This week is the first Sunday in the season of Lent. You can read more about what the meaning of Lent is
HERE, but we can summarize it as a 40-day preparation for Good Friday and Easter. Lent is usually marked by fasting and a call to repentance.
This Sunday, we will focus on our need for a Savior. If we are going to repent, we need to know to whom we are repenting, and why. As Dale will share, God gave his people the Law in the form of the Ten Commandments. If we are honest with ourselves, each one of us has broken the law of God. We have acted in rebellion and distrust toward our holy and loving Father, and we are unable to save ourselves. We are incapable of making everything OK. The wages of our sin is death (Romans 6:23), and that price is non-negotiable. "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24-25)
This Sunday, we come together in an attitude of sobriety. We will begin the service with a Confession of Sin, acknowledging that we have sinned "in thought, word, and deed." In other words, our lives are so intertwined with sin that it affects everything we do. Yet, we serve a God who can truly set us free. We will sing the song "Mighty To Save" (2006, by Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan). We proclaim that the Savior who "can move the mountains" is able to save us from sin.
We will also sing the old hymn, "My Savior, My God (I Am Not Skilled to Understand)." The words are from Dorothy Greenwell, and were written in 1873. We will sing the words with a new melody written by Aaron Shust in 2005. The second verse precisely articulates the focus of our service: "Christ died to save me, this I read/And in my heart I find a need of Him to be my Savior."
We will also sing the Matt Redman song "Better is One Day" (1995). We declare in this song that "Your Spirit's water to my soul." Just as our bodies don't survive without water, our spirits are dead without the sustaining, saving, sanctifying Spirit of God.
We finish this Sunday with the hymn "I Need Thee Every Hour." Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are totally dependent on the mercy and love of God in Jesus Christ every moment of every day. Let us work this season to be more aware of how great and vast our need is. In that awareness, we will learn the truth of these words: "They who trust Him wholly, find Him wholly true."