The Following Blog Post is written by Brandon Adent:

Popular references to Easter abound these days. Bunny-shaped chocolate is on sale at the grocery store, alongside the plastic ribbon grass that seems to cling to every crevice in the house. 

Most people don’t know where the bunny came from. Or why we color eggs, hide then, and hunt for them. Springy colors make sense to us… it’s the time of year where the dark of winter surrenders to the light of the spring.

We love spring. Especially in Bellingham. The return of the longer days and warmth of the sun give us a lot of joy.

And yet, there is a greater source of joy. The book of John talks about Jesus as the Light of the World, which shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome.

And on the day that Christ bodily rose from the grave, the Light stomped the head of the Darkness into the ground.

PAID IN FULL

To put the events of Good Friday (the day Jesus, the Christ, was crucified) and Easter Sunday into modern terms, let’s frame the discussion in terms familiar to many of us.

 Say you’re a college student without money for anything but Ramen noodles (10 for a dollar, in case anyone is curious), and a friend and family member offers to take you to Costco to get anything you want. You go to the store on your shopping spree, and your friend or family member pays the bill.

In order to exit the store, you must stand in line ready to show your receipt to an employee as proof that you’ve paid for everything in your cart. Once the employee marks your receipt as valid and complete, you are free to go about the rest of your business.

Similarly, paying the bill is a bit like Good Friday. With His blood, Christ paid for the wrongdoings and offenses of all who would trust in Him, and gives them His perfect standing in exchange.

Christ’s resurrection is like the receipt. By His resurrection, we know that our sin has actually been dealt with, for death cannot hold the sinless.

Moreover, the use of the receipt goes beyond departure of the store. Say your friend bought you a flat-screen TV, and when you plugged it in at your apartment or house, it didn’t work. The receipt gives you the assurance that you will be adequately cared for until you are satisfied with your purchase.

If you are in Christ, He has paid for your soul with His blood. And His resurrection is the proof-of-purchase. You have been adopted into His family (Gal 3, Rom 7), and there is nothing that can separate you from His love (Rom 8).

Because of this assurance, you can live courageously in the new life that you have in the knowledge that His grace is sufficient for you.

NEW LIFE IS YOURS

Because of the assurance that your sentence has been paid in full, you have a guarantee of new life in Christ.

You are a new creation; the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Cor. 5.17). You have been raised from death by the same power that raised Christ from the dead (Eph 5.4-6).

This means you actually can live differently! God has changed you from the core of your being, and is slowly molding you into Christ-likeness. Sure, we’ll struggle with sin, fear, guilt, and shame. But He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. (Philippians 1.6)

 DEATH IS AS GOOD AS DEAD

Your newness isn’t just relegated to your soul. Because of the resurrection, you have assurance of bodily resurrection, just as Christ was raised.

Paul addresses this very topic in 1 Corinthians 15. Amid disputes of whether the dead will rise again, Paul repeatedly and emphatically states that if Christ Himself was not raised from the dead, that we have no hope either in this life or the next.

Thankfully, Christ has been raised from death, showing that He indeed possesses power over it. As death could not hold Him, neither will it hold you.

This means that you don’t need to fear death. Certainly, the prospect is unnerving. But if we know that we are Christ’s in both life and death, and that He is sovereign over both, we don’t need to live in fear or anxiety over what happen today or tomorrow.

CELEBRATE THE GOD WHO LIVES

This next section may seem a bit odd: I’m going to quote a Christmas song.

Without Easter, there is no Christmas. If Christ had not come to live perfectly, die sacrificially, and rise triumphantly, He would not have come. Charles Wesley knew this when he penned the great hymn “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!”

Hail the Heav’n born Prince of Peace

Hail the Son of Righteousness

Light and life to all He brings

Risen with healing in His wings

Mild He lays His glory by

Born that man no more may die

Born to raise the sons of Earth

Born to give them second birth

The appropriate response to the risen King is worship. We bow our lives to Him, confessing our need and despising our old ways in the light of His grace.

This response should resound in every area of our lives. One ways we respond is by gathering corporately to hear what He has done and respond in gratitude in prayer and song. This is a weekly celebration, not a one time event, to serve as a frequent and tangible reminder one what He has done for every people of every tribe, tongue, and nation. But Easter provides us a particularly special occasion to gather and remember what God has done in us and what He means to do through us.

If you would, join us as we gather this Easter Sunday in the name of the resurrected Jesus.

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The Following blog is written by Brandon Adent

WHY DWELL ON DEATH?

This coming Friday, we’ll be meeting to celebrate and remember Christ’s crucifixion. We know that Easter is only three days later. To dwell on death seems so morbid. Why would we spend a Friday night in remembrance of the God who died when we know that He lives?

The implications of Good Friday are enormous; there’s really no end to them, and it’s impossible to fully understand the depth of them. Here are just a few reasons that Good Friday is worth celebrating.

IT IS FINISHED

Jesus, the Son of God, came to this world with a mission. He was born in squalor and raised in the middle of nowhere (John 2.45-46). Taking the trade of His earthly father, Joseph, the Maker of the Universe lived and worked unknown to anyone outside of Nazareth for most of His life (Mark 6.3). 

Then one day, Jesus stood in the synagogue of His hometown. He opened and read from the scroll of Isaiah, and declared Himself to be the one to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to set free the oppressed (Luke 4.18).

On that first Good Friday, after hours of agony under the full weight and fury of the wrath of God, Christ used His final breaths to announce that He had done what He came to do:

It. Is. Finished!

If you are in Christ, you are free. Your sentence and ransom have been paid. The sins that chained you to the dungeon of despair have disintegrated to nothing, and you have nothing to fear in death.

                        Fully absolved of these I am:

                  From sin and fear and guilt and shame 

THE CURTAIN IS TORN

There used to be a curtain.

The high priest, the one chosen to represent the nation of Israel in God’s presence, only entered the Holy of Holies once a year to offer sacrifice, wearing bells and a rope around his ankle so that the attendants could pull him out should they not survive their encounter with God. This sacred space was set apart by a thick curtain to ensure that no one would accidentally find themself in God’s presence unprepared.

The Apostle Matthew records that as Christ screamed out His victory and breathed His last, that curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom.

Can you imagine witnessing this moment? It’s almost comical to comprehend, visions of an unsuspecting priest diving for the ground, rising to his knees to find that he’s miraculously still alive.

In that moment, Christ became the Great High Priest. If you are in Christ, the implications are astounding. He pleads for us, and prays for us. He is our advocate, and our intercessor. And because of what Christ has done on Good Friday, we can approach the throne with confidence (Hebrews 5), knowing that it’s in Christ’s power that we stand.

WE REMEMBER

On the night before He was betrayed, Jesus had gathered His disciples to celebrate the Passover meal. Jesus took bread and wine, saying that bread represented His body broken, and the wine His blood spilled, and instructed His disciples to eat and drink in remembrance of Him.

Passover was the day that the nation of Israel remembered when God had set them free from captivity to the Egyptians. Similarly, the sacrament of communion, instituted by Christ just before His death and practiced by the church for millennia, remains an act of remembrance.

The elements have no saving power. They are just bread and juice.

However, they do serve as a reminder of Christ’s saving power, and redeeming His people from their sins. The elements are God’s grace to us, to give us a reminder of an event that took place long ago, that none of us have seen, but those who are in Christ know to be true.

WE RESPOND

On Good Friday, we meet to remember and respond to who God is and what He’s done. We’ll sing to and about Him, hear His Word taught, and go to the table in remembrance of Him. We’ll leave knowing that He’s alive, but, Lord willing, aware of the cause and effects of His death on the cross.

Please consider joining us Friday, April 3rd 2015 at 6 PM for our Good Friday service. 

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Yes, our church family celebrated Lent this last Wednesday. For some people the term Lent leaves a sour taste in people's mouths, and if you are one of those people please read this blog post done by Ariel Bovat on her reflections and experiences at the Lent Service. If you don't know what Lent is, its ok just keep reading. This blog done by Ariel will encourage and challenge anyone. Enjoy! 

If you like what you read you can find Ariel's Blog Here

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To Lent Or Not To Lent

I was baptized as a baby in a Catholic church. The end.

That was the only point of reference I had for any of the traditions of the Catholic religion, which included Lent.  

My mother eventually converted to the Jehovah's Witness religion and my very Hispanic Catholic baby baptism became of no consequence. 

I eventually became exposed to a distanced, albeit foreign, concept of Lent through the kids in my junior high who were Catholic. They would leave school for a few hours on Ash Wednesday only to come back to school with ash crosses on their foreheads. It was foreign to me. It was something that other people did. It meant nothing personally to me.  

For me, Lent became associated with Catholicism and unfortunately hypocrisy as well. 

I attributed all religious church traditions with hypocrisy because the first exposure I had with religious church traditions came primarily from the junior high and high school kids in the small New Mexico town that I lived in. For the most part, if someone was Mexican, they were Catholic. If someone was not Mexican, they were not Catholic. This experience/exposure did not leave me to conclude anything different. 

These Catholic junior and high school kids would be cussing up a storm, bullying kids on the school bus, yelling at the bus driver, bragging about their sexual exploits, etc....yet.....when the bus drove by the Catholic church, all these kids would stop what they were doing, make the sign of the cross on their bodies and then proceed with their "bad" behavior. 

I was perplexed.  I knew something was amiss. 

However limited my exposure was, that was my first experience with ritualism. Traditionalism. Empty church symbolism. 

I knew I wanted nothing to do with it.  

Lent....or the activity of Lent never crossed my mind again. 

Up until now. 
Six churches and 30 years later, 11 of those years as a Christ follower.  

Our new church offered an Ash Wednesday service. As foreign as it was to me, I was intrigued.

What could this non Mexican, non Catholic context service look like? I had no preconceived ideas of what it ought to look like. My husband, on the other hand, grew up Catholic, so he did have to wrestle with his personal past experiences on what it used to look like as a former alter boy but he was pretty stoked about it too. My kids were clueless. 

I feel that God was preparing my heart for the idea of participating in a Lent service last year when my family lived isolated lives void of any church fellowship. Your can read about that here. 

So, our very first Ash Wednesday service was pretty gosh darn amazing. The service was not liturgical, dry or passive. 

Instead, it was Spirit filled, worshipful, and very much active. 

The service was centered around the Holiness of God, our desperate need for a Savior, and an encouraging renewed reminder of a Holy and Loving God giving us Jesus to reconcile us to the Father. There was lots of singing (which I love), lots of reading of the Bible (which I love), and lots of prayer and reflection (which I need). 

There was the application of the ash crosses on our foreheads, which the kids thought was pretty cool. There was the participation of the Lord's supper. Then there was the anointing of oil at the very end to send us on our way. 

I don't know what I loved more- the actual service and it's complete passion for God or the fact that we finally had a church to celebrate Jesus with. I might venture to say that it's both. 

As a matter of fact, I wish Ash Wednesday was every Wednesday. But I guess that would defeat the reverence of the occasion. 

Along with the actual service, our church is doing a collective fasting and using a devotional titled Journey to the Cross to help foster a reflective and repentant heart as we usher in the solemn death of Christ and glorious resurrection of our Savior and King. 

It is interesting to see the many different view points concerning non-Catholic denominations wrestling with whether we should or should not participate in Lent. 

I've read several blogs on different view points concerning the participation of Lent as a non Catholic. 
Luma Simms, one of my favorite Christ centered woman writers addresses her perspective HERE after she readanother blog that questions the sincerity of heart of Lenten participants. You can read that blog HERE. 

To Lent or not to Lent...I guess that is the million dollar question of the day for evangelical Christ followers. 

Here is my humble yet limited answer. 

1. If you go to a gospel centered, Bible believing/Jesus preaching church and your church does not do Lent....then no worries. Don't do it. Or, if you feel strongly about doing it, then do it privately with your family. 
2. If you go to a gospel centered, Bible believing/ Jesus preaching church that does do Lent....then do it with your church family. 

However...here are my caveats on it. 

1. Lent doesn't make us holy. Only Jesus makes us holy. 
2. Giving up something for 40 days doesn't make us more holy. Only Jesus, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit makes us more holy. 
3. Focusing on what we have to give up does not make us more holy. Replacing God's word with whatever we give up reorients us to God. It assists us to recognize the magnificent finished work of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This helps in sanctifying us, aka....making us more holy.  
4. Going through the motions of a religious tradition will do nothing for our sanctification if we do not commit to reading scripture, meditating on scripture as it pertains to Christ's work on the cross, reflecting about our outward AND inward sin and recognizing the depravity of our condition, repenting daily, and most of all praying continually. But.....as Christ following people, we should be doing this already.

My personal favorite day of the year is Resurrection Sunday. Ash Wednesday and this Lenten season is now just an extension of Resurrection Sunday as we allow ourselves to start preparing our hearts in deep, humble, yet glorious gratitude that God loved us enough to have a plan to bring His sheep to Himself. He did this by giving something up.

The Father gave up His Son for approximately 33 earthly years for something the Father thought was worth it. That something is US. 

The Son came willingly...to eventually die a painful excruciating sacrificial death....for something He thought was worth it. That something is US. 

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Church Colson writes a great blog post about the benefits Christians have joining in Lent:

Five Benefits To Joining In Lent

That said, let's explore five benefits to observing Lent.

1. Lent affords us the opportunity to search the depths of our sin and experience the heights of God's love.

With Good Friday approaching, visions of Jesus' gruesome death remind us of the dreadful reality of sin. Here, our individual and corporate brokenness is on display as the Lord of glory dies under the weight of our just judgment, inspiring personal introspection. Though self-examination can turn into narcissistic navel gazing, such abuses should not foreclose on a godly form of self-examination that encourages humility, repentance, and dependence on Christ.

But for such introspection to remain healthy, we must hold together two realities that converge at the cross—our corruption and God's grace. If we divorce the two, then our hearts will either swell with pride and self-righteousness, losing touch with our sinfulness, or sink into anxious despair and uncertainty, failing to grapple with mercy.

Confident of God's grace in Jesus Christ, we are free to probe the inner recesses of our hearts, unearthing sin's pollution. God's grace liberates us to explore our soul, facing its filth, rather than suppressing or succumbing to its contents. With David, we are free to pray,

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Ps. 139:23-24)

Searching us, God discovers nothing unknown to him (Ps 139:1-3), but discloses the secrets of our hearts, allowing us to know ourselves. Under his tender scrutiny, God exposes, not to shame, but to heal. Thus, turning inward, we are led upward to find consolation, hope, and transformation through Jesus Christ. Certainly, such piety isn't the exclusive property of any church season, but Lent provides a unique setting for this self-examination.

2. Lent affords us an opportunity to probe the sincerity of our discipleship.

Jesus bore the cross for us, accomplishing our salvation, yet he also bestows a cross on us (Mt. 10:38-39; Lk. 9:23). Following him, Jesus guarantees unspeakable comforts and uncertainties (Jn. 16:32-33). Frequently, these uncertainties test the genuineness of our discipleship. Consider the following examples from Jesus' ministry.

In Matthew 8:18-22, two people approach Jesus, proclaiming their desire to follow him. One, a scribe, offers his undying devotion saying, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus responds by instructing the scribe about the rigors of following him, explaining that foxes and birds enjoy more comfort than he does. Perceiving selfish ambition, Jesus reminds the scribe that following him is not a means for advancing in the world, but rather involves forsaking it. We don't know how this scribe responded to the challenge, but Jesus leaves us with the question, "Will we follow him when it is inconvenient or only when comfortable and to our advantage?"

The second, a disciple, requests to attend his father's funeral before going on with Jesus. Jesus takes the opportunity to reveal the disciple's heart, unveiling his ultimate affections. He says, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead." Remember, Jesus warns us that we cannot love father and mother, or anything else, above him (Mt. 10:37). Obviously, Jesus does not forbid loving our parents or attending their funerals, but he does insist on being first in our hearts. Jesus is not a commitment among other commitments, but rather the commitment of our lives. Therefore, as Augustine points out, we must take care to order our loves properly, ensuring that our affections are set on Christ and not another.

In this way, Lent provides opportunity to question and examine ourselves, exploring the integrity of our discipleship.

3. Lent provides us an opportunity to reflect on our mortality.

Pursuing eternal youth, our culture seems to live in the denial of death. But ignoring death does not erase its impartiality—everyone who draws a first breath will take a last one. It is a certainty we can't escape (Heb. 9:27). Fortunately, death is not the last word. For all who belong to Christ, there is a promise stronger than death—we will die, but Jesus will return to raise our bodies, wiping the tears from our eyes and making all things new (1 Cor. 15:12-28; Rev. 21:1-8).

The most difficult moment I face each year, as an Anglican pastor, is to apply the ashes, in the sign of a cross, to the foreheads of my wife and children on Ash Wednesday. It is an intimate and haunting moment. Echoing the words of Genesis 3:19, I say, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." It is jarring. Every year, I cry.

Yet the ashes are applied in the shape of Jesus' cross—the only means for escaping the dust of death. When God raised Jesus, he raided death, destroying its power. Jesus' resurrection marks the death of death and welcomes us into a living hope (1 Pt. 1:3). This is our consolation and joy in the midst of our mortality.

Lent provides an unmistakable opportunity for disciplined reflection on this neglected certainty and God's radical solution.

4. Lent gives us the opportunity to move towards our neighbor in charity.

Long misunderstood as a form of works-righteousness, Lenten fasting is not about scoring points with God, but rather emphasizes simplicity for the sake of others. By temporarily carving away some comforts or conveniences, good gifts from God himself, we hope to de-clutter our hectic lives, allowing us to focus. Simple living allows us to reserve time for others while also serving to curb our expenses. It is fitting to allocate these savings, along with other gifts, for charitable purposes, especially directing those funds to the poor and marginalized.

So search your heart and go simple. Consider fasting from types of food, technology, and/or sources of entertainment. Live frugally, and do so for the sake of charity. Find a cause, or better yet a person, and give sacrificially. And, in so doing, may you know the joy of Jesus who gave himself fully to us.

5. Lent prepares us to celebrate the wonder and promise of Jesus' resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Here, Jesus trampled down sin and death, defeating the Devil (Heb. 2:14-15). After a season of depravation, highlighting the grim reality of our broken creation, Jesus' resurrection floods our grief with life and light. In other words, Lent prepares us to join the disciples in their joy and bewilderment on that strange morning long ago (Mt. 28:8;Mk. 16:8; Lk. 24:12). Our Easter worship is a dress rehearsal for our Lord Jesus' return when he comes to unite heaven and earth, making all things new (Eph. 1:10; Rev. 21:1-8).

And so, I invite you to a holy Lent. Take up the opportunity to dwell upon the grief of our broken world, the sin within your heart, and the deep love of God that exceeds these realities. Reflecting on the hospitality of God, consider the needs of your neighbor, especially those without life's basic needs. And, most importantly, in the gritty details of Lent, don't forget—Easter is coming!

Read The Rest. Follow Chuck Colson on Twitter 

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