lent

Right now is my favorite time of the day.  I am currently sitting in my living room under a large blanket, my best friend beside me laughing about articles on Facebook while we both drink our daily tea. This is the dream.  I love this time of the day because it is one of the only times to sit and be still.  Being in this new present season of lent is one reason why I am up at this hour anyways.  I love how the Lord calls us into a time of rest often.  This year I decided not to give up my annual no sweet tea and sweets but instead dive into a season that pulls me into a place where I am overwhelmed with what Jesus has in store to teach me.  This season is all about a time to stop.  A time to stop and consider the things I often forget: my sins and my returning to the cross.  A time to reflect of the fallen state of my heart and my gaping need for a Savior.  A time to return and kneeling daily at the cross, a time of repentance and mourning the depths and reality of my own heart, remembering the joy that Jesus has lavished on me through the cross and His resurrection. So, for lent I have decided to wake up in the mornings a lot earlier than more normal 10:00 routine to spend time intimately and restfully in Scripture and in prayer. Prayer has been something that the Lord has been awakening my heart to lately.  Prayer is this ushering into communion with the Father.  Prayer draws us in closer to the character and the heart of Jesus to that we might see our need and when we see that need our desires would be conformed to Christ.  Prayer ushers us into a time where our selfishness is put to rest and we are embraced with the desires of Jesus and love of Jesus.  Prayer allows us to begin to think His thoughts after Him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves.
I pray that this time in lent would be shaped into time like that displayed in Mark. "And in the morning, a great while before day, Jesus rose and went out to a lonely place and there he prayed".  This is what Jesus life looked like and was rooted upon.  Separating Himself from the world to dive into prayer with the Father.  Psalm 63 is one of my favorite Psalms and it starts with a prayer that breaks me to my core every time.  A prayer that is fully reliant on all that Jesus is.  "You, God, are my God.  Earnestly I seek you.  I thirst for you; my whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water.  With you I am fully satisfied". 
Pray-ers are all over Scripture.  New and Old Testament.  Moses, Elijah, Hannah, David, Hosea, Paul, Mary.  All of these people fall on their faces at the feet of Jesus begging for Psalm 63:1 to overwhelm them.  That with their whole being they would long and thirst for the goodness and fullness and grace of Jesus.
Prayer invites us into stillness and communion with Jesus that allows Him to reveal to us the persistent Father Savior that he is.  The persistence he has over my sin, the persistence he has over my joys, the persistence he has over my ministry, the persistence he has over death.
You, God, are my God.
Earnestly I seek you,  I thirst for you.
My whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
With you I am fully satisfied.
I give you thanks for ushering me into this communion with you.
I give you thanks for exploring the depths of my heart and uprooting brokenness and destruction and building in me Your own kingdom.  A holy place where you rest and restore my soul.
Lord.  I thank you for lent.  I thank you for mornings.
Let this time acknowledge my wickedness knowing that You, King over death, has already done all that needs to be done to grant me perfect forgiveness.  I pray that lent would be a season where I take a long hard look at my sin and grieve over it.  Then lock my eyes of the gaze of Jesus who has rescued me!
Let me return to You.  Return to you with joy and with mourning, with celebration and repentance, with my mess that is desperate to be made holy.  God help me to return, return to a place where the cross is it.  The cross is enough.

             For they shall return to me with a whole heart, cries the Lord" Jeremiah 24:7