I’m currently halfway through a course entitled “Transforming Conversations.” The aim is to equip me to have more effective conversations with people. It’s not talking about those general ‘chatty’ conversations we have with one another, but those times when we need to talk about something specific and make some clear progress: whether that’s about our faith or a practical problem in our lives.
We are encouraged to have structured conversations, that are time-limited and focused. And one of the questions we are encouraged to ask is ‘what do you want to get out of this time we have together?’ In fact, all the way through, the technique involves asking the other person question after question to get them to do the thinking rather than them imagining that I, as a vicar, have all the answers.
So let me try it on you now: what do you want to get out of Lent this year? How do you want your Christian life to be different by the time we get to Easter Day?
Whatever your answer, to see the difference you desire something needs to change. Something will need to be done differently. To keep doing the same thing and expect different results is, as someone once observed, a definition of insanity. So what will it be for you?
Many people, including many non-Christians, give up things for Lent, without having a clear purpose in mind. But that won’t get us anywhere. So can I encourage you over the next few days, to sit down, with your Bible open, and pray that God would show you where you need to change. Why not pray David’s prayer from the end of Psalm 139? Why not set aside 15 minutes a day for the 40 days in Lent to read a portion of Scripture and ask for God to transform you.
Throughout Lent, I’ll be suggesting some things to pray through which I hope will help us all grow in our faith. We’ll focus on the three persons of the Trinity, then on our prayer lives, the Scriptures and our corporate worship. Each week there will be some Bible passages to read and some things to pray about. And my prayer is that Almighty God may do his work in all our hearts over this season of Lent.