Just Fix It! C S Lewis

Words from C S Lewis:

"Christianity is a fighting religion. It believes and teaches that God made the world. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again."

Sometimes people tell me that they can't believe in our God of love because the world is such a cruel and hateful place. So we need to tell them to join us and help us fix it! 

It is only logical that we put things right, since we are the ones who messed up the good and perfect world He created.

What's first on your list?

It's Beginning Already!

 

                                         Looking for Jesus

As children, we memorized Romans 12.  Verse 2 is still stuck in my mind like a sticky note: "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..."

I remember reading that verse in the J.B. Phillip's paraphrase: "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold."

It's still a battle. The world is so anxious to squeeze us into its mold!

I remember being taught that "conforming" comes from outside pressure, but "transforming" comes from activity - the Holy Spirit - within.

The Greek word translated "transform" is the same word we translate "metamorphosis."

It's used here in Romans 12:2 and also in the accounts of Jesus when He was "transfigured" when He took Peter, James, and John to witness that special miracle.

We call the place it happened "The Mount of the Transfiguration."

Same word.  Metamorphosis. Same miracle.

Just as the lowly worm  is transformed into a butterfly, we are transformed into the image of Christ.

Same word, Same miracle.

The word is used only one other place -- 2 Corinthians 3:18: "We who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness..."

Sounds like it's beginning to happen already! Let's look for Jesus in each other today!

Love Hurts

  "There is no safe investment.

   To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.

   If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your  heart to no one, not even an animal.

   Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

   But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless  -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

   The alternative to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell."

                                      -- C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

{1 John 4:19 -- "We love Him because He first loved us"}

Give Him All - C S Lewis

From C S Lewis...

"Christ says, 'Give Me all.  

I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. 

No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there. I want to have the whole tree cut down. I don't want to drill the tooth or crown it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires you think are innocent, as well as the ones you think are wicked -- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. 

In fact, I will give you Myself! My own will shall become yours.'"

                                   **********

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; all things have passed away; behold all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I remember once reading that someone asked William Booth, the famous evangelist and founder of The Salvation Army, what was the secret of his great successful international ministry that so exalted God's glory. He answered, "God has all of me."

A Perfect Prayer

                                         

                                              A Perfect Prayer

The Book of Daniel (in the Old Testament) has some profound prayers.

I am thinking especially of His prayer in chapter 2. 

Daniel had been given the king's malicious command to not only interpret the king's dream but also to remind the king what the dream was about! A humanly- impossible task!

If Daniel failed then he and the others would be killed.

So Daniel prays for God to reveal the dream and its meaning to him. 

He begins his prayer of thanks for God's answer with grand proclamations of worship and praise: "Praise be to the Name of God forever and ever, wisdom and power are His..." he starts.

It is a short prayer.

As he ends he thanks God for answering: "You have made known to me what we asked of You. You have made known to us the dream of the king."

We learn from this that we should be specific in our requests, and then specific in what we are thanking Him for!

Asking Him to bless generally ('bless everybody in the world' we might say) is sometimes appropriate but maybe just a lazy approach when communicating with our loving Father!

Let's be like Daniel and tell our Father exactly what we want from Him and what we are thanking Him for! 

Wouldn't our earthly father prefer that?