always seemed foreign to you, let me encourage you to give it a try this year. You don’t have to follow every one of the Lenten traditions—for example, while I do fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, I don’t do the whole no-meat-on-Fridays thing. But I encourage you to engage in some meaningful practice(s) of self-denial in pursuit of that biblical command to take up your cross and follow Jesus. I think you’ll find yourself surprised by how much God will teach you when you take your self out of the equation.