Lent is crowd-sourced training and encouragement for taking up our cross

Let’s face it: learning how to deny ourselves for the sake of loving God and the people in our lives is hard. Repentance, self-denial, and fasting are all things that should be a regular part of the Christian diet (pun intended). These are basic rhythms of following Jesus and should mark our life all year long. But sticking with Jesus in the school of self-denial is crazy hard and most of us find ways of avoiding this central practice.

That’s why I love Lent so much. I know I’m not doing this alone. When I observe Lent with my friends and family and church, it’s like I get to crowd-source encouragement for some of the toughest parts of my spiritual journey. We are social creatures and we often find ourselves caught up in what others are doing. Why not use that tendency for good for once?

Each year when the season of Lent comes around, Christians start talking about planning their journey: choosing something to give up, making an honest assessment of things they need to give up to love more fully, getting soul-training materials ready to go deeper with Jesus than we’ve gone before. And even if every individual’s Lenten journey is a personal one, it’s a personal one we undertake together. It’s hard for every one of us so we encourage one another every step of the way.

This crucial public aspect of Lent became very clear to me when my wife asked me recently what I was doing for Lent this year. The question caught me off guard. I’ve observed Lent for many years now and some part of me knew the season was going to start soon. But this year it sort of snuck up on me. When she asked the question, nothing really came to mind and my first reaction was, “Meh, I don’t feel like doing it this year.” So I mumbled something incoherent about not being sure and then our conversation turned to other matters.

A day or two later, I was praying through some frustrations I’ve been experiencing in trying to move forward with God, some issues of discontent and dissatisfaction. During my prayer time, it hit me: Lent is exactly what I needed to get unstuck. Without even really knowing the details, it was pretty obvious that at root, my discontent resulted from some things that I wanted out of life that I wasn’t getting. Because I’ve been trained by Lent in prior years, I had a vague suspicion that my desires needed to be examined in the light of the cross. I needed to submit to what God is doing in me right now even if it’s frustrating, trusting that what he is providing is enough.

If my wife hadn’t asked me about Lent, I might have kept lumbering along for weeks or months, frustrated and stuck. Yes, I should have known what to do. My first reaction when noticing I was stuck should have been to deny myself and take up my cross. But I’m just not that well-formed yet! But a few circles around the Lenten track over the years has formed me well enough to recognize that taking my discontents and conflicting desires and laying them down at the cross is often the way to fresh and vibrant new life in Jesus. I’ve been down this path of self-denial before and I’ve heard others say from their experience that the way to get unstuck is to repent and to come to the cross.

This is how communal spiritual disciplines work. They are rhythms that don’t depend on us. They come and get us when we least expect it. They ask us to enter into a season of spiritual formation with others no matter where our individual lives are at the moment. Such practices make us into a body that follows Jesus together. We benefit from others’ enthusiasm when ours is waning. We learn from others what to expect and how to persevere through the tough parts. We chat with others about how it’s going because everyone is experiencing a version of the same journey. Sort of like Jesus knew what he was doing when he sent us out into the world not as individuals but as the church.

If you’re feeling stuck or spiritually dry, I commend to you the practice of Lent. If you’ve never tried Lent or need a refresher on how it works, here’s a brief primer on how it works. May God meet you where you are and lead you into the good life of his kingdom.