Transcript: Week Two of Lent: What Does God Think of You?

Introduction

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Welcome back to the second week of Lent. And as we find ourselves in the second week of Lent, I want to start with some words of encouragement for us today. For some of us we came charging out of Ash Wednesday with great expectations and great hopes of what Lent was going to be like, and maybe life just got busy. And if that’s where you are, if life got busy, if things got in the way, and you haven’t had the entrance into the early days of Lent that you wanted, I just want to encourage you to maybe start all over again today, Nobody’s keeping score God’s not keeping score, he just wants you in your heart and if you need to just start over again today how about we just start over and let the Lord guide you in the next week of Lent

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For some of us, as you have been faithful to prayer, maybe it hasn’t met your expectations. Maybe they have distractions have been a part of your prayer maybe things have been a little dry and the encouragement for you would be maybe just to kind of start all over again also right? Distractions and dryness that’s a part of life that’s a part of our relationship with God, and you’re not doing anything wrong there’s no judgment on you; it’s just a kind of part of life, and maybe today, just take a deep breath and just ask God for help, and just trust it he’s gonna be there with you.

For some of us into the second week of Lent maybe things are happening maybe you are looking inside your heart and finding lots of things there and maybe that can be encouragement for you also. I know for me I am my own worst critic. I can be real harsh on myself. I have expectations of how life is supposed to be now. How I was supposed to be living in the past, and sometimes when I come face-to-face with the things in my own life I can look at my life and my relationship with God with some real lofty expectations and it might be a word of encouragement for us to know that God doesn’t look at ourselves the way that we look at ourselves. When he’s writing about love, Pope Benedict the Sixteenth wrote in his eighteenth paragraph this beautiful invitation for us to love as he says even the person who we do not like or even know, and he says looking with the eyes of Christ I can give them the look of love they crave, in other words he connects the way that we see people with the way that we love people. And if that’s true with others, the way that we see others, is important then the way that we see ourselves or the way that we allow God to show us how he sees us is really important if we’re gonna be able to taste his love in our lives. God doesn’t look at us the way that we look at us. God looks at us through the eyes of Mercy. God looks at us through the eyes of love. God looks at us through the eyes of compassion. And just know that when we are looking at the things in our hearts, when we’re looking at the tough stuff of life and we might be overly critical God doesn’t look at us that way he looks at us the way that he looks at all of his sons and his daughters.

And also, be encouraged that God is never surprised. You know, sometimes, when we look at our hearts and we we discover things that are a part of our history or things that pop up, we can be surprised that those things are there, and we can worry about that. Let me tell you a story about the seminary. I was closer to ordination and I was coming face to face inside my heart with some control issues. And I began to worry about whether God was still calling me to ordination. I wasn’t expecting to find some things in my heart that I was discovering, and with great wisdom, I remember my spiritual director reminding me that God has never surprised me. As I was coming face to face with this issue, he reminded me that God wasn’t seeing it for the first time it’s not like God called me to the seminary shortly after college, and all of a sudden, this issue popped up close to ordination, and God was saying to himself, Oh, I never saw that coming right I’m surprised that that’s there. God’s never surprised. in fact, God was waiting for me to share that issue with him. God was waiting for me to give him access to that spot in my heart. and you might come face-to-face with some things in your life this Lent that you might be surprised by, but God’s not surprised. In fact, for many of us, God may have just been waiting for permission to be with us in those places of our hearts, and that is where we’re going to see the transformation in our lives.

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So be encouraged, don’t be afraid; in fact, here’s the good news for us in the second week of Lent. God is who he says he is. And in the gospel for the second Sunday of Lent, we see the transfiguration, and what we see there is Jesus confirming his identity as the Son of God. The Transfiguration is this beautiful story about how Jesus is revealing to us that he is who he says he is. He’s the savior of the world; he is the son of God. Jesus Christ is mercy, love, and compassion in the flesh, and that is what we’re gonna discover when we go inside our hearts. The good news for us in the second week of Lent, is that Jesus is who he says he is and that’s really good news for every one of us at every season of our life, especially this Lent when we need God inside our hearts to be mercy and compassion. This week, wherever you find yourself on their journey and whatever you find inside your heart, be not afraid. Jesus is who he says he is, and he’s only looking at us with the eyes of Love. God bless you.

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