Fasting Fridays in 2025: What are your priorities in life right now?
A Note From Pastor Gerry.
Lent is an invitation to rearrange your priorities—to focus on what matters most and leave behind what matters least.
Lent is the season where the Church prepares for Easter. Starting with Ash Wednesday, Lent spans 40 days until Holy Thursday, the day before Bad Friday. Each Sunday during Lent we will build toward Holy Week when we will have a unique Bad Friday experience and a celebration together on Easter Sunday!
In Matthew 4, Jesus spends 40 days in the desert, fasting, praying, and preparing for his mission. Lent is our opportunity for that same focus. Lent is a season to acknowledge that we're moving closer to death and to recommit to live in the healthiest and most loving way possible.
Each year, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. This day officially begins the season of acknowledgement and recommitment. Lent is your invitation to take your spiritual life more seriously. Lent is the perfect time to form life-giving habits and abandon self-destructive habits. Lent is your chance to discover the abundant life Jesus invites us to at Easter.
Take these 40 days to explore God’s dream for your life and it will change everything. Consider how you and your family might enter the season of Lent. May we be a community that hears and responds to God's invitation: "Come back to me, with all your heart." (Joel 2:12)
Are you ready?
In order for you to make the most of your Lenten experience, I wanted to suggest a few ways to begin preparing for this season.
Here are 3 ways that I find helpful:
1. BEGIN ASKING YOURSELF A NUMBER OF QUESTIONS EVERY DAY.
Lent is a season to look at how you’ve been living and to commit to being a healthier, more loving person. Try processing these questions by journaling or having conversations with someone close to you:
What unhealthy patterns do I see in my life during the past year?
What relationships need reconciliation or my new or renewed investment?
How can I improve my relationship with God?
In what ways can I join God in healing and restoring the world?
2. CONSIDER SOME KIND OF FAST DURING LENT.
Over the years I (Pastor Gerry) have practiced what I call Fasting Friday. I will be establishing that again this year as a time to fast and pray, not just for myself but our community at large. To facilitate this, each Friday we will post a prayer on Soul’s social media and invite people to share their requests.
Fasting is one way of identifying with Jesus on a deeper level and hopefully helping a person focus on God more intently. It’s been helpful for many throughout history to remove a practice or food from their life during Lent. The fast doesn’t necessarily need to be from food, though that can be helpful for many.
I invite you to join me in the spiritual discipline of prayer and fasting. Here are some ideas for fasting:
Pick a time frame; I usually fast from dawn until dusk.
Identify something that takes a lot of time or money and fast from that. Some ideas could be; television, the computer, your phone, video games, purchasing books, music or clothes, eating out or ordering in.
Choose whatever would be most helpful for you, as a main reason for fasting is to help raise our awareness of God. Whenever you feel an impulse for the thing you’re fasting from, take some time to acknowledge God and ask for His strength and grace.
3. COMMIT TO READING THE BIBLE EVERY DAY.
A daily reading schedule during Lent can help you develop the habit of stopping everyday to read the Scriptures. If you don’t have a regular pattern you can go online and download a number of free devotionals (I suggest a devotional on YouVersion if you are looking for ideas). Read as much as you would like, and remember many other people around the world are doing the same.
It’s my prayer that your personal experience of Lent is meaningful and transformative. May God meet you in deeply authentic and undeniable ways as you draw near to Him.