Pastor Chris explores our repeated mistakes and the invitation Lent offers to break free from those cycles. Drawing from Genesis and the story of Abraham and Isaac, we confront the fear-driven choices that keep us stuck and discover how to be reshaped by joy instead.
References
Genesis 26:1-11
1 Once again, a famine spread through the land, similar to the one that occurred in Abraham’s time. Isaac went to the land of Gerar to appeal to King Abimelech of the Philistines. 2 The Eternal appeared in a vision to Isaac.
Eternal One: Don’t go down to Egypt, Isaac. Instead settle in the land I will show you. 3 Live in this land as a foreigner, but don’t worry. I will be there with you. I will put a blessing on you, and I will one day bestow this land on you and your descendants.
You can be assured that I will honor the solemn vow I made to your father, Abraham: 4 I will make your children and their children’s children as numerous as the stars in the sky. One day I will give them all of these lands. Through your descendants all the peoples of the earth will discover true blessing, 5 because Abraham obeyed My voice, stayed loyal to Me, and kept My commands, statutes, and teachings.
6 So Isaac settled into the land of Gerar. 7 When the men of the area asked him about his wife, he was afraid to say, “Rebekah is my wife,” because he thought, “The men here might kill me in order to have her for themselves. She is after all an attractive woman.” So Isaac said instead, “She is my sister.” 8 After they had lived there for a while, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of his window one day and saw Isaac affectionately touching and caressing his wife Rebekah. 9 So Abimelech called Isaac to his court.
Abimelech: I see that she is your wife! Why did you say then, “She is my sister”?
Isaac: Because I thought I might die because of her!
Abimelech: 10 What’s the matter with you? What have you done to us? One of my people might easily have slept with your wife. Then you would have brought great shame and guilt upon me and my kingdom!
11 (warning his people) Whoever so much as touches this man or his wife will be put to death.
“We are always in danger of being co-opted by the very systems we are called to resist."
— Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
“We are all fearful of being exposed. We will do almost anything to avoid the humiliation of having our failures, our addictions, our broken patterns laid bare.”
—- Dan Allender, The Healing Path
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
— James Clear, Atomic Habits
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is united with the Anointed One, that person is a new creation. The old life is gone—and see—a new life has begun!
Matthew 13:31-32
31 Jesus told them another parable.
Jesus: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a sower took and planted in his field. 32 Mustard seeds are minute, tiny—but the seeds grow into trees. Flocks of birds can come and build their nests in the branches.