What if this Lent you did more than give something up? What if you used the season to draw closer to Christ in a deeper way?
The church season of Lent is typically a time of humility, contrition, and confession. It’s a time of preparation.
In this season, God calls us to reflect on our need for Jesus, our human frailty, and the hope of resurrection. As we journey toward Good Friday and Easter, we are invited to slow down, examine our hearts, and remember that we cannot walk this life alone. We need Jesus.
Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, where we receive ashes and hear the words, “From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return.” The purpose of this is not to make us overly dour or sad, but to remind us of the frailty of human life. We are here today and gone tomorrow. Then we enter the long season of Lent.
During this season, many choose to fast from things like sweets, TV, or social media. But this year, we invite you to lean into more than just what you give up.
Today we want to cover various spiritual disciplines that believers have used throughout history to grow in faith and dependence on Christ. Why it matters, how to practice it, and what it teaches us about walking with Jesus today.
Let’s step into this season with intention, humility, and a hunger to know Jesus more.
Silence & Solitude
As we begin this season of Lent, the first spiritual practice we’re exploring is silence and solitude. This ancient discipline invites us to step away from the noise, responsibilities, and constant input of daily life. It’s not about praying anxiously or trying to accomplish something.
It’s about creating space to sit with God and simply say, “Lord, I’m here. What do You want to show me?”
Start small. Turn off your phone. Step outside. Sit quietly for five or ten minutes and let Psalm 46:10 guide you: “Be still and know that I am God.” If you need a deeper moment of reflection, read 1 Kings 19, where God meets Elijah not with spectacle, but in a gentle whisper.
In the quiet, you may sense God’s voice or simply become more aware of His presence. Either way, this practice reminds us of our deep need for Him and the beauty of His stillness. Give it a try this week—and if you do, I’d love to hear how it goes.
Fasting
Lent began as a 40-day fasting in order to empty oneself and prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ. If you read through the Gospels, you will see fasting all over the place because it has been such an essential part of Jewish and Christian tradition. But it’s something we’ve really gotten away from today.
The point of fasting is not that if we pray and we fast, we’ll somehow manipulate God to do what we want. The point of fasting really comes back to this idea of desire and hunger, both literal and metaphorical.
In our culture today, we are constantly satisfying our hunger and desires: our stomachs are filled, our eyes are filled, our ears are filled.
Fasting is an opportunity—whether we fast from food, TV, sugar, coffee, or whatever it is—to practice self-denial and remind ourselves that our satisfaction is not found in worldly bread; it’s found in Christ alone.
Those are opportunities when our stomach growls or our mind craves that thing we are fasting from to turn our attention to the Lord and say, “Lord, help me to rely on You. Help me to increase my hunger for You, and may You feed me Your spiritual bread.”
I encourage you this week, and maybe throughout Lent, to pick one day a week to fast. That can be from bedtime to bedtime, from sunup to sundown, or whatever time works for you. Pick food or something that distracts you to fast from and in its place, spend time with the Lord in prayer and reflection.
Confession
We often try to build our lives around appearing good. We downplay our weaknesses, sins, and failures, either to make ourselves better or to project a false image to others that we are better than we are.
When we confess our sins, it’s not a guilt-inducing opportunity to think worse of ourselves. It’s an opportunity to be real. It’s an opportunity to have this cathartic moment of saying, “Lord, here’s all of me, including the bad parts of me. I don’t want them—I confess them to You.”
There are different ways to practice confession. A few options include reading Psalm 51, Psalm 32, or through the Ten Commandments, acknowledging all the ways you’ve broken them. Pray through those scriptures to help reveal your sin and go deeper into what is really driving that sinfulness in your heart.
What are your idolatries? In what ways are you trying to appear good? What are the things you want to downplay? Whose attention or affection are you trying to get?
These are the heart issues that, when we bring them to the Lord, He can provide deep healing.
Take time to engage in this spiritual practice—reading scripture, praying, and confessing to the Lord. Ask the Lord to help you confess to others where needed and to represent the heart of Jesus by acknowledging the ways you have hurt them.
In all things, ask the Lord to remind you that you are forgiven, you are loved, and you stand righteous through the work of Jesus Christ.
Service
We often think of service as external. In our pursuit of spiritual growth, sometimes we focus soley on our study of the Bible, going to Church, or prayer. Service tends to do be viewed as something extra, but it plays an important part in our formation and discipleship.
Christ came not to be served, but to serve. When we stop thinking so much about ourselves, our comfort, and what we want, and instead start looking at the needs around us, we adopt the eyes of Christ. We become like Christ.
When God called Abraham in the Old Testament, He said that Abraham would be blessed to be a blessing to others. That is our mission too, and who we are supposed to be. Living in the fullness of Christ, we have been blessed. So let us go and bless others.
How can service be a part of your spiritual formation? This Lent season, consider the ways you can serve others with your time, skills, or even finances.
Participate in an event or help someone around their house. Invite people over for a meal at your house, maybe even those who are challenging to love. In doing so, you adopt the eyes and heart of Christ, and lean into your spiritual formation.
Bible Study
Studying God’s word is a foundational spiritual practice for our faith.
When I pray, who is the God I’m praying to? As I fast, why am I fasting? Whatever we are doing, if we’re worshiping God, we need a firm understanding of His Word to direct our thinking, our hearts, and our actions.
The reason that we call the Bible (or the Scriptures) God’s Word is because we believe that these are the words of God, spoken through and written down by His disciples, His prophets, and His teachers. Without God’s revelation through Scripture, we would not know who God is.
We are prone to make God in our image. The Word of God corrects that for us.
It says, “No no no, here is the reality of this unknowable God that we can know through God’s Word.”
There are different ways you approach Bible Study. First, you can follow a yearly Bible reading plan (like this one) and get a big overview. Consider joining our Alpha and Omega group that meets every month to go through a 2-year Bible reading plan together.
It’s also beneficial to zoom in and read slow. Consider starting with a Gospel book, read a chapter a day, and meditate and journal on what is it saying about Jesus. You could also read through the Psalms; pick one a day and just sit in the emotions of people that are seeking to follow God in the same way that you’re seeking to follow God.
We simultaneously need a broad understanding of Scripture, along with a slow, meditative reading to really let us sit in the truth of God’s Word.
