To many people Ash Wednesday has significant meaning, it stirs the conscience and causes us to reflect on bad habits and sin. Ash Wednesday introduce the final (40) forty days before Jesus went to the cross. This period is known as a period of passion, when the sins of the entire world was placed upon him physically, mentally and spiritually. Realizing the seriousness of this period, many of us have decided to quit consumption of alcohol, the consumption of tobacco, abstaining from sex and meat consumption. While there are others who try to live morally upright during this period. Let’s take a look at the scripture in 2 Peter 2:24-25 “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed.
For ye were as sheep gone astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishops of our souls”.
(Now we see that while giving up things and abstaining from behaviors are good, ultimately it is Jesus who absorbed our sins in his body changed things. We are also told from this passage, that as a result of him bearing our sins in his body we are now returned to him, who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. The word also tells us that “all we like sheep have gone astray but, the Lord laid on him, the iniquity of us all.”
So, while we are observing Lent in this way, let us remember that righteousness is the way to victory, says the preacher)
No matter what we give up during Lent, cannot be compared to Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness. He was tested to the limit and came forth filled with the Holy Spirit, which launched His Ministry. For me, to give up more of self, pray more, more of the Word and Worship to be filled with The Spirit and the fruit thereof. He must increase, while I decrease, in other words to die to self.