Set Apart In Christ

Many Christians are familiar with the period of Lent; a period of preparation for the celebration of Easter. This period in the Christian calendar, commencing on Ash Wednesday (this year February 17, 2010), is a reminder of the need for repentance in the Christian life. Fasting from a particular food during this period is commonplace. Traditionally, this is meat and for many Catholics they will also only have one complete meal during the day and two smaller ones at other meal times, with nothing else in between. This is not just a time of repentance and self-denial (it is no mistake that The Salvation Army's Self Denial Appeal occurs at this time of year), but also the opportunity to take stock of our lives and remove that which is unnecessary, in order to learn to live more in complete reliance upon Christ. Recently I got to make a new friend who is a Canadian missionary currently serving in France. He has made a conscious decision to live by faith. He refuses to take a salary ...

"As the children of this world, fired by personal ambition, set themselves career goals and then work very hard to adchieve them, so God's children, fired by the greatness of divine love, should have before their minds the goal of discipline in daily living, and work equally hard, planning, praying, and trying things out, to make it a reality. The alternative is to live like a pilot flying blind--always being taken by surprise and tyrannised by the immediate, the urgent, and the unexpected--experiencing life as a succession of emergencies that one is never ready to meet." J.I. Packer "A Passion for Holiness" (Leicester: Crossway Books, 1992), 115.