Lent is a 40 day season of prayer and fasting that begins on Ash Wednesday (February 18) and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday (April 2). It's a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord's Resurrection at Easter. During Lent, we seek the Lord in prayer by spending time In Gods presence and we practice self-control through fasting. We are called not only to abstain from luxuries during Lent, but to a true inner conversion of heart as we seek to follow Christ's will more faithfully.

Fasting is the practice of abstaining from something for a period of time in order to prioritize Jesus in your life. In other words, fasting is putting something good down in order to choose God. Fasting has usually meant abstaining from food for a whole day, or historically in the season of Lent, from sun up to sun down.

Our recommendation is to make sure what you fast is actually challenging, but is not a sinful thing. The reason to make it challenging is because in the moments you reach for the thing you’re fasting from, you want to enter into prayer and fix your eyes on Jesus. However, fasting is not fasting when it is putting aside a sin pattern like gossiping or immorality. These are things Christ compels us to put down always, not just for a moment. Fasting from the good allows us time to focus on God.

However, Lent is not all law and no grace. From the very earliest days, the Church has declared that Sunday, the day of Christ's Resurrection, is always a feast day, and therefore fasting on Sundays has always been forbidden. Since there are six Sundays in Lent, we have to subtract them from the days of fasting. Forty-six minus six is forty. Make sure you feast.

That's why, in the West, Lent starts on Ash Wednesday – to allow a full 40 days of fasting before Easter Sunday. Would you consider joining us in putting something down so you can take something up?

Prayer in the season of Lent can look many ways. We recommend a prayer rhythm during this season.

Open your day by praying the Lord’s prayer. As you pray, take your time to allow each line to sink in.

Pause at midday to pray for God’s strength. Remind yourself of God’s promises found in scripture and read a Psalm.

Finally, close your day by remembering God’s blessings. Thank God for specific things before you go to sleep.

1 Peter 5:6 - Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

Jeremiah 29:12-13 - Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Nehemiah 1:4 - As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven

Lamentations 3:25-26 - The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

Psalms 51:1-6 - Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Psalms 103:14-15 - For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass they flourish like a flower of the field;