"The Season of Grace and Hope"

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return."

So begins the yearly Christian season known as Lent on February 26th, a follow-up of sorts to the season of Advent, which concludes on April 9th.

While during Advent we celebrate the various "comings" of Christ – first as a baby born to take away the sins of the world, and second as the victorious King come again to put the world to rights – during Lent we traditionally take a more contemplative posture, examining ourselves and our own mortality in order to personally identify with what Christ did to break our chains of sin.

In the book of Hebrews we find the perfect marriage of these two important Christian seasons:

Since all His "children" have flesh and blood, so Jesus became human to fully identify with us. He did this so that He could experience death and annihilate the effects of the intimidating accuser, who holds against us the power of death. By embracing death Jesus sets free those who live their entire lives in bondage to the tormenting dread of death (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Consider this: Jesus became one of us and lived our life in order to experience our death, so that He could break the power of death reflected in the opening words above! This is what we reflect upon and celebrate during the season of Lent.

For those who are unfamiliar with Lent, it is a forty-day journey of self-reflection and self-denial that prepares the Believer for Holy Week, leading to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Throughout this period Christians are invited to examine themselves as they remember the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus on their behalf. It's also a time for setting aside our past sins and failures in light of the blessed future hope of who we will become by God's grace. Accompanying this season of repentance is fasting, almsgiving, reflection, and prayer.

Lent officially begins with Ash Wednesday, a solemn service in which we're called to remember our mortality and express our need for God's mercy and forgiveness. We are invited to remember that one day we will return to the dust from whence we came, and it is by God's gracious gift that we will be resurrected from the dead and given everlasting life.

"Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, He united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by His wonderful grace! He raised us up with Christ the exalted One, and we ascended with Him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm, for we are now co-seated as one with Christ!" (Ephesians 2:5-6 TPT)

"For since we are permanently grafted into Him to experience a death like His, then we are permanently grafted into Him to experience a resurrection like His and the new life that it imparts." (Romans 6:5 TPT)

Traditionally, this season has been marked by fasting from food and entertainment as a way to experience, in some way, Christ's own self-denial. You may have known a friend or coworker who gave up chocolate or Facebook, wine or TV – perhaps you yourself fasted from something or some experience for Lent as a way to prepare for Easter. While it may sound silly, these forty days of self-denial are meant to help Believers identify with and understand the depths of Christ's own self-denial on our behalf through His suffering and sacrifice on the Cross.

But why forty days? The number "forty" is deeply scriptural: God sent rain for forty days and nights during the great Noah flood; Moses spent forty days on Mt. Sinai with God; the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years before gaining the Promised Land; and Jesus went into His own wilderness and fasted for forty days, where He was tested and tempted by satan before He began His ministry.

So it is this deep, biblical history that inspired early Christians to begin setting aside these days to focus the heart and prepare the soul to celebrate the most important events in history: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it is this practice that inspired The Passion Translation's Grace and Hope: A 40-Day Devotional for Lent and Easter, written to bless your walk through the Lenten and Easter seasons.

We hope this Lenten season will encourage and inspire your faith in the One who bore our pain and shame, so that you could be declared "Not guilty!" and enjoy everlasting life in the age to come!

(Article used by permission: The Passion Translation)

Brian Simmons
Stairway Ministries
The Passion Translation
Email: brian@passiontranslation.com
Website: www.stairwayministries.org
| www.thepassiontranslation.com

Brian Simmons is known as a passionate lover of God. With his wife Candice and their three children, he spent nearly eight years in the tropical rain forest of the Darien Province of Panama as a church planter, translator, and consultant. After their ministry in the jungle, Brian was instrumental in planting a thriving church in New England (U.S.), and now travels full-time as a speaker and Bible teacher. He is also the lead translator for The Passion Translation Project which will result in a new, dynamic version of the Bible for this generation. He has been happily married to Candice for over forty-three years and is known to boast regularly of his children and grandchildren.

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