Lent

I'm getting in to this habit of posting approximately once a month. It's a terrible habit and I definitely need to fix it. By not having posted something in such a long time, my thoughts get all jumbled up and I don't know how to organize and articulate what I really want to say. Lucky for me, I am frustrated and discouraged enough that my mind hasn't wandered off too much.

Looking back these past few years, I have never really challenged myself with lent until this year. Maybe I have challenged myself in the past, but in comparison to this year, lent is definitely much more difficult. In past years I've given up caffeine, anime/manga, eating past a certain hour and some other things. Thanks to a brother, I challenged myself to add something to my life instead of taking things out of my life during lent. The mentality to this being that by challenging myself to increase my devotional time each day, the extra things in life will naturally be filtered out or eliminate themselves in order to stay disciplined and keep to my lent promise. It's been working great and I am truly loving it. However, two days before lent I was also convicted to give up drinking. By no means do I go crazy and go drinking all the time. What drinking usually entails for me is meeting up with a few friends and close brothers and catching up once a week. We share and blow off some steam and its usually a relaxing time.

I was pretty discouraged by some of my brothers tonight. They were aware of my giving up drinking for lent, and knew my convictions/reasoning behind doing it. Even so, tonight as I got dinner with them and caught up, and the idea of going to the bar was brought up, I decided that I would not go so I would not even be presented with the temptation. Thankfully, I have my best friend keeping me accountable and reminded me that going home was definitely the best idea. However, the thing that really irked me was that my other brothers literally tried to drag me with them. I just found it really discouraging that brothers who know what is going on in your life, consciously decide to tempt, distract, lead you away from your convictions.

Accountability is only as strong as you as a group make it. Please in the spirit of lent and fellowship, if you share what you're doing for lent with a brother or sister, keep them accountable and remind them to stick to their convictions. Don't be that person who is trying to lead someone astray. Were supposed to be sacrificing things during lent to remember what God has done for us, and as I'm finding out, it is really hard to do. Don't make it harder on your brothers and sisters.

1 Corinthians 10:13