Wednesday Lenten Worship Series
Meeting in the Wilderness | Luke 4:1-14
Life is full of deception, most notably the self-deception of our streaming consciousness. Through our minds, all day long, run untrue thoughts about ourselves, others, and the circumstances in our lives. There are voices that haunt; perhaps from past trauma, perhaps from someone who instilled them in our heads, perhaps from our own meandering inclinations.
In his classic writing, “The Screwtape Letters,” Christian apologist and theologian, C.S. Lewis, captures something of the inevitable deception in our own thought processes. One he titles, “undulation,” the way in which the human mind inevitably finds itself into the ups and downs of euphoria and distress, no matter the stability of circumstance, we are inclined to fall into patterns of upheaval, succumbing to the undulating nature of discontent and content.
Sometimes we just need to sort through the wheat and the chaff in our thinking!
This season of Lent affords us such an opportunity. Call it the spring cleaning of your soul, the sweeping aside of that which deceives, the renunciation of voices not God’s; that haunt, inhibit, and keep you from living fully.
And so, we will embark on this 40 day journey to Holy Week and Easter. Along the way with Jesus, we will confront the deceptions with the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting God to lead us out!
Wednesday Worship Lenten Series | Schedule
Ash Wednesday, March 6 | Humility Grounded in Mortality
We mark our foreheads with ashes of our mortality, reminding us that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.” This is an opportunity to see death, as the window into how we shall live, calling us to “return to the Lord, our God.”
March 13-Lent 1 | The Voice of Our Hunger?
Sometimes we attempt to feed our soul’s hunger with food. We live to eat, instead of eating to live. During this week in worship, we will explore our relationship to food, renouncing the voice of self-defeat, and embracing God’s voice of nourishment for body, mind, and spirit.
At 7:00pm Vespers, Annika Henry, NLC member, will share her journey with an eating disorder. In the wilderness of her suffering, Jesus met her with grace and love to set her free.
March 20-Lent 2 | The Voice of Wealth and Possessions
We have instilled great value in having much. We live comparatively, especially with those who have more. And yet, Jesus teaches us something different, that money is not security, but utility, to be used for the good of those we care for, and those who need our generosity.
Lowell Stortz, NLC member, will reflect with us on the voice of wealth and possessions; the risks, the pitfalls, and the possibilities it brings.
March 27-Lent 3 | The Voices that Haunt
Coming out of traumatic experiences, we bear the voices of the past that seek to keep us imprisoned in the suffering of our own minds. Jesus comes to break down those voices, and to set us free.
Edith Hudson, NLC member, will open our hearts to the transforming voice of Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit, giving her the faith to renounce the voices from the past. She truly gives witness to what God can do when God meets us in the wilderness of our lives.
April 3-Lent 4 | The Voice of Addiction
Addiction is a disease by which our minds become captive to a substance, a behavior, a self-destructive pattern of life. God, the higher power, intervenes to reclaim our souls for good, turning us back to God with the fervor of faith.
Keith Narr, NLC member, and addiction counselor, shares his journey with alcoholism and how God met him in the depth of his wilderness, bringing him home to a new way of life, defeating the voices of deception, and speaking grace and love into his heart.
April 10-Lent 5 | Temptation to Hide
Just as Jesus was tempted numerous times by Satan in the wilderness in Luke 4 vs. 1-13, there are times in our very own lives where the voices that haunt us, or take us off course, are sent away by the voice of God’s grace upon us.
Tim Beekmann and Patrick Durkin had moments in their lives when certain “voices” told them to hide who they were and meant to be. However, through their strong faith in God, and unconditional love and support from their families and friends they pushed those other “voices” away and became true to themselves. As part of our 7:00pm Lenten Worship on Wednesday, April 10th, Tim and Patrick will share their personal coming out stories and highlight what led to their chance encounter in 1998, Commitment Ceremony in 2002, and most recent legal marriage 20 years later celebrated on October 19, 2019.