Wisdom in the Desert (Week 1): Invitation to the Wilderness

Sure today comes from Deuteronomy 8 one through 5.

Carefully follow every command I'm giving you today so that you

may live and increase and may enter and take possession of the

land the Lord swear to your ancestors.

Remember that the Lord your God LED you on a journey these 40

years in the wilderness so He might humble you and test you to

know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep

His commands. He humbled you by letting you go

hungry. Then He gave you mana to eat,

which you and your ancestors had not known, so that you may learn

that man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that

comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Your clothing did not wear out and your feet did not swell.

These 40 years, keep in mind that the Lord your God has been

discipling you just as men disciples His Son.

This is the word of the Lord. Amen.

As we begin, I want to talk about this amazing technological

feat called the noise cancelling headphone.

Anybody. My wife recently bought me a

pair not too long ago as a gift of these babies right here.

They're Sony's, so they're pretty nice noise cancelling

headphones. I don't usually buy myself nice

things, but she loves me so much she was willing to get these.

And if you've never tried a good pair of noise cancelling

headphones, it'll change your life.

OK, It's pretty amazing the first time you actually put

these on and activate the noise cancelling feature, it's like a

different world. Do you guys know what I'm

talking about? You ever had one of these?

And it's pretty amazing. How it works is basically

there's microphones in the speakers picking up the ambient

noise around you. And then what it does is it

produces the exact opposite frequency of the noise around

you, thus cancelling it out so you don't actually hear the

noise. How cool is that?

It's amazing. OK, I, I'm a technology nerd,

but it's great. And so it's great.

Like I'll be working in a coffee shop and I'll put these on and I

can just concentrate and it, it drowns out the noise around it.

And so I liked it so much, I actually bought Susan a pair of

noise cancelling headphones and which she uses sometimes when

like the kids TV shows are getting maybe a little like

jarring on the nerves, you know what I'm saying, moms, And just

just slip those babies on and enter into your own world.

And she seems to love it. So the thing about noise

cancelling headphones is that you don't even realize sometimes

how noisy the outside world is until you actually enter into

the quiet. You don't realize how many

distractions there are around you until all of a sudden the

HVAC is no longer humming and the murmur of the crowd can't be

heard, or the traffic outside, or whatever.

And to be honest with you, it can be a little bit unnerving at

first because you can hear your own breath.

You can sometimes even like feel and hear your heartbeat.

And it's a very strange phenomenon to suddenly be in

such quiet can actually feel a bit uncomfortable at first.

The reality is this, our world around us is very, very fast and

it's very, very loud, even even literally.

There's studies being done about noise pollution and the effects

it's having on our psyche and our minds, but not just the the

physical loudness, but just the noise that each of us have to

deal with every single day. Our world is speeding up

constantly. In fact, Doctor Gloria Mark,

she's been tracking attention spans for the last two decades.

Any guesses on how attention spans are trending?

In a recent American Psychological Association

podcast, she shared the findings from her research.

Again, over 2 decades, she said our average or the the findings

were that our average attention span on screens has declined

from 2.5 minutes in 2004. OK, so you're on, you're on your

screen, you're working. How many different times are you

multitasking and going to different screens?

So in 2004 is 2.5 minutes, 2 1/2 minutes, and now today it's gone

down all the way to just 47 seconds.

OK. And I'm guessing it's even worse

in today's day and age with Reels and TikTok and so on and

so forth. And her research actually shows

that this rapid switching comes with the cost, increased stress,

more errors and slower performance.

We think we're getting better. We think we're by by speeding up

and and taking on more, but we're actually getting worse.

These studies are finding how can we actively as believers,

cancel out the noise and the hurry of the world around us so

we can actually hear the quiet voice of God?

And what would it look like for us to to pause long enough to

actually hear what God has for us?

And what if the intentional soul level stripping back of our

comforts could expose the very things that are debilitating us

every single day? How can we as believers deal

with the hurry and the anxiety and the noise that's all around

us? What would it look like for us

to set intentional time to step into this?

Well, today we're kicking off a brand new sermon series called

Wisdom in the Desert, and we're doing this right before we begin

the season of Lent. If you've never heard of Lent

before, it's this window of time in church history between Ash

Wednesday and Easter Sunday. So the Lent season, according to

the church calendar, actually begins this coming Wednesday.

And so as a church, we're going to be intentionally slowing down

and taking some time during Lent to focus in on quieting out the

noise and listening to God. Now, if you've never heard of

Lent before, that is totally OK. If I can confess something to

you, when I first started hearing about Lent and the idea

of fasting for 40 days and stripping things away for 40

days, to be honest, I was like, that sounds like a major bummer.

And I don't want to do it. You know, for me, Lent, you

know, felt like something that was just like this old and

irrelevant thing that, you know, Catholics or some other

denominations practice. And I I didn't really like the

idea of others sort of enforcing how I was meant to experience

God. If I'm honest, it felt like one

more big ought to when it comes to your faith, one more things I

one more thing I should be doing, but I'm not actually

practicing. And when I heard about the idea

of like, fasting for 40 days, I'm like, that is something that

only spiritual giants do, you know, like it made me ask the

question, does anyone actually do that?

Or do they just say that they do?

And when I did try to engage in Lent, historically, it ended up

being this sort of like, how long can I go until I eventually

fizzle out, sort of like power through the pain exercise.

I'm going to fast as long as I can.

So it's like this weird success, shame thing and failure.

And what I didn't realize was that it was my own ignorance and

my own unwillingness to really understand what Lent was about

that caused me to actually avoid it.

OK, I didn't really understand it.

So we're going to take some time to really begin to understand

the heart of Lent and see if there's a way like in our modern

age that that we can learn from it and engage with it in a

healthy way to hear God's voice. So let's begin.

Like I said, Lent marks the 40 days of between being Ash

Wednesday and Easter Sunday where we choose to intentionally

slow down, to fast, to pray, and to give our alms or alms giving,

which is just basically generosity, especially to the

poor. Now, why 40?

The number 40 is pretty significant throughout the Bible

#1 the 40 days are modeled after Jesus when he went out into the

wilderness to be tempted by the enemy.

And he was out there and he prayed and he fasted for 40 days

and 40 nights. Now, that story of Jesus is also

connected to an earlier story in the Bible.

It's found with the Israelites where they had to travel through

the desert for how many years, 40 years?

You catching a theme here, 40 days of Lent, 40 days Jesus in

the wilderness, connected to 40 years in the wilderness from the

Israelites. So we have to understand

something. The number 40 in Scripture is

often used symbolically to represent periods of testing,

preparation, or expected waiting on God.

So again, we're going to be in Matthew chapter 4 today.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 4 is where we find Jesus being tempted in the

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

wilderness. Now, a little bit of background,

right before Jesus is being tempted, he's actually baptized.

It's sort of the beginning of his public ministry.

It's this amazing moment where Jesus goes into the water and

then he hears the voice of God from heaven who says this is my

son whom I love with him. I am well pleased.

Beautiful passage. All of us want to hear God say

that about us. This is my son with whom I'm

well pleased. I love him.

Immediately after that in Matthew's Gospel, he goes out

into the wilderness again for 40 days.

I'm going to read the passage here.

Beginning in verse one says then Jesus was led by the Spirit into

the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

The tempter came to him and said, if you are the Son of God,

tell these stones to become bread.

Jesus answered It is written, Man shall not live on bread

alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand in

the highest point in the temple. If you are the Son of God, he

said, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command

his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their

hands, so that you will not strike your foot against the

stone. Jesus answered him, It is also

written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test again.

The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all

the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.

All this I will give to you. He said, If you will bow down

and worship me. Jesus said to him, Away from me

Satan. For it is written, worship the

Lord your God and serve him only then the devil left him and

angels came and attended him. Pretty powerful story a lot that

is packed into that short amount.

And we're going to begin kind of re examining this story in the

weeks ahead. But we what we see here

initially is that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the

wilderness to be tempted. Now we need to understand

something about the word wilderness here.

This is the word a Ramos in the Greek has multiple meanings, but

it usually means a solitary place or a desert.

It's a significant place all throughout Scripture, and we're

going to look into that a little bit.

But what we see in Jesus's ministry, for instance in Luke

5, is that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed That

word there for lonely places is the word a Ramos.

It's a place of testing and it's a place to meet God.

So Jesus wasn't just going off to lonely places to take a

little like me time. OK, this isn't like self-care as

we might understand it. Sometimes that's good, but it's

not like a relaxation or it's not just like a vacation time.

No, Jesus is not retreating from his problems and he's not

attempting to escape from reality.

Instead, Scripture says that that the Holy Spirit leads him

to a solitary place. And in this passage we just

read, he's engaging against his temptations of the enemy and

he's being tested by God. So when we think of like the

spirit leading us or being like a spirit LED church, sometimes

spirit LED isn't always just like miracles and warm fuzzies

and like, you know, tingles during worship.

OK, that's that's not always it or signs and wonders.

Sometimes being spirit LED is actually a time where God leads

us into a stripping back, leads us into a time of of dryness and

of wilderness. And Jesus was willingly going

into this solitary place, this arraymos, in order to meet God.

Like I mentioned before, this 40 days of Jesus in the wilderness

was also very much connected to the Israelites wanting for 40

years in the desert of their own.

This is what it says in Deuteronomy 8 regarding the

Israelites. This is God's chosen people.

It says, remember how the Lord your God LED you all the way

into the wilderness? So their God is again leading

people to the wilderness for these 40 years.

Why did He do that? To humble and to test you in

order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would

keep His commands. He humbled you, causing you to

hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor

your ancestors had known to teach you that man does not live

on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth

of the Lord. So this is what Jesus is quoting

in the wilderness. Man does not live on bread

alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the

Lord. This story here in the Old

Testament is a direct connection to Jesus in the wilderness.

So again, we see the wilderness as a place of testing, as a

place of preparation, and of waiting.

The wilderness or the Aramas is a place of necessary separation

from culture and the cultural forces around us to reveal whose

Kingdom you're actually living for, to reveal what's actually

going on in your hearts. And so for the Israelites here,

they had a choice to make. They could either keep on living

into their former way of life, the Egyptian lifestyle and the

Egyptian values, or they could allow God to shape them into

Kingdom values, the new values that would be represented in the

promised land that they would one day inherit.

The wilderness was a time of testing of the hearts to say,

who are you really going to follow?

Which Kingdom are you going to live into?

It says this in Leviticus 26 a little bit earlier, talking

about the former way of life in Egypt versus the future

lifestyle. It says in verse 12, I will walk

among you and be your God and you will be my people.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt so that

you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians.

That was their former way of life.

I broke the bars of your yoke and did what enabled you to walk

with heads held high. Wow.

So for the Egyptians, they were slaves under Egypt and so they

carried the yoke and the burden of slavery.

All right. Just imagine like a heavy wooden

work tool on your back, a yoke. And they were just, they were

just bowing over to their slave masters.

They were under the heavy toil of their Egyptian slave masters.

But then what does it say? God says I broke that yoke off

of you to do what it says this so that I could enable you to

walk with your head held high. Do you see the difference?

And so in the wilderness, this is the place where God is

teaching them and training them. He's saying you're no longer

slaves to your former way of life.

I am now lifting your head so you can walk into the promised

land. I'm shaping you.

I'm testing you. But you have to choose which

Kingdom are you going to be living into?

Are you going to let the old ways die out and choose the new

ways that I have for you? Church, listen, all of us are,

are tempted in many ways to carry the yoke yoke of the

culture around us. We're tempted to be burdened and

weighed down by the values and the traditions and the

expectations of our culture around us.

None of us are immune in in America, especially in 2026 and

beyond, right, like our cultural values are very much ones of

individualism. It's very much focused on

consumerism, materialism. Even in our city, you know,

we've identified like what are the, what are like the spiritual

forces or like the territorial forces at play even in our

community, in our city here in Ankeny.

And there's very much a cultural, spiritual sort of of

weightiness regarding self importance.

We think we're really important. We think life is about us.

Not only that, but we carry the weight and the yoke of just

living in an outrage culture. All the noise, all the all the

issues, all the arguing, etcetera.

You see, Egypt trained Israel to think like slaves.

And maybe in a similar way, America trains us to think like

we're this all sovereign consumers in charge of our own

lives. But here's the thing.

Here's the point. The wilderness retrains us to

live like sons and daughters, trusting God for our manna,

trusting God for Our Daily Bread, for provision, for

nourishment and direction. Michael Wilkins puts it this

way. The desert is a place of the

first showdown between competing kingdoms and their rulers,

between two figures who lay claim to the hearts and souls of

men and women. Rather than retreat, Jesus now

advances the Kingdom of God. In other words, where the

Israelites groaned and failed their testing in the wilderness,

Jesus is the true Israelite who succeeded.

And he proved it in the wilderness.

He overcame. There was another group in

history, a little bit more ancient history, who chose to

willingly venture out into the wilderness in the desert, and

they were intentionally choosing a different Kingdom than the one

that they were living in. They're called the Desert

fathers and the Desert mothers. Many of you have never heard of

this bunch. It's it's a bunch of early

Christians actually who really arose in the 3rd century AD.

And it's a bunch of men and women who began to who leave

their sort of sophisticated metropolitan cities of Cairo and

Alexandria. And they wanted to pursue deeper

lives of prayer and holiness. And they did it out in the

wilderness. They were so hungry for holiness

and they were so troubled by the compromise state of the church,

which was looking less and less like Jesus the more power and

prestige it gained. And instead, they chose to

abandon it and wander out into the desert.

So they went out into the Wilds of Egypt and Syria and Arabia.

And part of the reason was because Christianity was

becoming increasingly politicized by Rome and the

Roman government, which was sort of the superpower of their day.

So it's estimated that like hundreds of thousands of people

eventually went out and formed these communities, these

monastic cities. They people would, would trek

out into the desert in order to seek these desert fathers and

mothers, just to learn from them and to hear from them.

They went out there to do spiritual warfare, to learn

about themselves, to starve their flesh and their desires.

They craved silence and solitude and spiritually they were living

in a in a world that was busy like ours.

It was noisy like ours. So what they did was they chose

to live off grid for a simpler, truer life.

And they were modelling this after Jesus, of course, who went

out into wilderness. OK, radical group of people.

Radical group. And I'm thinking about like,

what's the modern day parallel of this?

And I don't know that we really have one, but maybe today this

is the the group of people who would be looking at our current

cultural moment and they'd be looking at our culture sort of

strange mix of political power meets religion meets corruption

and moral depravity from the elites.

And this is be a group of people who said, you know, I don't know

that I want any of that. I want to seek a different

lifestyle. So this would be the group

modern day where rather than arguing over which Super Bowl

halftime show was the most righteous, this would be the

group of people who said, you know what?

I'm not sure I really see Jesus in either of them.

I'm not sure I'm seeing Jesus in anything that I'm witnessing out

in the culture and what it values.

So I'm going to choose instead to retreat and go off and truly

seek the way of Jesus. So be the group of people who

like that, go out into the the desert of Nevada with tents, you

know, to really figure out what is the sin that drives mankind,

the sin that's actually living in me and how can I be free of

it? How can I take on a new way, the

way of Jesus? How can I actually see him?

And so they went out and people followed radical group.

I'm not saying all of their practices were good.

They were ascetics. So they would, you know, starve

themselves essentially and do radical practices.

But there was a ton of great wisdom that came out of this

era. One of them was named Anthony

the Great, probably one of the most famous of the Desert

Fathers. And he wrote this.

See if this kind of makes sense for our time.

A time is coming when men will go mad and when they see someone

who is not mad, they will attack him saying you are mad, you are

not like us. Many times if we're actually

trying to live the way of Jesus in our current cultural moment,

people are going to look around at us and they're going to say

you guys are a bunch of crazies. What are you doing living in

community together? What are you doing sacrificing

for others? What do you mean holiness?

In a time where anything goes, when it comes to God leading

Israel to the desert, when it comes to Jesus willingly going

to the wilderness to be tempted, and even when it comes to the

desert fathers, here's something I think we can learn.

Intentional separation from the world is often necessary for

spiritual formation and for growth.

Intentional separation is often necessary if we really want to

grow in Christ likeness. This is not just on a macro

level, but even on a micro level.

Jesus encouraged us. In Matthew 6.

He says when you pray, go into your room, close the door and

pray to your Father who is unseen.

Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward

you. The context here is not

performing like your righteousness in front of

others, but I think there's also something to be said about going

off into a distraction free environment where you can really

actually meet the Lord. Again, in Luke 5, Jesus often

withdrew to solitary places, a Ramos like environment so he

could connect with God. You and I also, we need this

kind of separation from distraction and disruption.

We live in an age of distraction.

Hurry, hustle, go, go, go, go, go.

Years ago, Richard Foster put it this way.

In contemporary society, our adversary majors on three

things. Noise, hurry and crowds.

If he can keep us engaged in muchness and manyness, he will

rest satisfied. How many of us like our default,

is muchness and manyness squeezing it All in all the

time? I know I'm prey to it.

And what we see here is that the enemy loves to prey on our

fears, especially when it comes to survival.

The enemy loves to whisper lies into our ears and say you won't

survive unless you can keep up. And what he does is he sort of

creates this hurricane of activity.

In this hurricane of noise, we have to find a way to distance

ourselves from it. How are we going to hear God's

voice if we're living in hurricane winds?

I really enjoy swimming with my kids.

They take swim lessons every summer.

At least Jane does. And when it comes to teaching

anyone how to swim, it's not usually a good idea to throw

them into the wave pool to learn how to do their strokes right.

That's a bad idea. If you're teaching someone how

to swim, first bring them to calm, quiet waters.

Teach them how to swim where they can actually hear your

voice and learn the motions without being tossed around all

the time. Look, you and I, church, we are

in a wave pool of culture all the time.

You and I are constantly being pushed and pulled by the voices

all around us. And so holy separation from the

world provides those kind of still waters.

We need to learn how to swim, to learn how to actually hear God's

voice so we will be anchored in the chaos waters of this world.

We need to learn how to trust the voice of Jesus, who is quote

the anchor for our soul, firm and secure as Hebrew says, the

anchor for our soul. It's the only way.

Because if you're, it's only until you're you're anchored

that you realize how far you've been drifting.

The waves and the tides will pull you all over the place.

We need a firm and secure anchor for our souls so we can remain

resolute even in the face of changing culture around us.

This is the invitation of the wilderness.

This is the invitation of Jesus. And so practically speaking, as

a church, we would like to invite you to take the next 40

days of Lent to seek calmer waters.

The invitation during Lent is to shut the door and to go out into

the wilderness for an intentional time of holy

separation. We're asking the question, what

if we could disengage for a short window of time so that we

can re engage? Well, what does it look like to

retreat so we can come back more, healthy, more free, more,

and walk and in tune with the Spirit so we can engage the

broken world around us. Not so that we can retreat so we

can hide or pretend like there's no problems in the world, but

actually allow God to shape and amorphous into people of love so

we can engage in the world around us.

So our church invites you to come with us in the wilderness

to do three things. Number one is to detach from the

patterns of this world. Romans 12/2 says do not conform

to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the

renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test

and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect

will. We need to find a way to to

detach from the noise. To detach from all the patterns

in the cultural norms that we find ourselves in #2 is to

starve the flesh's unhealthy appetites.

What do I mean by that? All of us have many cravings of

many kinds. It's not just Valentine

chocolates, right? It's not just McDonald's.

It's not just the entertainment and Netflix, right?

All of us have fleshly desires are primal urges that we wrestle

with every single day. And so Lent is an invitation to

starve those unhealthy appetites.

Galatians. Galatians 5 says for the flesh

desires what is contrary to the spirit.

We have to find a way to say no so we can walk in the spirit.

And finally, the third goal of this season is to confront the

lies and temptations of the devil.

Scripture says that the the native language of the devil,

who is a very real sentient adversary for every single one

of us, he's not just this mythical figure.

It's an actual diabolical entity.

It says that the native language of the enemy is lies.

The native language is lies. Constantly whispering in our

ears. Go faster.

You won't be able to keep up. There won't be enough.

You're getting left behind. You're not doing good enough.

You need to be more. You need to be better.

On and on and on. It whispers lies.

And so how do we identify those lies and instead bring the truth

of God's Word to them? So we're going to be engaging in

a few different practices or spiritual disciplines through

this through these next 40-40 days.

So each of you should have a piece of paper next to you.

It looks something like this on the screen here.

This is an invitation for you. This is not mandatory.

We can't force you to do any of us.

This is just an opportunity to step into this Lenten practice.

I want to kind of walk through what this is.

It's an invitation to step into solitude, into fasting, into

prayer. One of the ways that we can

detach from the world is through the practice of silence and

solitude. Silence and solitude is

basically going off by yourself, being alone and not having any

distractions around you. At first.

If you go off all by yourself with no phone, no screens, it

may feel agonizing at first. OK, you're going to be left

alone with your thoughts. And you might find that there's

a lot of thoughts, OK. But the spiritual discipline of

silence and solitude is just our way of going out and meeting

with God. It's sort of like going off into

the wilderness. The other day I tried to

practice this. I had a a meeting on Wednesday

that got cancelled. And normally my temptation in

that those moments is like, Oh yeah, I just got another hour

and a half to, to get stuff done, baby.

Right, I'm going to keep grinding.

I'm going to keep moving. I'm going to keep, you know, get

ahead or whatever. And instead the Lord just kind

of met me and he's just like, hey, no, actually, what would it

look like for you to take this hour and a half and just just

go, go be alone. And so I did.

I turned my phone all the way off so no one could track me.

Sorry, government, right? I turned my phone all the way

off included. My wife couldn't even track me.

She didn't know where I was. Sorry.

And I just, I hopped in the car and I just drove out to nature

and it was only like 45 minutes by myself, just me and the Lord.

And in those moments, it wasn't as if like heaven opened up and,

you know, angels descended and like comforted me or anything

like that. OK, It wasn't this euphoric,

like majestic thing. But for me, it was just a moment

that I could offer the Lord and say, here I am God, just you and

me. I'm not even going to say I like

heard his voice or anything like that.

But there was this sense of his presence and I just sat there

offering myself to him, silence and solitude.

And so maybe for you, you would like to step into that spiritual

practice. And there's lots of amazing

resources we could give you about learning more about those.

Just let us know if you're interested, but maybe you want

to make a commitment in the next 40 days to to practice this.

Maybe it's once a week you find an hour just to get away

completely alone. Moms, I know that's hard for

you, especially have young if you have young children, right,

an hour away from the kids somehow.

And maybe that's not totally feasible right now in your stage

of life, but even finding 15 minutes to go into the closet

with God detaching from the world #2 starving the flesh is

unhealthy appetites. We're going to do this by

encouraging some time of intentional fasting and

intentional abstinence. Again, a short word on each

Fasting is basically going without food or water for an

intentional set amount of time. Sometimes in church history,

this is means going going once a week without food for for

breakfast and for lunch. For me and my community, we

oftentimes try to fast. For instance, on Wednesdays we

will eat maybe a meal on Tuesday and then we will eat on

Wednesday night. Again, this is just something

we've been trying to get into that the habit and rhythm of

together. The reason we intentionally go

without food is really simple. It's to increase our hunger for

God. We increase our physical hunger

in order to increase our spiritual hunger for God.

Man does not live on bread alone, but he lives on every

word that comes from the mouth of God.

And so from you. Maybe you'd like to try that out

for the first time. Again, disclaimer, it may feel

really uncomfortable when you first start it out.

These spiritual practices are not something that we do in

order to earn God's favor. It does not make you more holy.

It does not save you, but rather it's just an opportunity for us

to open up ourselves to the transformative work of God.

And so we encourage you. Again, we have resources on how

to fast. But maybe you just say, you

know, I'm one meal, one meal a day, or maybe I'm going to pick

one whole day during the week. Many of us probably won't go

like the full, full 40 days of Lent without food.

OK, although it can be done. Let me know if you try that out,

by the way, because I will be praying for you.

OK, But actually then we say 40 days of fasting.

There's actually 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter because

we encourage you to take one day a week to not fast.

Traditionally it's on Sunday if that's your Sabbath, or it can

be Saturday depending on on your flow of the week.

If you're not familiar with what Sabbath is or anything like

that, that's OK. You're you're totally good.

But the point is this maybe choose to have a day where you

feast and celebrate. For instance, we're going to

have AI think we're going to have a potluck as a church

coming up on on Sunday in a few weeks here.

The point is this intentionally removing the comfort of food in

order to starve the flesh spiritually.

Now, for some of you, maybe you can't fast from food, and so you

may instead choose abstinence, which is basically just saying

no to various comforts for a season of time.

So some people say, you know what, this season of Lent, I'm

just going to try going without social media for 40 days.

Do you guys think you could do that?

Some of you're like, yeah, no sweat.

Or maybe you choose to go without sugary foods or meats or

whatever it may be. Bottom line, it's basically

saying no to something and offering that over to the Lord.

So again, maybe it's shopping or mindless TV, what have you.

We just encourage you to prayerfully consider abstaining

from something during this season.

Whatever you choose to do, the goal is this to increase our

hunger in God alone. We're going to have

opportunities, for instance, with the worship night coming up

again a week from Tuesday, and we encourage you to to press

into God's Word during this time as well.

We have Bible reading plans in the back.

Basically, this is sort of like a choose your own adventure sort

of deal. Whatever you choose to step

into, and all of this is Invitational, all of this is

just. If you choose to step into it,

don't be like me where you felt pressured into it, you felt like

you had to do certain things, but instead just listen like

God. How might you be calling me to

step into this next season of beginning on Wednesday?

So all of this, all of the spiritual disciplines, is a way

of us practicing active noise cancellation.

It's like putting on the noise cancelling headphones and it's

allowing God to produce the exact opposite frequency of our

surroundings. Not so that we can ignore the

world or drown it out, but instead so that we can learn to

listen and obey to the Lord's instructions, so that we can

learn to obey him when he says, be still and know that I am God.

This is not earned salvation for us.

It is only by grace that you have been saved through faith

and it is not from yourselves. It's a gift of God.

It's only through the cross and resurrection of Jesus that we

can be saved. But the spiritual disciplines

are tried and true practices throughout church history for us

to engage in the transformative work that he wants to continue

to do in each of us. And so we begin this week, if

you'd like my encouragement to you, it's starting today to just

lift the foot off of the accelerator of your life and

begin to slow down into Ash Wednesday coming up and allow

God to lead you out into the wilderness to pray and to

encounter Him. We want to encourage you if

you'd like. There's this entire series is

based on content from the Lectio 365 organization.

They're an incredible organization.

Along with 24/7 prayer, there is an app that has daily prompts

for you to follow along with. The QR code is on your sheet as

well. And we just encourage you,

whatever it is, find a way to to daily engage with God.

My wife and I have used this app many times.

They have a great sort of guided prayer that we use in the

evenings as well. But I just want to put that

resource out in front of you today.

Real quick at our upcoming series, as we're laying in the

plane here, these are the weeks that we're going to be looking

at ahead week, next week, we're going to talk about intensifying

our hunger for holiness. We'll talk more about what

silence and solitude is. Talk about the idea of

renunciation. What is that?

OK, And the beauty of that overcoming temptation, choosing

the way of humility. And then we'll be into Holy

Week. But I really, really encourage

you to come back for the next few weeks.

I think God's going to do a transformative work in US.

We're going to have more time of just like slowing down and

interaction and listening to the Spirit as well.

OK, as we close, I just want to ask a question.

What could God do with a little bit of separation from the noise

of the world around us? What is God longing to do in our

spirits? Let's follow Jesus into the

wilderness this Lenten season. Let's slow down.

Let's strip away. Let's deny our comforts.

And choose to allow God to quote, humble, and test you in

order to know what is in your heart.

This season of Lent is an opportunity for us to go from

having our our heads down being burdened by the expectation of

the world around us. And it's an opportunity to allow

God to lift our heads like He did his own children.

Because every single one of us, we worship a God who longs to be

with us. He longs to guide us.

And as Scripture reminds us, he longs to be our people.

That's what's on offer. God loves each and everyone of

you so much and he longs to have a real thriving relationship

with you and that's only available through the cross of

Jesus. And so if you're here today and

you haven't yet accepted Christ as your Savior, if you haven't

yet surrendered and said, you know what?

I'm a, I'm a Sinner. I've made so many mistakes.

I can't right my own wrongs. I need something higher, more

powerful than me. I need Jesus in the power of the

resurrection in my life. That invitation is for for you

today. You can accept that and become a

Christian in a moment, and it's going to take a lifetime of

figuring out what that means and figuring out how to more and

more walk into the way of Jesus. But know this, God loves you

deeply and he wants relationship with you.

So what's on offer is Wilderness or Ramos.

What's on offer is a little bit of separation to have actual

space where we can hear the voice of God.

We can open ourselves up to Him and live into everything that He

has for us, the full freedom and life that He has.

Life to the full. And so, as the world rages and

spins faster and louder, may we choose now to enter the quiet

with our Savior and in the wilderness.

May God test us, refine us, and refresh us.

May we find wisdom in the desert during the season of Lent.