Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

EN(dur)ANCE by Robin Gudal

As I sit and write today, I am so excited. It is Ash Wednesday and I have waited to start a book until today. “40 Days of Decrease” by Alicia Britt Chole is a book to help guide one through the Lenten season.

“This is not your normal Lenten experience … it is about uncluttering our souls, fasting into weakness. To be humbled and tested with the outcome to know what’s truly in our hearts.” She quotes,” the purpose of Lent is not to force on us a few formal obligations, but to “soften” our hearts so that it may open itself to the realities of the spirit, to experience the hidden “thirst” and hunger “for communion with God.”

I have “fasted” many things, days and weeks in my life, and I love the spiritual experience and God’s peace in the process. So I am eager to see and experience this Lenten season. Come Lord Jesus, come.

Side note: “Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough” by Elmer L. Towns is a worthy read.

As we embrace this season I also think about the Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” — Matthew 6:9-13.

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” — Deuteronomy 7:6, NIV.

He chose you and me, and all we need to do is call upon him. In the movie “Mountain Top,” an elderly man who has many challenges in his life leans into “papa” for his strength. Each time he referred to papa in the movie I felt a yearning to also position myself to know papa better, especially through this Lenten season.

Papa, or Abba as Brennan Manning refers to Christ in “Abba’s Child,” has made us loved, redeemed, forgiven, chosen, accepted, new, secure, significant and complete.

“The Lord’s Prayer is in talking, listening, opening up, loving, meditating, asking, magnifying, thinking, changing, waiting, confessing, worshiping, exalting, enjoying … God.” — “Praying the Lord’s Prayer for Spiritual Breakthrough,” Elmer L. Towns.

Are you in a season of needing, wanting to lean in more? If so, may we enter Lent with a posture of thinning our lives in order to thicken our communion with God.

Robin (Beckman) Gudal is intentional in life, a wife, momma, nana, friend and a flawed and imperfect follower of Jesus.