Lent – Day 3

An IV Drip for the Soul

To begin your journey through the Lenten season (and every Saturday during this study), you will learn about common spiritual disciplines that many followers of Jesus practice during Lent.

Today you will learn about embracing Scripture and prayer.

These disciplines are valuable tools to draw near to God when they come from a heart seeking to do just that — rather than a heart which hopes to justify itself through these works or simply check a box on its Lent

“to-do” list. We hope these insights will encourage you and help connect you to the Father throughout these 40 days.

The chemotherapy room is a subdued place. Patients quietly bide their time as the drugs they hope will kill their disease slowly drip into their bodies. It’s quiet, somber, yet eerily peaceful. Loved ones accompany most patients, as I did with my cancer-stricken mother, offering encouragement, conversation and even occasional bursts of laughter.

Cancer doesn’t infect from the outside in, like a virus. It’s a corruption at the cellular level — one’s own cells mutate into malformed, sick versions of themselves that replicate, filling the body with disease. When my mother’s cancer was discovered, a tumor the size of a cantaloupe had already grown.

In this way, cancer is like sin. You don’t “catch” sin like you catch a cold; it’s corruption at your cellular level. You’re born with it, like many cancer patients are born with the genes that eventually cause cancer to develop.

When you place your faith in Jesus, He takes the cancer of your sin upon Himself. At the cross, the penalty for sin is paid, and its power to destroy you is neutralized. But there is a still-to-come element in Jesus’ work; while you remain here, in a still-corrupted body, the effects of the cancer’s presence linger.

Hebrews 4:12 describes the word of God in almost medical terms. Scripture is like a surgical instrument or incredibly effective chemotherapy, targeting precisely the infected area it needs to reach. Time spent reading and meditating on Scripture is like time in the chemotherapy room: peaceful, often quiet, perhaps somber, yet sometimes filled with joy.

Most importantly, present with you in your spiritual treatment room is the greatest loved one of all, Jesus, the Word made flesh, who fully cures your disease. He administers through His Word the targeted chemotherapy you still need.

Drip by drip, healing, transformation and life flow into your thirsty soul.

Pray.

“Jesus, thank You for taking away my sin and forgiving me through Your death and resurrection. Thank You for the promise that, one day, I’ll experience that freedom from sin in full. Give me the desire to draw near to You through Your Word, and help me to be patient as You use it as chemotherapy to kill the remaining sin that I know and feel is still present. Amen.”

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

Written by Jason Weimer who serves as the Associate Publisher for Cru Press.