Spoiler: It was never really about the chocolate.
Every year, like clockwork, the same question pops up everywhere: “What are you giving up for Lent?” Chocolate. Coffee. Social media. Netflix. Carbs. The answers roll in fast, and by day four, most of them quietly crumble under the weight of cravings or convenience. We shrug, promise to do better next year, and wonder why forty days later, we don’t feel any different. Here’s the truth: Lent was never supposed to be a test of your willpower. It was meant to do something far more uncomfortable. It was meant to show you your need.
Somewhere along the way, we turned fasting into a spiritual diet plan. A discipline challenge. A way to prove to ourselves—and maybe to God—that we’ve got what it takes to say no to something for an extended period of time. But that’s not what the hunger is for. The hunger is a teacher. And if you let it, it will teach you dependency. Every time you reach for the thing you gave up and feel the ache of its absence, that ache is supposed to point somewhere. Not toward your willpower. Not toward pride in your ability to stick it out. Toward God. Toward the recognition that you are a creature who was designed to need things—and that your need has a specific destination.
“Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus said that while he was hungry. Not metaphorically hungry. Forty-days-in-the-wilderness hungry. The point wasn’t that food is bad or that physical need is unspiritual. The point was that underneath every hunger is a deeper hunger. And most of us never feel it—because we never let ourselves get hungry enough.
What if, instead of asking, “What should I give up for Lent?” you asked something harder: “What am I using to avoid feeling my need for God?” That’s uncomfortable. Because the answer isn’t always chocolate or Instagram. Sometimes it’s busyness. Noise. Productivity. The constant motion of a life so full of good things that there’s no space left to feel the one thing it’s missing. Sometimes the thing you need to fast from isn’t a vice. It’s the comfortable numbness of a life that’s too full to notice the ache underneath it.
Lent creates a gap. On purpose. The gap is supposed to be uncomfortable. The discomfort is supposed to make you reach. And the reaching—that instinctive, desperate, I-need-something-I-don’t-have reaching—is the whole point. That’s prayer. Honest prayer. The kind that doesn’t come from a polished script but from the raw, unfiltered ache of actual need.
The forty days of Lent mirror the forty years Israel spent in the wilderness. The forty days Jesus fasted before stepping into ministry. That pattern isn’t random. Wilderness is where dependency gets forged. You don’t learn to trust God’s provision when your pantry is full. You learn it when it’s empty—and something shows up anyway. You don’t learn to pray with desperation when life is comfortable. You learn it when the comfort is gone, the need is real, and the only place left to turn is up. Lent is a voluntary wilderness. You’re not giving something up to prove you can. You’re creating space—intentional, uncomfortable, holy space—where God can remind you what you’re actually made of and what you actually need.
This week, when you feel the absence of whatever you’ve given up—don’t just power through it. Stop. Feel it. Let the hunger be a doorway. Ask yourself what you actually need. Not the chocolate. Not the scroll. The thing underneath. The peace you’ve been chasing. The answer you’re still waiting for. The healing that hasn’t come yet. The yes you’re hoping for. Bring that to God instead.
That’s what Lent is supposed to do to you. Not make you thinner, more disciplined, or more impressive. Make you needier. In the best possible way.