As we enter this Lenten Season there is the call to the wilderness. It is the call to be with the Lord. It is the call to encounter him. In that call come these assuring words: “I will be with you. I will hear you. You will hear me.”

But there is a second voice that calls us in this season as well. It is a voice that “mocks and seduces men and women of faith, making easy promises, issuing facile invitations, urging acts that are against our faith and our identity.” (Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent)

What we need in this time is to learn to discern those voices. If we will learn to discern those voices we will regain our prophetic voice in this culture. We can learn to move away from the voice of ease to the voice of power. We will move away from the old cynicism of despair to the joy of innocent faith once again.

Discernment is what is needed again in our faith in this culture. We have lost our sense of discernment in our desire for ease and our lust for power. In this season, we need a return to HEARING the voice of God… then proclaiming HIS freedom to the captive.

This is the way. Walk in it.