Anne Hamilton has a penned a profuse number exceptionally well-thought-out posts on Facebook.
This post responds well to the concept of the Lenten season.
She writes:
Back about forty years ago, someone told me that if I wanted to give up sugar in coffee, I would have to do it forty times before I broke the habit. That turned out to be true. I suffered all the way through 39 cups of unsweetened coffee—only to discover that, on the 40th cup, my desire for sugar had gone.
A couple of years later, I applied the same principle to milk and gave it up too.
Forty, of course, is a number found repeatedly in Scripture. Perhaps most famously in the number of years the Israelties spent in the desert and the number of days that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness.
So let me offer a challenge that only Jesus can help you fulfil. Instead of deciding what you’ll “give up” for Lent, ask God to put His finger on a “false refuge” that He’d like you to give up permanently. Ask Him to identify a place of consolation, a subtle stronghold empowered by an idol, and – over the next forty days – ask Him to help you lay siege to it and bring it down.
It might not take that long. But if it does, ask Him for the strength of endurance that Jesus showed in the face of repeated temptation.
Just wow. I add a hearty amen. During this season, consider listening to what Father tells you to PERMANENTLY remove from your life.
And it may be coffee. Or covfefe.
Giggle.