Tag: fasting

Embracing Lent: A Guide to Spiritual Renewal

Lent, running from Ash Wednesday to Easter, involves fasting and giving up pleasures. Protestants, once skeptical, now embrace Lent. Scott Hubbard advocates embracing it as a path to refocus and encounter Jesus. Resources are recommended, including a devotional by Alicia Britt Chole. Lent is seen as an opportunity for spiritual growth and reflection.

updated March 5, 2025

Lent is the season of the Christian church year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. It is preceded by Fat Tuesday, better known as Mardi Gras.

To observe Lent some people commit to fasting from certain foods or drinks or giving up certain pleasurable activities or habits during the 40 days before Easter.

Some people choose to do something, like performing a service to others, doing a meditative or spiritual activity, or some repetitive action to remind them of the season.

In this article, Scott Hubbard explains how Protestants first rejected, but now embrace Lent and offers resources on observing Lent in a new way.

HOW TO PREPARE AHEAD FOR EASTER

Consider the days ahead as an opportunity — as one more path you might walk to focus your scattered attention, warm your heart’s affections, and meet the risen Jesus afresh.

Scott Hubbard
Hans Urs von Balthasar, (1905-1988), Swiss Roman Catholic theologian and author
to the cross that the christian is challenged to follow his master. quote Hans Urs Von Balthasar
graphic from Lightstock.com, an affiliate link

40 Days of Decrease: A Different Kind of Hunger. A Different Kind of Fast.

by Alicia Britt Chole

What if you fasted regret? What if your friends fasted comparison? What if your generation fasted escapism? What if your community fasted spectatorship? Trigger a spiritual revolution with this daily devotional for Lent.

Decrease life’s unnecessary details and increase your relationship with the Lord so you can live in awe of Christ’s resurrection! 

40 Days of Decrease is a guide for those hungering for a fresh Lenten/Easter experience. Dr. Alicia Britt Chole guides you through a study of Jesus’ uncommon and uncomfortable call to abandon the world’s illusions, embrace His kingdom’s realities, and journey cross-ward and beyond.

I have used this devotional from Alicia Britt Chole. Using this affiliate link to the paperback or Kindle versions helps support this blog, thanks for considering.

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Dwell for Lent

The trumpet of fasting and repentance is always for our healing and restoration, never a deepening of wounds. (Joel 2:13)

Dwell daily devotional for Lent, March 5, 2025

Many people find using their phones a convenient way to read and meditate on the Bible. And it’s easy to do so with the Dwell Bible App. With Dwell you can listen to and read the Bible and special devotional offerings for Advent, Lent, and throughout the year.

Using this affiliate link helps support this blog and my mission to share the heart of health wherever needed all over the world. Please join me.

Beyond fasting

If we want to make the most of this annual opportunity (Lent), we’ll do more than just give something up.

We’ll silence ourselves before the Sovereign who became a servant. We’ll fasten our eyes upon him as he teaches and heals and smiles and weeps — the only upright man in a world of cracked and curved impostors

Scott Hubbard

Fasting and caring in Zanzibar

What is true fasting? Maybe not what you think.

 
 
“Fasting, abstinence from food or drink or both for health, ritualistic, religious, or ethical purposes.
 
The abstention may be complete or partial, lengthy, of short duration, or intermittent.
 
Fasting has been promoted and practiced from antiquity worldwide
by physicians,
by the founders and followers of many religions,
by culturally designated individuals (e.g., hunters or candidates for initiation rites), and by individuals or groups as an expression of protest against what they believe are violations of social, ethical, or political principles.”
 
Brittanica.com 
 
 
 
 
 
Isaiah 58 , HCSB
 
True Fasting
 
“Why have we fasted, but You have not seen?
We have denied ourselves, but You haven’t noticed! ”
 
“Look, you do as you please on the day of your fast,
and oppress all your workers.
You fast with contention and strife to strike viciously with your fist.
You cannot fast as you do today,
hoping to make your voice heard on high.
 
Will the fast I choose be like this:
 
A day for a person to deny himself,
to bow his head like a reed,
and to spread out sackcloth and ashes?
 
Will you call this a fast
and a day acceptable to the Lord?
 
Isn’t the fast I choose:
 
To break the chains of wickedness,
to untie the ropes of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free,
and to tear off every yoke?
 
 
group of people sitting under a tree
relief outreach by CHaRA
 
 
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
to bring the poor and homeless into your house,
to clothe the naked when you see him,
and not to ignore your own flesh and blood?
 
 
nurse with boy giving shoes
nurse distributing new shoes to children
 
 © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.
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CHaRA Cares in Zanzibar

photos by Dr. Aletha during a volunteer trip to Zanzibar to assist CHaRA with their humanitarian work

 

 

Fasting for the body and the soul

Observed by Catholic , Orthodox, and Protestant Christians, (although the dates may differ) Lent is a time of spiritual reflection, contemplation, renewal, and commitment.

 

Exploring the HEART of faith, hope, and love

Dr. Aletha
FAITH LOVE HOPE
These three remain, faith, hope and love, and greatest of these is love.  
1 Corinthians 13:13                          
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