The Beautiful Irony of Fasting – Lent Devotion

The Beautiful Irony of Fasting – Lent Devotion

by | Feb 14, 2018 | Christian Growth, Encouragement, Holidays

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sending devotions out to guide you through the Lenten season. Each Lent devotion will provide a brief analysis of Scripture and reflection questions. I pray these will be a source of encouragement and inspiration as you walk through the season leading up to Easter. Sign up on the form at the bottom of this post to receive weekly Lenten devotions delivered straight to your inbox. 

Introduction

A couple of years ago, I did the Daniel Fast by Susan Gregory. I drank only water and ate essentially lettuce and rice for 30 days. (I checked the rules and coffee didn’t count as water, so I almost died.) During that fast, I needed some direction and had pressing aches in my life that I wanted the Lord to address and fix. But during that time, I sensed Jesus saying, “Don’t seek the fix; seek My face.”

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This was a bit of a new angle for me because having grown up in the church, I’m actually pretty skilled at seeking Christian fixes, ideals, and disciplines. In other words, I’ve learned how to seek Christianity. But seeking only Jesus? I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Seeking Him simply for who He is—not necessarily what He could do for me or give to me—was somewhat new territory. It turned out to be exactly what I needed.

As we step toward spring and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ over the next 46 days of Lent, my prayer is that we’ll seek Jesus. Simply Jesus. In an effort to help you on that journey, I’ll be sending out a devotion on the Person of Jesus every Wednesday between now and Easter.

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I know many of you are coming through the thick of an icy winter desperate for a fix, a healing, a spotlight of direction, a miracle, a green bud on the branch. In seeking the face of Jesus you won’t be ignoring or abandoning those longings, rather you’ll be affirming that Jesus is the greatest need of your life.

In preparation for seeking His face with a more intent focus, I encourage you to fast in some form. A true fast would be to abstain from certain types of food or food altogether for an allotted time each week during Lent (as your doctor determines is good for your health). You may instead choose to give up television, social media, streaming movies, etc. Whatever you decide, the irony and beauty of fasting is that when you set aside something that brings you comfort, pleasure, or sustenance, God is faithful to grow something new in its place.

Lent Devotion 1: A Speaking Savior

 Hebrews 1:1-3 “Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word…”

One of the very first things the author tells us is that God is a speaking God. And not only a God who speaks but One who speaks to us. Look back at verse 1:1 with me. We discover that a really long time ago, back when the Old Testament prophets were alive, God spoke!  Who did He speak to? The people of God under the old covenant (fathers). How did He speak? By the prophets. But now, in “these last days” that we’re living in—during the date on your calendar, in your city, on the street you live in, within your church community—God has spoken. He’s no longer speaking through the prophets; rather, He’s spoken through His Son Jesus.

I’m a communicator by nature. I like to communicate to others and like to be communicated to. This is sometimes to the dismay of my closest friends who occasionally like to not discuss every single thing under the sun. Sometimes they want to just be with me—something I do not understand when we could be conversing and figuring things out! So I find it particularly meaningful that the God I serve is a speaking God and that He’s chosen to speak specifically through Jesus.

Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us that Jesus has something to say, and He has something to say to us. Both through His actual words as recorded in Scripture and through the statement He made by His death on the cross and resurrection for our forgiveness and salvation. We know from other portions of Scripture He also speaks to us through His Holy Spirit.

What do you need to hear today? What do you need communicated to you? What if I reframed the question slightly: Who do you most need to hear from today? Is it not Jesus?

In verse 3, we find out another revelation about the speaking voice of Jesus: The whole world is sustained by “his powerful word.” This can be hard to understand when we think about the pain and chaos in our world right now and in our own country. Most of us don’t even have to look that broadly—we have unsolvable problems and divisiveness in our own communities, families, friendships and marriages. In the midst of what feels so tumultuous, Hebrews tells us that Jesus is personally involved and sustaining all things.

Take some time to reflect on this.

The word “sustaining” here means to uphold and gives the sense that Jesus is personally carrying things forward to their “appointed end or goal.” As unruly as things are, until He returns to set everything right, He’s still ruling and reigning. He has not left you. One scholar put it like this: The author of Hebrews “is not referring to the passive support of a burden like the Greek god Atlas bearing the dead weight of the world on his shoulders. Rather, the language implies a ‘bearing’ that includes movement and progress towards an objective.”[1] In other words, the person of Jesus has not lost control of our world or your world. He is intimately involved by the power of His word.

As we begin this season of Lent by reflecting on Jesus, I’m grateful that God has spoken through Jesus. That He’s spoken to us. And that the spoken word of Jesus is personally carrying and sustaining all the things. That He has not left us on our own and tells us so.

Questions for Reflection or Discussion

  1. What is particularly meaningful to you about God having spoken to you through Jesus?
  2. Why do we often find it hard to silence the noise around us for the voice of Jesus? How can this season of Lent be different?
  3. What do you think is different about God having spoken through the prophets versus now having spoken to us through Jesus?
  4. In what specific ways are you encouraged to know that Jesus is sustaining all things by the power of His Word?
  5. Spend some quiet time in prayer and praise God that He’s not silent but speaks to us through Jesus.

[1] O’Brien, P. T. (2010). The Letter to the Hebrews (pp. 56–57). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

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Letting Go of the Christmas Ideal for Christ Himself

Letting Go of the Christmas Ideal for Christ Himself

by | Dec 1, 2016 | Encouragement, Holidays

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The Christmas season is upon us, often meaning our joys and sorrows are increasingly magnified. If our lives are brimming with joy and loved ones near, well, the strings of bulb lights and wintery wreaths energize that happiness like cinnamon to steaming cider. But if we’re treading a path of loss or suffering or unmet longings, our pain is only increased by the continual reminder of what could be, or should be—A soul mate to call your own, a home of bustling children and grandchildren, vibrant health, full stockings and bank accounts, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Longing for the Christmas Ideal

The Christmas ideal that accompanies our passage through December is a companion that reflects what we deeply hope to be our reality while exposing the parts of our lives that fall quite shy of the image it upholds. As a single woman with no children, Christmastime is both exceptionally sweet and a reminder of what is not. I will not be arm in arm with a husband through the malls, nor will I be buying my own children matching pajamas. I’ll be torn between deeply enjoying my parents and family in Virginia on Christmas day while simultaneously missing my community in Tennessee, the friends who make-up my daily life.

To be absolutely certain these are trifle voids compared to some of the unspeakable upheaval and tragedies some of the people I know are currently in the throes of. Regardless of how we’re walking through this Christmas season, every point at which life does not measure up to loved ones around crackling fires and picturesque table settings will be exposed.

So what do we do with a Christmas ideal that shows us what we all long to be true but is perpetually out of reach?

We do what Elizabeth did when Mary came to visit. We rejoice in our Savior instead of dwelling on who’s got it better or where our lives aren’t living up to our Christmas expectations.

A Tale of Two Relatives

Consider Elizabeth’s story leading up to the encounter with Mary who came to visit her newly pregnant with Jesus. Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah had pleaded with the Lord for children but with nothing but seeming silence in return. For a woman of Jewish culture to be barren was the ultimate social shame, a devastating loss of legacy and meaning in one’s society. After years of what Elizabeth would refer to as her “disgrace among the people”, the angel Gabriel visited her husband in the temple proclaiming that Elizabeth would soon become pregnant with a son. And while any son would have done just perfectly for Elizabeth, this child would be the forerunner of the Messiah. After all her suffering, Elizabeth would bring into the world one of the most important figures in Christendom.

Mere months before the very first Christmas, we find Elizabeth’s life shaping up more divinely than she could have ever imagined. Her disgrace has been removed, her womb is inhabited with child, her status in society has been exalted. Soon she will place in her husband’s arms what she’d always longed to give him but never could. Elizabeth, well along in years and having been faithful to the Lord through decades of unanswered prayer has finally reached her moment. The shaft of God’s favor is finally beaming down upon this most faithful and deserving woman.

Nothing like six short months for someone to threaten a Christmas ideal; Enter, teenage relative Mary.

In those days Mary set out and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judah where she entered Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. (Luke 1:39)

Essentially the only woman in all of space, time and history who could have possibly outdone Elizabeth, shown her up, beat her out, crashed her party, would have been Mary the mother of Jesus (of course this was not Mary’s heart or intent). At the peak of Elizabeth’s glory a much younger and arguably less deserving woman steps through the front door bearing a child greater than her own. And if we’re looking at all of this strictly from a human perspective, Elizabeth’s Christmas ideal fractures before Christmas has even come.

But Elizabeth was not caught up in comparisons or jealousy. Instead, Elizabeth stuns with her gracious response.

How could this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? (Luke 1:43.)

Her words reveal a secret we desperately need at this time of year: Elizabeth’s hope was not in an ideal but in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. When the blessed mother of her Lord entered her home, the farthest thoughts from Elizabeth’s mind were the ways in which her esteem, happiness or place in society would be threatened. All that mattered to her was the Lord, and because this was foremost true she could delight in Mary’s blessing as well.

Resist the Christmas Comparison Game

As I venture into this Christmas season I will be deeply disappointed if I compare myself to those whose lives are living up to the Christmas ideal in ways I wish were true of my own. I will ache unnecessarily if I set my hopes on Christmas-y images of magical settings that inspire a longing they are powerless to fulfill. If my focus is solely on the movies and malls and mulling spices, I will miss out on intimacy with my Savior, the only one able to commune with me in the deepest places of my heart. I will look to Him to do what only He can do in me, what no idealistic fantasy can.

As unmet longings and desires are awakened this season, I will spend quiet hours in God’s Word being reminded of the ways that the Desire of Nations meets our longings. When I feel alone, I will meditate on Immanuel, God with us. Like Elizabeth, I want to look beyond my own wants while delighting in and helping others in the context of Christ and community—that the mother of my Lord, should come unto me?

While I intend to hold nieces and nephews on the couch and watch Frosty and Rudolph, decorate a bang-up tree, make gingerbread houses, stroll leisurely through shops, sing with Amy Grant in the kitchen, splurge on Christmas-y cups of coffee, read by the fire, dine with friends at special gatherings, and perhaps let myself dream of the unlikely if not impossibly serendipitous love story through a Hallmark movie or two, my hope will not be in these trappings.

The Christmas ideal will not be mistaken for my Savior.

 

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Immanuel, God With Us

Immanuel, God With Us

by | Dec 15, 2015 | Encouragement, Holidays

Merry Christmas Friends,

I hope you all are having a meaningful Advent season. I’ve always felt that the holidays magnify whatever state we’re already in. If we’re in love, the season strings lights around our romances; If we’re lonely or hurting, those same lights seem to cast a glaring beam on our ache. And if we’re somewhere in the bell curve of general humanity, we probably have both excitement and longing that are simultaneously being magnified. It is perhaps for this reason that no other name means more to me at Christmas than the name Immanuel, God with us.

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This is where I’ve been sitting in the mornings and evenings, contemplating and communing with this God With Us. My tree looked more charming in the lot than it did when I finally steadied it upright next to my fireplace, which isn’t working right now by the way. My chimney is leaking among other problems like it being almost ninety years-old. But the tree and the leaking chimney with the stockings hanging from the mantle will do, because they remind me of Jesus having come.

Consider the significance of having come.

God did not wave a wand or sweep His right arm across the sky or condemn from afar when He could have. Instead, He sent His Son to save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). I sat by this tree last night and this morning, recounting not just my sins but my sinfulness. (David, the Psalmist, the King on whose throne Jesus would eventually reign, claimed in Psalm 51 that he was sinful since birth.) I’m not talking about berating myself at Christmastime, rather I’m just a little more aware of what’s wrong with me, or what’s not right with me, and how much I need a Savior.

I’m aware that in this life we can be as excited and crackling with happiness as cranberries on a skillet, and in the very same day we can wound with our words, jealousy can tackle us from behind and we can be faint with longing. In either state we need a Savior. And so Jesus came. God with us. Not God far away, not God from a distance, not God as one of many. But Immanuel.

My prayer for you and me this Christmas is that we would relish His nearness. Our sins have been forgiven, joyful all ye nations rise. He mends the brokenhearted, O come let us adore Him. He brings His blessings into our broken relationships, far as the curse is found. He frees those in bondage, chains shall He break. Joy to the world, the Lord has come.

I am grateful for each one of you and look forward to seeing many of you on the road in 2016.

Merry Christmas,
Kelly

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Merry Christmas and The Minter Kitchen

by | Dec 19, 2013 | Encouragement, Holidays

Merry Christmas Everyone. If you’re like me you’re scrambling to get everything pulled together in the next week or so. I was reminded this morning of that beautiful verse, Colossians 1:17, which says that in Christ all things hold together. Deep breath. And when I take long enough to consider this, I find it to be not only an inexhaustible concept but also a comforting truth.

I am working busily on finishing up a book and then will be diving into writing my next bible study for LifeWay. More news on those shortly, but in the meantime… how about a recipe? The wonderful people at LifeWay have put together something they’re calling The Minter Kitchen. Now, if you actually saw my kitchen you might not be as excited about this monthly posting – all I can promise you is that these are some of my go-to recipes that I often cook and enjoy. And occasionally even serve to others. So check it out, along with some of the other fun things they have going on on the LifeWay Women’s Blog.

Lastly, please share any recipes you’re currently enjoying in the comments section – I’d love to see them and try them. Also, please be sure to check back here for new dates on the calendar – would love to see you on the road. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on the new book and new bible study.

Merry Christmas,

Kelly

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Sharing God’s Mercies In A New Year

by | Jan 10, 2013 | Encouragement, Holidays

Christmas is out the door, with the exception of a few hanger-on pine needles I’ll be finding well into August. It’s time for another year, and like a train on a schedule it doesn’t hold its doors for me to get on board, before its smoke plumes and whistles and gears start cranking. Ready or not.

I begin each New Year with a general sense of contemplation, as I imagine most do.

Whether we buy into resolutions, diets, gym-joining, goal-setting, we are naturally designed for turning seasons and fresh beginnings. It is only right and good that we consider afresh what we long to do, who we long to be this coming year.

Marketing companies may cash in on what this month represents, but its’ newness they did not create.

This is God’s gift of time measurement. Without it we’d have days running into one another unbound by solstices or seasons, the markings that make it possible for us to determine things like, “Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far.” Januaries give us context for what is “far”. They offer us a moment to pause and consider what has happened, and what we long to have happen.

I’ve been doing much of my contemplation this year through the Gospel of Mark. A new friend of mine encouraged me to steep myself in this particular book because Mark writes more about the Kingdom of God than any of the other Gospel writers. Since one of my desires this year is to see a greater coming of Jesus’ Kingdom here on earth – in everyday, real life we’re talking about here – I’m enjoying a book I’ve read many times before, only this time in a different way.

I mused with this new friend who happens to be ministering in a particularly unsettled part of the world. I told her how I struggle to talk about the Gospel in ways the people around me understand, even desire. This is a much bigger conversation than whatever fits into the going length of a blog these days, but her response to me needs little room. In fact, she began with a question: “Kelly, what did Jesus tell the man from Gerasenes, the one He cast the demon out of, to do?” We were eating at a place called Potbelly’s. Just being at a place with this name made me less smart. I couldn’t remember. She smiled and then began to deliver a truth the way Proverbs speaks of a word fitly spoken. “Jesus simply told him” she said, “tell your people about the mercy God has shown you. That was His evangelism strategy.” (Mark 5:19, for precise quotation).

I nearly burst into tears for two reasons I can trace. The first was out of relief. I have so thoroughly complicated the process of sharing my faith, witnessing, evangelizing, however you may name it, that I have missed the ease with which a person speaks about Jesus who has firsthand experienced Him. We should speak of His mercies as naturally as the songbird carols from our windows; I have never once prompted her. If we have a redemptive story to tell we should tell it often to all manner of listeners. Which brings me to my second traceable reason for tears: Sometimes I struggle receiving the mercy God has shown me. If I can’t connect to His personal love then the faith-story I tell others will be forced and awkward, saddled with inaccessible doctrines that may be true, but they won’t be life. The man from Gerasenes had everything he needed to share the fame of Jesus in his community because he’d had a personal encounter with Jesus.

We will talk about Him to the degree we experience Him.

I am still contemplating. Contemplating about what the Lord has done for me, and how He has had mercy upon me. I am examining why I often struggle to receive such goodness, or simply fail to recognize it. The truth is that every Christ-follower has a story of mercy to share, and when we share it with passion, humility, joy and even ease, well then, perhaps more people around us will respond the way the people of the Decapolis responded to the man from Gerasenes.

“and they were all amazed.”

 

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Happy New Year

by | Jan 2, 2012 | Encouragement, Holidays, Uncategorized

The Minters attempting a poised family photo.

Poised Family Photo.

I’m about to pluck the ornaments from the Christmas tree and wrap the lights into a quasi-organized ball of tangles. The mantle will be cleared, and my Vietri santa sugar and creamer that my Mom graciously splurged on for me will be put away until next November or so. The shimmering green, silver, and red wrapped Hershey’s Kisses will remain on my dining room table until they’ve been eaten, because I think you can get away with those well into January. It’s when you’re offering them to guests in August that they become a problem.

Gathering up the Christmas decorations and making way for a new year’s reality can be both disheartening and invigorating. Though I’m always sad to see the holiday season come to an end with its family gatherings, rich foods, post-season football games, times of relaxation, and of course its unparalleled focus on Christ’s birth, I am usually ready to begin the year anew. Like most of you, I’m sure you’ve been pondering the experiences that you were ready to see vanish into 2011 and the ones you hope to see dawn in 2012. I hope the following will be of some encouragement to you…

I was reading in I Samuel 25 last week, and was stirred by a phrase in verse 28 that will usher me into the new year. The following words were spoken by Abigail to King David, “…the Lord will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my master, because he fights the Lord’s battles.” I don’t know what battles lie in front of you, but in the spirit of transparency I have wasted precious moments of my life fighting battles that were not the Lord’s. I have spent valuable nights worrying about relationships I wasn’t supposed to be in in the first place. I’ve needlessly toiled over obstacles in my career that weren’t part of God’s plan. I’ve fretted over finances when the Lord had already promised to provide for my needs.

When I read the above words that characterize David’s life, I was inspired to specifically seek God’s direction for this coming year. “Lord, I don’t want to waste valuable time that I can never get back fighting battles that are meaningless.” This year I want to learn more of what it means to fight where it matters. Whether it’s struggling in prayer for those in the Amazon region of Brazil, studying the Scriptures, designating money to the needs God has put on my heart, spending time over coffee with those who could use encouragement, learning a new skill, cooking a new dish… I want to contend where God’s asked me to.

How beautiful that according to John 15, we don’t have to do this alone. Christ is the vine, and we are the branches that naturally grow out of that vine bearing the fruit He authors. I am excited for this coming year; Thankful for what God has done in my life in 2011, and looking forward to the ground He will ask me to fight for. In the meantime, I’m going to cook some kale, cannellini bean, sausage soup for tonight, and watch pieces of the numerous college bowl games. I may even take a nap.

Thank you so much for your incredible support of me over the past few years. I am thankful for each and every one of you, even if we have yet to meet. May God’s favor rest upon you in 2012.

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