Lent. For the seven weeks leading up to Resurrection Sunday, we practice sober awareness of our frailty, sins and smallness. It starts on Ash Wednesday when those ashes are traced on our foreheads in the shape of the cross, a tactile reminder of our origins in the dust. From there we come, and to there we will go.

You want to really live, the kind of living that drains the marrow from every day? Then start by facing your death, your weakness, your smallness. We spend seven weeks facing our death and despair and doubt, entering into it with the fullness of our being—heart, mind, emotions—we leave nothing behind.

We do this for a number of reasons, chief among them the simple truth that Sunday comes after Friday. Only when you’ve gotten through, not around “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are you ready to throw the only kind of Resurrection party worthy of the occasion—that Sunday when we run huffing and puffing from the open tomb, beating our pots and pans in that clanging raucous outburst that begins with those three resounding words: “He is risen.”

That day when all the amps are turned up to “11.”                 –Rob Bell

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others. – Elisabeth Elliot

The aim of Ash Wednesday worship is threefold:
— to meditate on our mortality, sinfulness, and need of a savior;
— to renew our commitment to daily repentance in the Lenten season and in all of life; and
— to remember with confidence and gratitude that Christ has conquered death and sin.                            –The Worship Sourcebook

 

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.                  –Joel 2:12-13 ESV

6:00am & 6:00pm in the Sanctuary tomorrow,         Ash Wednesday 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From a brief article by UF grad Freddy Harrell

We too easily forget our Maker and Redeemer; replacing God with things and ambition. Lent is the season that does something about this situation. It calls us back to God, back to the basics, back to the spiritual realities of life. It calls us to put to death the sin and the indifference we have in our hearts toward God and our fellow persons. And it beckons us to enter once again into the joy of the Lord–the joy of a new life born out of a death to the old life. That is what Ash Wednesday is all about–the fundamental change of life required of those who would die with Jesus and be raised to a new life in him.

Join us Wednesday, February 13th at 6AM or 6PM*

The truth about ourselves awaits, and a reminder that God in his great love for us, promises new life in the midst of the old, new birth in the midst of the old, new creation in the midst of the old.

*A light meal will be served after the evening service.

The covenant of works refers to the covenant that God made with Adam and Eve in their pristine purity before the fall, in which God promised them blessedness contingent upon their obedience to His command. After the fall, the fact that God continued to promise redemption to creatures who had violated the covenant of works, that ongoing promise of redemption is defined as the covenant of grace.

From this article by RC Sproul

Leighton Anthony Hernandez
Born to Tony & Jen 2/9 @ 4:44p.
7pds, 2oz, 20″

RUF was out and about to serve the church today. Here Are some young ladies who helped Arlene and Ronnie Neder. Then a great text from the middle school retreat.