ST NICOLAS, NEWBURY
LENT REFLECTIONS WEEK 1
JESUS TEACHES ABOUT SELF-DENIAL
1. Think of some of the adverts you have seen in the last few days. How many of them have tried to persuade you to take life more easily or treat yourself in some way? To what extent does this sort of thing work on you?
2. 'Come to Jesus and all your problems will disappear' is an approach which is sometimes used in communicating the Christian Faith. What do you think?
3. Here's what Jesus says in Luke 9:23-25: '...If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?'
4. What comes into your mind when you think about self-denial?
5. What does 'taking up the cross' mean in practice for us today?
6. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once put it like this: 'When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die'. What does this mean?
7. Here's one way of thinking about this issue drawn from something the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 2:20: 'I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' What light does this shed on the meaning of self-denial?
8. How does what Jesus says in Luke 9:24-25 help? 'For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?'
9. The missionary Jim Elliot, killed by the Auca Indians in Ecuador while he was seeking to bring the gospel to them, was once challenged about the foolishness of his decision to abandon his career and go instead and be a missionary. His response? 'He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose'. What can't you lose? What can't you keep?
David Stone
10 February 2005