2026 Lenten Season - Day 25 - Here's the Struggle

We continue the tradition of 40 days of Lent-related devotionals (46 counting the Sundays).
Sharing "Journey to the Cross" by Paul David Tripp.
***************************************************************************

Lent is not about what you will give of yourself to God, but about what he, in grace, has so bountifully given to you.

The husband had been caught in adultery. It was humiliating for him and devastating to his marriage. He didn’t confess until he was caught. Jerry and his wife came to me for help. They both seemed to want to save their marriage. He spoke words of brokenness to me and seemed to be repentant. Mary was willing to hang in there as long as Jerry was turning from the entanglements of sin and turning toward his Lord and her with new commitments of faith. But as I continued to meet with them, I began to be concerned. Truly repentant people are overwhelmed with the rebelliousness and destructiveness of what they have done, while at the same time, they are blown away by the magnitude and consistency of God’s mercy and grace. They tend to experience the love of God in deeper and fresher ways as they tend to embrace in new ways the truth that they could never do anything to earn that love.

But when I would meet with Jerry, the thing Jerry talked about the most was Jerry. He talked about all the things he was giving up for the Lord, the length and depth of his new devotional life, the Christian books he had purchased, and the new ways he was serving his wife. He kept telling me how he was “all in” for the Lord. The more he told me, and the more he patted himself on the back, the less I believed it. It wasn’t, “God, be merciful to me a sinner,” but rather, “God, look at what I am doing for you.” He had an attitude of the heart that the grief of real confession and the humility of true repentance would never produce. When I began to write this devotional, I thought of Jerry, and here’s why.

The season of Lent is about offering yourself to God in new or deeper ways. It’s about new submission and deeper devotion. Lent is about mourning the ways your heart has wandered. It is about confessing the hold the world still has on you or the places where you have succumbed to temptation’s draw. It is about identifying places in the heart where you need to give yourself more fully to God. There is a necessary self-focus to Lent because you are examining your heart, your life, your relationships, and your daily decisions to see where God is calling you to give up something or to take up something in devotion to him. Lent is about willing self-sacrifice as you pursue the one who made the ultimate sacrifice for you. Lent isn’t a formal season of temporary sacrificial devotion, but rather an opportunity to address things in your life that need to be addressed but that often get lost in the busyness and distraction of everything else you’re doing. But here’s what is so important to understand about Lent: it is not about what you are doing or are committing yourself to do for God, but about what he has done and is now doing for you.

The story of Lent is the world’s most important and most wonderful generosity story. Lent is about one who not only lavishly gives what is desperately needed, but who also offers himself as the ultimate gift.  But the story of Lent is not just about generosity; it is the one story where the giver and the gift are the same person. The hope and security of Lent is not to be found in the size and consistency of what you give to God; it is about the stunning gifts of grace he has given and will continue to give you. It is God’s generosity that is primary and transformative, not ours. We love because he first loved us. We give because he first gave to us. We lay down our lives because he first laid down his. We are willing to suffer for his sake because he first suffered for us. We obey because in his obedience we are given hope. We fight temptation because he fought it and defeated it on our behalf. We are willing to humble ourselves and serve because he left the splendor of eternity, humbled himself, and served up to - and through - the point of death. Everything we ever give of ourselves happens only because of the primacy of his gifts to us. He is the ultimate giver. No matter how great our sacrifices or how much we give, we will never give to him the magnitude of what he has given us. As we seek to give ourselves more fully during Lent, every gift we give is a celebration of the transformative storehouse of what he has given us. Lent is all about sacrifice: his, not ours.

Pride in the sacrifices you are making not only crushes the spirit of this wonderful season of spiritual reflection and growth, but it also quenches the work that the Holy Spirit would do in your heart as you open it up to him. Pride doesn’t mix well with the grief over sin that propels confession. Pride doesn’t sit well with the humility that fuels true repentance. A self-congratulatory attitude turns sacrifice into a reason to convince yourself that you’re pretty righteous after all, and righteous people don’t need the divine sacrifice that this season is all about. Pride flips the Lenten season on its head.

Now, here’s the struggle. Whenever you focus on yourself, even in examination and confession, pride lurks right around the corner. It is so tempting to take credit for desires, choices, and actions that you would never have taken if you had not been rescued and changed by God’s grace. If pride is self-congratulatory, then it is also self-reliant. But the whole message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that you and I were not created to be self-reliant, and in our struggle with sin, we have no ability on our own to defeat what needs to be defeated. This is why the sacrifice of Christ was essential. He came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, even in our deepest moments of sacrifice and devotion.

So in this season of new and deeper sacrifice and devotion, resist the temptation of turning the tables.  That is, don’t make the lavish gifts of another become about what you give. You can’t stand at the foot of the cross and consider the magnitude of what was done there and hold onto the pride of personal sacrifice. Pray for grace to make every sacrifice, every gift given, a celebration of both the ultimate gift and the most generous giver.

GOING DEEPER

Reflection Questions

1. Jerry’s story illustrates an important test for genuine repentance. Would you pass the test? Is your repentance more about what you have done or what God has done?

2. In what ways does Lent often lead to pride?

3. What are some practical ways to guard yourself against the tendency for the Lenten season—and spiritual disciplines any time of the year—to become a source of pride?

Read James 4:6–10, and let it lead you to genuine sorrow over your sin.

6 And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
7 So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. 9 Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

2026 Lenten Season - Day 22 - The Love and Grace of Warnings

We continue the tradition of 40 days of Lent-related devotionals (46 counting the Sundays).
Sharing "Journey to the Cross" by Paul David Tripp.
***************************************************************************

On this side of eternity, it is easy to love the gift more than the giver.

Parents instinctively know that issuing warnings is an important part of true love. Parents who love their children spend a lot of time over the years warning them. From the early warnings about things that are hot, sharp, dirty, or poisonous, to the later warnings about the temptations of a fallen world, one of the ways that parents regularly express love for their children is by warning them of the dangers ahead. I have two granddaughters, and when I am with them, I find myself doing this all the time. Sometimes those warnings are attached to the rules that children have been taught and asked to obey. These warnings carry with them the threat of consequences or judgment. But warnings are not the same as judgment. If all I wanted to do was judge you, I wouldn’t warn you. I warn you because I love you, and I don’t want you to have to experience the consequences of your disobedience. When you are warned, you are being loved. To be warned is to receive grace.

Scripture warns us about a subtle kind of idolatry that masquerades as the worship of God but is really driven by the love of things. The war between worship of God and worship of things is not always as apparent to us as we think.

A seminary professor of mine told of a moment in his church when his brothers and sisters were enjoying a time of public praise. One woman stood up and shared how she had been facing bills that she could not pay, that she had prayed, and that God had supplied the money necessary to pay them all. Then she said, “I am just so thankful to God for his faithfulness.” It seems that everything was right in this moment of praise, except my professor kept thinking, “What if he hadn’t?" What if God, for his eternal glory and her spiritual good, had allowed her to face the stress of the even greater financial consequences of those bills being unpaid? Would she have still stood up and thanked God for his faithfulness?

Now, it may seem like a judgmental way of hearing this woman’s gratitude, but the professor’s observation points us to how subtle and deceptive the war for our hearts can be. Could it be that we are most excited about God’s presence in our lives when he has met a physical need or delivered to us something that we want? Could it be that there are ways in which God has been reduced from the one that we love to the deliverer of the thing that we love? Could it be that love of the world masquerades in our hearts as the worship of God? After we get what we want and we thank God for it, we think we are worshiping him, but perhaps, in reality, what has captured our hearts is not God but the thing.

The world around us is filled with sight, sound, touch, and taste attractions. We also find delights that are not physical, like affection, success, position, respect, power, and control. All of these created things, both material and immaterial, appear to give us life. They seem to have the power to produce joy and satisfaction or, when absent, sadness and discontent. So it is quite tempting to reach for them,  hoping they will do for us what they were never intended to do. It is tempting for all of us to look around and say, “If only I had _____ then my life would be ______.” Whatever sits on the other side of your “if only” is the thing you are living for at that moment and the thing that you think will give you the peace of life that you think is missing. Consider these heart-revealing questions.

When does God excite me most?
When do I shout the loudest, “God loves me!”?
When am I most thankful that I am one of God’s children and the object of his fathering care?
When does my relationship with God provide me the most joy?
What does God need to do for me in order for me to be content?
When do I tend to question God’s love?
When do I struggle the most to believe that God is faithful?
When am I tempted to envy others or to think God has favorites?
When does my praise of the Lord feel empty?
What causes me to feel that my prayers go unheard?
What would God have to do to produce real joy in me?

I don’t know about you, but I find these questions to be uncomfortable and revealing. I don’t think of myself as one who loves the gift more than the giver, but perhaps there are ways in which I do. Do I really believe that God is good, does what is good, and gives what is good to all his children all the time? Is it really true of me that because of the joy and satisfaction of knowing him and being loved by him, I am able to live with plenty or live with want? Does the withholding of what seems good cause me to question if he is good? Can I stand next to someone who has what I think I need and still love my Lord and rest in his love for me? Are there things that I have set my heart on, the absence of which will cause my faith to waver and my praise to be silenced? Where does my heart still live under the rulership of the gift rather than the righteous and loving rule of the giver?

During this season when you are letting go of the things of the world, confessing areas of sin and weakness, and running to your Savior for rescue and help, perhaps you should also confess one of the subtlest forms of idolatry. Perhaps it would be good to confess that what appears as worship may not be worship at all. It may be worship of the thing that reduces God to the delivery system for what your heart really craves. And remember, God sent his Son not only to forgive our sins, but also to liberate our hearts from the bondage to anything but him. He is not shocked or disgusted by your struggle. He will turn not away from you, but toward you with love and grace.

So today, hear this loving warning. Could it be that the confession of ongoing struggles of idolatry, no matter how subtle, is the first step toward a heart that is consumed by the worship of God alone?

GOING DEEPER
Reflection Questions

1. When have you found yourself closest to God? When have you been tempted to love him for the gifts he has given rather than for himself?

2. How can you grow in satisfaction in God himself while still being thankful for the gifts he gives?

3. What do you need to confess as an area where “what appears as worship may not be worship at all”?

Read Psalm 50:8–15, and hear God’s heart of love that longs for relationship, not empty sacrifice.

Psalm 50:8–15

I have no complaint about your sacrifices or the burnt offerings you constantly offer. But I do not need the bulls from your barns or the goats from your pens. For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird on the mountains, and all the animals of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for all the world is mine and everything in it. Do I eat the meat of bulls? Do I drink the blood of goats? 

Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God, and keep the vows you made to the Most High. Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory.