Lent thougts.....

Well, while reading Alan Creech's blog I realized that i think God might be wanting me to do something similar with my blog during Lent this year. For lent this year i am giving up a little bit more of my time to devotional time each day. And so I resolved to reading and using a Lent study book as a starting place each day. And I thought i would put my favorite quote from the book here on my blog, so that others will be as blessed as I am, maybe cause a discussion or two, and maybe just maybe get yall to read some of this guys' books...he is one of my heroes!!! The book is:


that is what my book looks like(out of print)..but there is another one that looks to be the same thing...without the Lent aspect to it and it looks like this one:
<---- Click on that picture to order the book @ Amazon.com...but the book details are:

author: Tom Wright
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: BRF (The Bible Reading Fellowship) (November 21, 1997)
ISBN-10: 0745935567
ISBN-13: 978-0745935560
(c) 1997

I hope that is enough info that Tom or the publishers will not mind we quoting him here and there each day (I mean come on..this is free advertising here!!! to all 12 people who read this blog, ha ha ha)...anyway here are a few quotes from the previous days that I was blown away by:

Ash Wed: 2 Cor. 2:14-17
"as God is leading us in Christ through pain, through the valley of the shadow of death, through apparent despair, then somehow, strangely, as we look around, we discover that god is spreading in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him (vv.14-15), and we become the people through whom the sweet smell of God is actually being wafted to and fro." (p. 12)

Thurs: 2 Cor. 3:1-6
"The personal presence and activity of Jesus Christ come to live within them. they become a letter of Christ to the world." (p. 17)

Fri: 2 Cor. 3:7-11
"The glory of Christ is not revealed in spectacular show of success, in people who get everything right all the time. People like that, as we know, can sometimes be a pain in the neck. the church reveals the glory of Christ through suffering and shame as much as through what the world counts as success." (p. 21)

Sun: 2 Cor 3:18
"He (Paul) means liberation from the ministry of death; liberation from the need to pretend; liberation, in fact, to reflect the crucified and risen Christ to one another." (p. 26)

Mon: 2 Cor. 4:1-4
"Just as by the Spirit we, reflect God to one another, so Christ truly reflects the living God into the world."


Tues: 2 Cor. 4:5-6
"If we are to know God in Christ, and if we are tpo be the people that God wants us to be in Christ, we must learn the painful lesson of recognizing the glory of God, the god-ness of God, as we look at Jesus on the way to Calvary, and then finally on the cross itself. And part of this is learning who God is. it does not mean that God has forsaken us. times like these are the moments when we are privileged to be led by the Spirit, as Jesus himself was led by the Spirit, into the wilderness and along the way of the cross, a way illuminated by the knowledge of the glory of God." (p. 33)

Wed: 2 Cor. 4-7-12
"it is when people are actually living out the dying of Jesus that, strangely but surely, the life of Jesus is also then made visible.......

Have you in your body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus might be made visible in your mortal flesh? this is, i suspect, at the hear of the message of Lent. This is, after all, the time when we can rediscover that only when we suffer with Christ will we learn what it means to be glorified with him."

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If you are not blown away or blessed by those quotes...lets talk...over dinner or coffee, and we can read the entire chunk of the text and wrestle with it together!

this time reminds me of my brother's death. Jay died right before Easter Day, and I remember everyone (including me) desired for him to at least make it through to Easter...but that time of year is about joy and not death, it is about resurrection, and hope, but maybe we could never have appreciated the joy that comes from the life Christ gives if we had not suffered in the Glory of God for that time. It is amazing how God teaches me even to this day through the life and death of my brother! Amen!

I pray that this season of lent is one that you can find struggle and peace in the difficult life of glory. for the glory of God is in the death & life of Christ! I will try to put a quote up more often and not make them all hit at once. until next time... may God bless you! may God help you realize when life is not at all what you desire for it to be, that, that might be exactly where he desires for you to be joining Christ, so that you may live with Christ in the perfect timing of God. KUTP's!!!!