My Preparation for Easter Covenant

Lent is a time to prepare for Easter. It is a necessary prelude. The death and resurrection of Christ are true whether or not I prepare for Easter. However, without my heart and life being ready, I may not experience the depth and power. of Christ's death and resurrection. So with my brothers and sisters, I commit myself to disciplines for conversion from sin and death to love and life in Jesus Christ. With the aid of the list below, I make the following commitments to discipline and growth for the next six weeks:
(Check the ones you desire or feel prompted to do; circle the ones you then decide to do.)

Inward and Personal Disciplines

• Spend time in solitude each day.
• Share in the Lenten Series on Sunday mornings.
• Read a book for inner growth.
• Read twice through the Gospel of Matthew.
• Begin to keep a journal of prayer concerns, questions, reading.
• Focus on thanksgiving, rather than on asking, in prayer.
• Give myself a gift of three hours to do something I always say I don't have time to do.
• Find a way to go to bed earlier or sleep in so I get enough rest.
• Make a list of people with whom I need to be reconciled. Pray for them and let Jesus guide me in my thinking and feeling toward them.
• Take control of my life by ______________.
• Go to all of the Holy Week services as an act of love and waiting with Jesus.
• Take one hour to inventory my priorities and plan how I will reorder them.
• Give up a grudge or a rehearsal of a past event.
• Forgive someone who has hurt me.
• Dance my prayers to a favorite tape or CD.
• Other promptings:
  

Outward and Social Disciplines

• Take on some loving task.
• Plan to visit a "shut-in" neighbor or church member weekly.
• Write a letter of affirmation once a week to a person who has touched my life.
• Listen and respond to Christ's call to a ministry of service.
• Go to coffee or dinner with someone I want to know better.
• Begin to recycle waste from my home and workplace.
• Give blood and recall the cross.
• Call the Pastor or Church Office and ask how I can help.
• Say "NO" to something that is a waste of money and time.
• Pray to God to help me resist prejudice and to give me courage in opposing it.
• Rebuke the spirit of criticism and my own tongue out of control.
• Find a way to live out the baptismal promise to "resist evil, injustice, and oppression" in the power and liberty God gives us by ___________________
• Other outward and social promptings:
  

Keep this for reference during the coming weeks of Lent.