Lent for Those in the Space in Between

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  Matthew 16:18

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.”  Luke 22:61

Lent is an opportunity to discover who God says we are as opposed to who we think we are. The contrast can be crushing. 

If we are honest, we all know the weight of disappointment in who we really seem to be compared to who God says we are meant to be. Maybe we don’t even know who He says we are in the first place.

But hope is here, in this beautiful season as life springs forth from the hard shell of the winter earth. If a tender green stem can push through the subterranean darkness, shove aside the rocky, frozen soil, and bloom, so can you and I. 

God’s promise of who we are is the seed. Who we see ourselves to be is the earth piled dark upon us. The joy of Lent is the shoot bursting forth into the light of day as we blossom into who He knows we are despite the long winter.

The eyes of Christ burn with a holy knowledge of exactly who we were created to be as He speaks life over us, into us, and through us. His declaration of who we are is nothing short of miraculous; the Creator decrees purpose to the creation; the Lover proclaims promise to the beloved.

We are known. We are purposed. We are promised. This is what is true about you and me. #Lent #faith Click To Tweet

And, like Peter, we stand in the space between soaring promise and crushing reality. We wonder if we can ever really be who He says we truly are.

On that early day of proclamation how Peter’s heart must have quaked in the physical presence of such power and authority, such love and intimate knowing of himself. How loved he must have felt. How inspired, how determined to rise to those great words. 

And how must his heart have suffered a thousand deaths as he stood later in the place of betrayal while the eyes of Promise and Purpose looked straight upon him once more, again knowing. Knowing his failure. Knowing his weakness. Knowing his inability to be who he was created to be on his own. Peter surely felt the deepest kind of agony in his soul that evening as the fire burned low.

For many, the space between the promise of who we are meant to be and the reality of who we are right now in this moment is an impossible chasm. It stretches beyond our sight in its limitless distance, shrouded in fog and beset with traps. 

The other side, the goal, the promise, flashes brilliantly through the clouds like a towering mountaintop, only to elude us again when the thunder of life claps us to the ground of our weaknesses and inconsistencies.

As I approach Lent this year, I am confronted with the Space in Between who I am and who I want to be. The space between who God has said I am and who I see in the mirror each day. The space in between the vision I cherish for my family and the reality of our struggles here and now in today’s real world. The space in between heaven and the red clay dirt of this earth.

This space is frustrating and doesn’t feel glorious. It requires hard work and determination, tenacity and discipline. It is daily and requires much trust.

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Peter was ignorantly blissful, for a time. He seems to have taken Jesus’ promise words with confidence at the start. He believed them, and he knew he was important. He believed so much in his own ability to be great that he declared he would never, ever, deny Christ. 

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” 

But in the end, Peter learned what many of us, those who are honest with ourselves, know.

We live in the Space in Between. We live in messy houses and serve with prideful hearts and drive carpools and work at overflowing desks and wash piles of dishes and eat the wrong stuff and say things we wish we hadn’t right there in the space in between who we want to be, who Jesus says we were made to be, the Truest Things About Us, and who we are right now. And we write too-long, run-on sentences just to get our entire point across breathlessly.

In that fateful millisecond when he breathed the bitter space between himself, the betrayer, and the Lord, our Redeemer, Peter became painfully, acutely aware of the Space in Between.  

Jesus looked straight through the Space in Between and crossed the distance instantly. 

Immediately the chasm was bridged, the impossible was made possible. Because at that moment Peter remembered. He remembered that the One who made him knew him.

He knew him and yet He still promised. He still loved Peter.

Jesus keeps every promise and His love never fails.

Peter’s real journey began right then. He started the impossible journey across the Space in Between, the journey made possible only by the One who Promised.

Peter became who he was created to be. Jesus built His church, the church we enjoy this Lent season, upon one who failed, one who betrayed the Lord.

The One who Promised guarded His promise and fulfilled it. The Promiser brought his imperfect, strong-willed child across the great divide of Self and made Him an instrument of peace and hope.

He will do this for you and for me. Jesus will help us cross the Space In Between, and He will build in our lives what He has purposed, even though we fail him and we betray him. 

Later when he wrote his first epistle, Peter was much more mature. He had crossed the chasm and stood on the other side beckoning others over. 

He greets us with these significant words, “To God’s elect… who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ…” (from 1 Peter1: 1-2) 

Those words were engraved in Peter’s heart by painful experience. No longer do we hear the proud voice of the old, pre-chasm Peter. This Peter knows the fulfillment of his purpose depends on the Lord.

Peter learned what we all must: God knows us and yet He still promises, purposes, loves. 

And the promise God has made will be accomplished through God’s Spirit, not our strength.

In the meantime, we are made small by the absurdities of daily weakness and irritations in the here and now of who we are. Elisabeth Elliot wrote, “The great discrepancy between what we envisioned and what we’ve got forces us to be real” (Keep a Quiet Heart, 228). 

Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6, AMP).

This #Lent season, let us trust the Promiser to bridge the gap between promise and reality. #faith Click To Tweet

I want to throw off my own strength, my own agenda, my own idea of what I must do to be this or that and take up His. My heart is set on pilgrimage across the Space in Between. Won’t you join me?

Lord, fulfill your promise in me and make me who You say I am. Amen.