Lord, Restore us this Lent: A Lent Devotion by Jay Hanson

This Wednesday is the start of the season of Lent. Lent is the roughly 40 days  leading into Easter. Friends across our connection, please know I am praying for you, your church, and leaders to have a deep and holy Lent. 

During the season of Lent this year I am teaching a series entitled “Restore” which acknowledges that while we were created in the image of God, we live in a fallen state where we need God to “Restore” us into the image of Christ.  We call this the process of sanctification or you could say scriptural holiness.

How sanctifying grace accomplishes this in our lives remains, at least for now, a mystery. 

We can develop an accurate understanding of the power structure of the principal players in the process of sanctifying grace and I think it is important that we do. 

It sounds pretty straight forward and simple, but I fear we often get it way out of order. God does it. We participate in it. Satan tries to mess it up. God has the ultimate power. 

We have the power of choice. All satan actual has is the power of influence. He only has the power we allow him to have to influence our choices. 

Each week during the “Restore” series I will be teaching how a Christ-like attribute in our lives can be distorted into an UnChrist-like characteristic when we misuse a good gift from God. Then we will look at God’s plan to “Retore” us. You can journey with us through this series on-line at www.thechapelministries.com

Regardless of if you decide to join us on the journey, here is what I hope all us will realize during this season of Lent: 

We all need to be RESTORED and God wants to restore us. 

For God to restore us, We need to repent, release, refocus and receive.

God does it!

We participate in it when we:

Repent - agree with God that we are not yet who we were created to be. We have not lived into our God given potential. We are not Christ-like in far too many areas of our lives. 

Release - our efforts to do better. Stop trying to just try harder. Let go of the illusion that we were ever able to make our selves holy and simply ask God to forgive us and help us. Releasing is not merely a mental exercise. It includes a tangible letting go of things in which we have misplaced our trust, allegiance, or love. A core tenant of Lent is letting go of things which are holding us back from God. 

Refocus – our attention on God. We don’t simply turn way from things (releasing) but more importantly we turn to God and refocus our attention and life on God. You don’t break the habit of thinking about elephants by saying “stop thinking about elephants”. You break the habit of thinking about elephants by refocusing your thoughts on God.

Receive – the grace we need to become the people we were created to become. Sanctification is not a self-help, positive thinking thing. Holiness is something we can only receive and never earn or deserve.

During this season of Lent may we all RECEIVE the grace from God we need to spread scriptural holiness across the land.