Pray, face, receive

from Helen

Well, lent is here. I remember as a child thinking of all the different things that I could give up for lent. I tried all sorts, chocolate, crisps, pop, ice cream the list was endless. I never really enjoyed the time as I had spent so long thinking of what to give up that I used to forget the major part of lent which is growing closer to God. 

Lent is a time when we think of Jesus in the wilderness and this is why people give things up, but actually it is about a time of change. Jesus went into the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) to reflect, to pray and he faced temptation but this prepared him for His ministry. 

Jesus needed time out to pray to think, to face His temptations and once He had done this, He received help from angels. 

I want this morning to think about what lent might mean for us as we pray, face our temptations and receive the love that God has for us. 

I have often thought of Lent as the ultimate Spiritual exercise regime, it is a bit like aerobics.  Now I have tried normal aerobics, water aerobics and even step aerobics.  I have enjoyed each one but each one has caused me to get the moves wrong and to give up.

I started normal aerobics and it was going ok to be honest, until.. I developed a lack of co-ordination followed by the strangest back pain ever which was like my stomach grumbling but in my back.  I suspect the lack of co-ordination had something to do with it.

Then there came water aerobics,  I was happily doing all the right exercises but then I realized that I was doing them differently to everyone else, wearing my glasses so that I could see the instructor may have helped !  

Then I tried step aerobics, which would have been fine if I had not kept falling off the step.

All these attempts at aerobics led me to believe that me and aerobics are never going to be the best of friends.  

I hoped that my spiritual exercises would fare better.   I used to pray with a CD on of modern worship songs, which went well until I realized that the songs were so loud everyone in the house knew that I was praying which I worried may have made me seem self-righteous as if I was trying to win a spiritual discipline exercise.

I then tried contemplative prayer, this is where you sit in silence and concentrate on one word and let your mind drift into thoughts of God.  It is very restful, in fact it was so restful that I fell asleep. 

In Lent we are encouraged to pray more as we seek to get closer to God. Lent could sound a bit scary when I compare it to aerobics and different ways of praying but actually it isn’t. After all we are seeking to grow closer to God who loves us and never leaves us – now that’s not scary at all.

Prayer is about us talking to God. Our time with Him is to be time when we can be open with Him, explain what we are feeling and ask for His help.  We can be helped by perhaps sitting in quiet for longer, writing down the names of people we want to pray for and praying for them. Maybe when we are watching the news praying for the situations that we see going on. 

You may choose to read through one of the gospels during lent, use a Lenten reflection book, I am going to learn a new collect each week. We will all have different ways. The most important thing is that we make time for God. 

The second thing that Jesus did in the wilderness was face temptation. Temptation is one of those words that can remind you of a juicy book or soapopera, chocolate – yes it is in my sermon again !, people doing something incredibly bad. But temptation can also be gossip, it can be saying an unkind word, it can be holding a grudge against someone, it can be about not letting go of hurt caused to us by someone else.  

Temptation is anything that stops us getting closer to God.

There was once an Abbot of a monastery who would challenge his novices by sending them off for a time telling them to befriend their desires.  Basically, they were to go and do whatever they fancied and then come back to the monastery. 

The novices were to give in to all temptations and then when they had done this they would be ready to commit to the life of a monk. Of course, the point of this was, that the people who were really ready to make the commitment wouldn’t feel the need to give into temptation and those who weren’t ready would find that actually life outside the monastery had more attractive things for them to do. 

Temptation is what ever takes us away from God and all that He is asking us to do. Which is, to be more like Him to think before we do something. It may be to ask ourselves if all we do and say matches up to God. None of us is perfect and we make mistakes but part of being a disciple, a follower of Jesus is to keep turning to Him and turning away from all that would stop us being like Him.

At the end of the gospel reading we heard that angels ministered to Jesus. Jesus had gone to get closer to the Father, He had faced temptation and now He was able to receive more and more of God’s love. I love the idea of angels ministering to Him. God ministers to us by helping us, by loving us, by always being there and all He asks of us is that we go to Him. 

Lent and everyday is to be about praying, facing up to difficulties and receiving God’s love. May we this lent and always be ready to pray which will help us face up to temptation and grow closer to God and then to receive His love. AMEN