Lent is a journey. Lent gives us space and time to pause, reflect and enter more intentionally into the habits of prayer, self examination and repentance (turning back to the King and His Kingdom). These disciplines or habits are not the main things but they help us return to God with all our hearts.
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This Lent season we invite you into the journey and each week we will give you some questions to help you. Below you will also find a guide of selected bible passage to help you to discover the story which restores humanity...

Each Tuesday we will be meeting to pray in person at Studio 3, 54 Grafton St, Coventry, CV1 2HW from 7pm until 8pm. Join us to pray for our church,  one another, for our city and for Ukraine. Contact Nick Sutton for further details.

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Week 5: (30th March - 5th April)

DAY 29 - GOSPEL  Luke 4:13-44
DAY 30 - TRUTH John 8:31-47
​DAY 31 - GRACE John 1:14-18
DAY 32 - PARABLES Matthew 13:1-23 
DAY 33 -IDENTITY Mark 8:27-30
DAY 34- LIBERATION Matthew 11:1-6
DAY 35 - APPRENTICES Luke 9:1-6, 10:1-3​

1. Do you know the gospel?  Do you know the message you carry?  The Good News that God himself, the creator has come to rescue us from sin and renew all things in and through the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, and to establish his kingdom in the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. Today, How will you put the grace of God to work (into effect)? These seems contradictory but everything we do in and for the Kingdom comes from a place of grace. Remember grace is opposed to earning not effort. See 1 Corinthians 15:9-11. 
   
3. How will you respond with grace to those who do not ‘deserve’ grace? How will you live in light of the ‘undeserved’ grace God has shown you?

• Jesus was clear about his Message and his Mission. He came preaching that the Kingdom of God was near, that there was a new way to be the people of God. The good news of the kingdom was the only gospel Jesus preached and it was the only message he taught his disciples to proclaim. What message are we proclaiming? A message about the Kingdom (or about Jesus) that sounds like bad news is not the gospel of Jesus. 
  Our friend, Simon Ponsonby wrote a letter to the UK Church, in it he points out that, “We have a gospel. We have the breath-taking, heart-racing, life-changing, epic story of God who loves us and has come for us. This story of stories presents God in Christ entering the world to rewrite our fractured story, to rescue the drowning, to find the lost, to free the bound, to comfort the broken, to restore the fallen, to enlighten the confused, to create community, to transform society, to recreate creation. Without it we are doomed, we are damned. Death and life and heaven and hell are at stake here.”
  This is the story we live in. This is the adventure we are living out. This is the Gospel message and mission we have been called to participate in. By saying “yes” to following Jesus you have ‘signed up’ for the exact same mission: communicating the works and words that enact and explain the Kingdom of God.​
• Jesus loved using parables. Mark tells us that, “He did not say anything to them without using a parable.” (Mark 4:34) He was never without a story when he spoke. Metaphor was his main teaching method. Why did he use them?
  Challenge: The parables challenge the listener to make a decision. What is the message of Jesus for? It’s not to be filled up with knowledge it’s for living. The parables do not hide or obscure the message of Jesus. They drive the point home. Jesus wants his hearers to become genuine disciples and put his message into practice. They were not to go hey nice story, tell us another. They were to go away and think and wrestle with what had been said and apply it to their lives and the lives of others.
  Invite: Why do you speak in parables? Why are you doing this? It’s hard work. Give us a list. Make a powerpoint with bullet points. Give us a formula. Make it easy for us. If it’s easy it’s shallow. Hidden truths invite people to enter the depths of the story. You can paddle in the shallows and hear a story about soil and rocks and birds and weeds of you can take a breath a plunge into the depths of what this story say about the human heart. The parables invite the hearer into relationship. Parables invite the hearer to ask questions and enter into dialogue. Conversation.
  Change: Don’t just listen with you ears, listen with your heart. Make a decision. Choose life. Don’t walk away without applying this. Go deeper. Discover the meaning for yourselves. Don’t be spoon fed. Chew on it, savour the taste. Allow it to change you. Parables are not about information but about transformation. They change our hearts. They invite you into a relationship and into a life that is changed. They help shape the heart that is willing to change. They invite the person into a relationship, to look both inwards and outwards.
  “Parables entertain us at the front door while the truth slips in through a side window and sandbags us from behind.”  -Adrian Plass​​

• ​​Who do you say Jesus is? Does the identity of Jesus affect how you live your life? Does his life and death, His crucifixion and resurrection impact who you are? Does his identity in some way affect your identity? Do you identify with him?
• Today, How will your identity be influenced by His identity? Read Colossians 3:1-4. What does this say about your identity in Jesus? What difference does this make to you?
• “The Christian community is both a sign and a promise of God’s coming liberation. We are the presence of God’s liberating kingdom in a broken world. We are the place where liberation can be found, offering a home for exiled people. We are to welcome the broken people to a community of broken people. We are the community among whom liberation is a present reality – the jubilee people who live with new economic and social relationships. We are the light of the world, a city on a hill. The challenge for us is to articulate Jesus’ message of a liberation in a way that connects with people’s experience and offers a place of liberation in the Christian community.” -Tim Chester, Good News to the Poor, 97.
• Jesus made disciples. Disciples are really apprentices. learning from the Master how to do what they do and become like what they are. Check out the following from Dallas Willard, “Being a disciple or apprentice of Jesus is a definite and obvious kind of thing. To make a mystery of it is to misunderstand it. There is no good reason why people should ever be in doubt as to whether they themselves are his students or not… to be a disciple in any area or relationship is not to be perfect. One can be a very raw and incompetent beginner and still be a disciple... How does this apply to discipleship to Jesus? What is it, exactly, that he, the incarnate Lord, does? What, if you wish, is he “good at”? The answer is found in the Gospels: he lives in the kingdom of God, and he applies that kingdom for the good of others and even makes it possible for them to enter it themselves. The deeper theological truths about his person and his work do not detract from this simple point. It is what he calls us to by saying, “Follow me.”” 
• Have you heard the call to follow?The call to follow is a call to go. to be sent out into the world as an Apprentice of Jesus to do what he does to become more like him. To “learn from Jesus to live my life as he would live life if he were I.” To do things as he would do them. Today where have you been sent? How will you proclaim the Kingdom of God? ​

“A disciple or apprentice, then, is simply someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.” -Dallas Willard

Week 4: (23rd - 29th March)

DAY 22 - CAPTIVITY Daniel 9:1-19
DAY 23 - DESPAIR Ezekiel 6:1-14
DAY 24 - HOPE Isaiah 9:1-7
DAY 25 - MESSIAH Isaiah 53:1-12 
DAY 26 - EMMANUEL Matthew 1:18-24
DAY 27 - KINGDOM Matthew 4:12-17
DAY 28 - FULFILLMENT Matthew 5:17-20

1. How do you live out your allegiance and obedience to your Lord and King in the day to day, comings and goings of life?
2. In your life where have you experienced disaster? How did you respond? It may be that you are living in that place now and feel that God’s presence has left you. Know that He is there with you in the midst of despair, in your place of suffering. ​
3. Today, know that God is with you, His Presence, His Holy Spirit is near. Jesus told his followers that he would never leave them, therefore wherever you are, he is. And wherever you are, His Kingdom is near. How does that change the way you think about your day today?​

• Daniel took responsibility for the sins and rebellion of his people, he includes himself in his confession. When you see the state of your city or your country, how do you pray? Where do you start?  The people would be in captivity for 70 years. It is nearly ‘hometime’. The people would return to the land. In the suffering and persecution one thing was still clear, God’s rule and reign would not diminish. 
• The prophets do not hold back with their language. For Ezekiel, he excels in communicating the despair of the people who have lost their homeland. Ezekiel saw through the denial and despair and saw that somehow, incredibly, God was at work in the midst of the catastrophe. Those in denial refused to believe that God would allow bad things to happen to them. Those in despair, were overwhelmed by events and refused to see that life was worth living.
• In the rubble, God was at work. What Ezekiel saw was that God was at work, using the disaster to create a new people of God. A people that would keep their identity as “The people of God”. The people of God had lost their place, the land God had given them, and they had lost the presence of God, as His glory left the temple. Ezekiel sees all this. He sees the doom and destruction, the devastation and disaster. But there was hope… God promised to one day renew his presence amongst his people.
• Isaiah saw the hope of Jesus in the day to day reality of the exile. Where do you see signs of hope? Today, where things seem hopeless, pray to the God of hope, that His Kingdom would come, His Will be done in your life, on earth as it is in heaven. Today, Pray, “Lord, your Kingdom come, Your Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”. What signs of the kingdom are you seeing? Where do you see the Kingdom coming?
• How are you living in the tension now and not yet of the Kingdom? Refusing to embrace the triumphalism of the “now and already” and refusing to accept the defeatism of the “not yet”. For more on this see Morphew’s Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom

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Week 3: (16th - 21st March)

DAY 15  - UNITED 2 Samuel 5:1-5 / 7:8-16
DAY 16 - TEMPLE 1 Kings 8:6-21
DAY 17 - DIVIDED 1 Kings 12:1-25
DAY 18 - PSALMS Psalm 47
DAY 19 - WISDOM Proverbs 1:1-7
DAY 20 - PROPHETS Jeremiah 1:1-19
DAY 21 - EXILE Jeremiah 29:1-14

1. How are you inviting and welcoming “outsiders” into the presence of God? Who is God calling you to be kind and generous towards?
   
2. How is the character of the living and loving God being seen by others in your behaviour?
   
3. How will you serve and obey the Lord? 
   
4. Who have you fallen out with, that the Lord is calling you to forgive, restore relationship and reconcile with?

​At this point in Israel’s history they were a loose confederacy of smaller tribes, the books of 1&2 Samuel tell the story of the beginning of a united nation, from a theocracy to a monarchy, united under one King. The Kingdom of Israel was God’s Kingdom. Samuel was the Kingmaker, Saul was the King the people wanted, David was the choice of God as King. He would rule on behalf of God. The boy Shepherd who would become ruler and unite the tribes of Israel.

King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel and had a vision to build a temple for God; a place for the Ark of the covenant to be placed and for God to be worshipped. It was a wonderful vision but David was not the one to bring it to pass. His Solomon was the one who would ultimately build the temple. This Temple was not a house for God to live in, but a holy meeting place between humans and God. It was somewhere where Heaven and Earth met. A most holy place: A place where the presence of God dwelt with His People.

After the death of David’s son, Solomon, the nation begins to fragment and divide into a Northern Kingdom (Israel) and a Southern Kingdom (Judah) as the people choose to turn away from God. There was always tension between the North and South and as they divided they crumbled.

The book of Psalms is the prayer book of the Bible.  A collection of 150 songs drawn from the experience of life. Through good times and bad, trouble and turmoil or celebration and contentment, the Psalms give voice to the cries of our hearts. Forget any idea that these are sweet or cute songs, these are not prayers for ‘nice people’ but personal, authentic and often brutally honest. These songs are prayers which enable us to bring everything in our lives before a God who loves us.

The Prophets stood out and spoke out. They had a voice. They spoke into the culture and society around them. They pointed to the coming Saviour who would finally rescue not only Israel but put God’s rescue plan for the whole world into effect.

Israel and Judah were warned again and again to return to God but once again humans rebelled. The prophets warned the people of coming judgement but the warnings were ignored. Israel and then Judah were invaded and the Kingdom was lost. The people were taken into exile, removed from the land.

This Week:

The Psalms give a voice to every area of life. They are honest and often brutal cries of the heart. What if you were to pray honestly to God, what would you say? Read Psalm 47 again. What does this say about God? How does this affect you? Try writing a Psalm in your own language. What would you write?

The beginning of Wisdom is the fear of the Lord, What do you think it means to fear the Lord and why does that help someone live a fruitful life? Where do you go for advice and wisdom? How do you respond to others when they give you advice that you know is good? What would it take for you to become wise? 

Have you ever felt that God has spoken to you or guided you? Today, ask Him to speak to you. Ask Him to speak through you to others. How will you speak out against injustice and suffering and call people to live lives of faith and compassion, mercy and justice, love and grace?

The people were called to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper". Where has God placed you? What would it mean for you to seek the peace and prosperity of the place you are in?

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Week 2: (9th - 15th March)

DAY 08  - EXODUS Exodus 6:1-10
DAY 09  - NATION Exodus 19:1-8
DAY 10  - LAW Exodus 20:1-21
DAY 11  - HOMELAND Joshua 1:1-9
DAY 12  - MISSION Isaiah 42:1-9
DAY 13  - LOVE Deuteronomy 6:1-9
DAY 14  - MONARCHY 1 Samuel 8:1-22

What is your situation? Where do you need the divine deliver to rescue you?

​Today, call out to Him,  the ‘ever-present-one’, to liberate you, to set you free, to transform you.

“The Exodus reveals the name and character of God the King”​
​-Derek Morphew

YHWH, “I am”, calls Moses. "I Was Who I Was, I Am Who I Am, I Will Be Who I Will Be”
God enters the situation. God is present. God delivers, God brings salvations. God rescues. God invades History.
“I was, I am, and I will be , from generation to generation, the becoming present one, coming down into the situation of man, to deliver and transform, from bondage to liberty” [Morphew, The Breakthrough of the Kingdom, p20]

This week:

• Pray: “Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be done” in my life, in my family, in my workplace, in my neighbourhood, in my city…​
• How will you show others that you belong to the LORD? How will you proclaim what He has done in your life? How will you live as an example to others?
• How will you bring light to those around you? How will you contribute to the mission of God to renew all things?
• Let God take you by the hand and lead you to where He is already working in the lives of others. Be prepared to demonstrate the Kingdom to others.

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Week 1: (2nd - 8th March)

DAY 01  -  BEGINNINGS Genesis 1:1-28 (* John 1:1-5) 
DAY 02  - PURPOSE Genesis 2:1-17 (* 1 Peter 2:9)
DAY 03  - REBELLION Genesis 3:1-10
DAY 04  - CONSEQUENCES Genesis 3:17-24
DAY 05  - FALLOUT Genesis 6:1-8, 9:1-17 
DAY 06  - BLESSED Genesis 12:1-5
DAY 07  - SLAVES Exodus 1:1-22 

Questions:

• What steps can you take this week to turn back to God? 
• Which habits or practices is the Holy Spirit inviting you into as you start this journey?

“To be made in God’s image means to be in connection to God through Christ
and to be designed for reflection of God and God’s glory.”
​-Scot McKnight

In the beginning, humans were made to be in relationship and to be responsible. In relationship with God and responsible for the world around us. We were created to be creative. To rule and reign with love, care, kindness, grace and mercy. In short, to be like Jesus. 

Today, reflect on your relationship with God? Are you connected to Him? Close to Him? Are you being like Jesus?
In what ways have you damaged or tarnished the image of God in you?

You reflect God’s nature: God’s character to those around you. You were made in His image. Today how will you reflect this image to others? What will you do? What will you say? How will you demonstrate the goodness of God to friends and family, strangers and colleagues?

Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with the fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Gal 5:22-23