8 Ways Lent Reminds Us of God's Love for Us

There's something profoundly human about fasting. When we abstain from food, comfort, or distraction, we feel our need. Our stomachs growl. Our hands reach for what isn't there. We become acutely aware of our dependence.

And that's exactly where God meets us.

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness, hungry and vulnerable, before beginning his ministry. He knows what it feels like to need. He knows the ache of longing. He knows what it is to be hungry, like so many people around the globe. When we fast during Lent, we're not proving our strength—we're acknowledging our weakness, and we’re aligning ourselves with others in need. And in that weakness, in that need, we discover this incredible promise: God doesn't love us less. He loves us enough that he became human like us. He loves us enough to know our hunger, to understand what it means to need, to understand our weakness. As Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

Our hunger during Lent doesn't push God away. It pulls us closer to the Bread of Life, who satisfies our souls.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Jorg Greuel

We live in a culture that demands we have it all together. But Lent invites us into something different: brutal honesty about where we actually are.

The Psalms of lament—the ones we often read during Lent—don't sugarcoat anything. They cry out, "How long, O Lord?" They admit, "I am weary with my crying." They refuse to spiritualize away pain.

This is love. A God who gives us language for our grief, permission for our anger, space for our questions. A God who doesn't require us to perform okay-ness or enough-ness before approaching him.

During Lent, we're invited to bring our actual selves—not our Instagram selves, not our Sunday morning selves, but the real selves who are tired and confused and wondering where God is. And the stunning truth is that God already knows those selves, and loves them fiercely.

Photo Credit:Ricardo Gomez Angel/Unsplash 

Everything about Lent moves us toward Good Friday. Toward darkness. Toward death.

And this feels wrong to us. We want to skip to Easter. We want resurrection without crucifixion, new life without letting old things die.

But God's love doesn't bypass our pain. It enters it.

Jesus didn't avoid the cross. He walked toward it, willingly. And in so doing, he showed us that God's love is willing to go into the darkest places—the places of loss and grief and endings—to bring us through to new life on the other side.

When we observe Lent, we're acknowledging that some things need to die. Old patterns. False beliefs. Ways we've protected ourselves that no longer serve us. And God loves us enough to let those deaths happen, because he knows what resurrection looks like. And he wants to speak resurrection over every area of our lives. 

Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/alexeyrumyantsev

In our noisy, perpetually connected world, Lent's call to solitude feels countercultural. But it's also deeply loving.

God knows we're drowning in noise. He knows we're performing for audiences we can't even see anymore. He knows we've forgotten who we are underneath all the productivity and achievement and constant availability.

So Lent says: Come away. Be still. Listen.

When we create space for silence during Lent—whether through morning prayer, an afternoon walk without our phones, or extended time alone—we're not earning God's favor. We're accepting his invitation to remember whose we are. We’re turning into his voice above the thousand other voices demanding our attention.

Solitude during Lent is God's love making room for us to find ourselves again in him.

Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Polina Panna

There's something powerful about knowing that when you're fasting on a Wednesday, someone across the world is fasting too. When you're reading Lamentations, someone else is also sitting with grief. When you're wrestling with what needs to die in your life, you're part of a global community doing the same work.

Lent reminds us we belong to something bigger than ourselves.

God's love isn't just individual—it's communal. We're part of a body. And during Lent, that body is collectively leaning into the hard work of formation, of letting God reshape us, of preparing for resurrection together.

You're not walking this path alone. None of us is. And that's a gift of God's love—that we get to do this hard, holy work surrounded by siblings in Christ who understand.

Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Alexis Brown

We want to control our own transformation. We want to fix ourselves, improve ourselves, optimize ourselves into holiness.

But Lent keeps asking us to let go.

Let go of the comfort. Let go of the distraction. Let go of the illusion that we can save ourselves.

This surrender isn't defeat—it's trust. It's believing that God's love is powerful enough to do what we cannot. It's admitting that we need saving, and that the One who made us is also capable of remaking us.

Every time we say no to something during Lent—to the extra serving, to the endless scrolling, to the compulsive busyness—we're practicing surrender. We're saying, "God, I trust you to fill this space. I trust you to be enough."

And God receives that surrender as worship, as an act of faith that his love is sufficient for us.

Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images Plus/fcscafeine

Here's what's easy to miss: Lent isn't ultimately about suffering. It's about hope.

We journey through the wilderness because Easter is coming. We walk through darkness because resurrection is real. We let things die because we believe in the God who brings life out of death.

This is the heart of the gospel—that suffering isn't the end of the story.

God's love doesn't leave us in the tomb. It rolls away the stone. It breaks through what we have sealed. It brings us through death into life, through grief into joy, through winter into spring.

When we observe Lent faithfully, we're not wallowing in darkness. We're trusting that light is coming. We're betting everything on resurrection.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/jchizhe

Maybe this is the most important one: Lent shows us that God doesn't relate to us based on our performance.

When we receive the ashes, we hear "remember you are dust"—but we also hear the rest of the story. That God formed us from dust with his own hands. That he breathed his own breath into us. That he calls us beloved even in our dustiness.

Lent strips away our pretenses, and underneath, we discover that we're still loved. Not because we've fasted perfectly or prayed eloquently or given up all the right things. But because God's love isn't contingent on our spiritual success. Hallelujah! 

You are loved in your hunger. Loved your honesty. Loved in your surrender. Loved in your waiting. Loved in your messiness. 

This is what Lent has been trying to tell us all along: God isn’t disappointed in you. You don't have to earn this. You already have it. You are already held. You are already loved.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Ryan McVay