Category Archives: C.S. Lewis

Dec 23 2011

This Special Place, Where it is Always Christmas

“This Gospel anticipates a world far different from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia,where it is “always winter, and never Christmas.” But the promise of the Gospel is that it is “always Christmas.”

To be “in Christ” is to enjoy each morning as a Christmas morning with the family of God, celebrating the gift of God around the tree of life.”

–Kevin VanHoozer

Christmas can be a torment and tribulation for so many. I have no doubt it brings grief. Family, friends, finances– mixed liberally with heavy doses of materialism and manipulation will always bring us issues.  The music and decorations are mere Novocaine  (which doesn’t always work). Stress builds up. And we want none of that.

“Christmas is for children. But it is for grown-ups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and a nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chilled hidebound hearts.”  

–Lenora Mattingly Weber

As I think about Christmas, it is helpful for me to see it as a “mirror.” It is my reflection back to me. What we see, is who we are. If we have issues in our own life, the Season will just magnify them.  But this doesn’t mean its bad, far from it. There is always conflict, but this spiritual combat can bring us success. Some things must be fought for.

I’m convinced that in all of this, there is opportunity.  The chance to connect to “Christmas”. The very idea is quite strange.  But Christmas is an exquisite treat.  It is made by mixing love and truth in generous portions. As we look hard for it, there is something that moves us to a place far beyond us. Grace makes us to stand and look, perhaps for the first time.

Grace is electrical. It connects us to everything holy and true.  Its very presence in our lives can really move us through the ugliness of Christmas. It propels us, and shoots us face forward into a deep sense that He is close to us. Christmas brings us right into a place where everything makes sense, is sweet and incredibly kind.

When we truly process this, we’ll find “Christmas”. And honestly, it is more than a holiday. For the Christian, it is special time. And yes, there will be times when it is trying, but in my own thinking, Christmas has become a time of great joy and anticipation.

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Oct 15 2011

Thinking Out Things

There is a full treatment that the Father intends to work in us. And He will work in us, and we can’t prevent its work.  We don’t really want Him to make us a saint.  But He carries out a different plan.  We shouldn’t be entirely surprised to have Him inside of us, working and building.  We really are brought to a point when the things He does will need to be tolerated, at least.

To be a Christian is a challenging endeavour.  Just ike taffy is pulled to an amazing length, it will always unfold and duplicated.  This work starts to insist that we turn over everything ugly and evil and we turn over the nastiness that wants to invade our darkness.  We are the lost sheep, and we honestly renounce a corruption of our hearts, and the desire to wander away.

There is one of those stories, which can be found in many different cultures.  It is this– a man wears a mask, for several years.  He never takes it off.  The mask is a permanent fixture in His life.  As the moment of revelation when the mask comes off, we all discover that he has been changed, transformed by the wearing of the mask.

Will you wear the mask?

Might it be, that it you will “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,” transformation will happen as we start to “wear Him” through our unique and surprising life.  We have been bonded to Him, and He is now working “Christlikedness” inside us.  If we try to evaluate the Lords work, we maybe disappointed.  But we so seldom discern these things properly.  However it is clear that He has not postponed His work, but is actively seeking it to work in our lives.

Aug 18 2011

Everything is About Jesus

The Gospel of John describes a wonderful image of the vineyard; branches and vine, which illustrates our relationship with Jesus.  We must abide and remain in him to be fruitful.  He is the vine, and we, we are the branches.

Notice the clear emphasis. Come to Me, remain in Me, stay connected to Me.  He didn’t advise or suggest we attend a seminar, go to Bible school, or attend a prayer meeting.  He said, “Come to ME“.  He is the one we are to center on. He insists that He is to be our total focus.

This is either an egotistical religious fanatic intoxicated with His power and self-importance or He really is reality.  C.S. Lewis comments,

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Jesus insists that we worship Him.  That much is clear.  “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.  I am the only way to the Father.”  “He who believes in Me has eternal life, and he who doesn’t is condemned.” We just breeze through these verses and never truly catch the consequences.

A mere man could not say these things (at least not with straight face) and be considered sane.   He either was what He said He was, or a liar or lunatic.  We must each choose. 

As believers we need to give to Jesus His rightful position.  The One who sits on the throne is the center.  All things derive their life, meaning and essence from Him.  We must not forget that He is the Risen Lord.  We need to realize that He has asked us to worship Him.  Point blank.

Jul 28 2011

So You Want to Become Vulnerable?

 
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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it 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. To love is to be vulnerable.”

 — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Public speaking has never been a problem for me. All through high school, Bible college, as a street evangelist– nothing I’ve ever done really has ever been a concern.  But,  I have friends who rather submit themselves to hideous torture then to put themselves in that public position.  They are afraid of the spotlight, feel exposed and just a little too accessible in the lime light. 

Becoming vulnerable in love is ‘above and beyond’ the fear of public speaking.  It is almost irrational in the way it takes charge.  We refuse to put out, with the fear of being that accessible.  We will not allow ourselves to become a victim.  But public speaking has nothing on loving someone deeply, because of the risk involved.

Men are the greatest perpetrators of this attitude.  We close ourselves off and keep our hearts protected and safe.  We cannot truly give our hearts away, because we cannot share that which is most intimate (we hate that word!).  I will refuse to become vulnerable to anyone, because of the risk I put myself in. To really “trust,” in deep way, is way too much exposure for us.

Our families cannot understand our emotional coldness.  They think that the problem is their fault.  They struggle to understand.  And we respond to their attempts to accommodate us with skepticism and fear.  We hold back and pathetically attempt to adjust to their efforts.  Selfishness ultimately wins the day.

Lewis reveals that our natural inclination is towards selfishness.  We try to hide and avoid the “nakedness” that love requires.  I am convinced that we will spare no effort to stay safe, becoming invulnerable to another’s inspection.  We wall up ourselves to the risks of love.  But learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.

Jesus Christ has come, to teach us how to love openly and freely.  He became vulnerable, laying aside his perogative of being God.  He is teaching us to love like him. We will only truly heal when we risk it all, with our Father, and our brothers and sisters.

 

 

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Jul 8 2011

Ramblings of the Broken

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”    — C.S. Lewis

I think I am a creature of habit.  I honestly don’t think we have the power to steer our lives.  I rather think we choose our habits, and inclinations.  They in turn decide our paths.  We give ourselves too much credit, to decide and direct.  Simply put, we are not that big.

Somebody once told me, “The purpose of life is not to find your freedom; but to find your master.”  I don’t live that way, at least my inner propensity does not include God.  Did you ever think something like this?  “I wish God did not exist.  I want to be in charge, and I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it!”  Living it all with no rules and no accountability!

But as we get older, our hair is gray and we look in the mirror and see bags and wrinkles, we realize how vulnerable and how precarious life really is.  If we are honest, and sufficently self-aware, we find ourselves needing to believe something more then us taking the universe over.

“Life is what happens while you are making other plans,” John Lennon observed.  Its reality is that it is something that springs on you, and you have an epiphany, shocked to the core.  Life has happened, and you didn’t even realize it.  We are quite undone, and we don’t really understand what it is all about.

I look at myself in the mirror, not in vanity but in amazement.  The ugly tattoos, and the track marks are from another life. I have scars on my wrists from a couple of suicide attempts.  There is the surgical zipper scar from a brain tumor.  I walk with a cane.  I am learning how to be broken.  And everything that has happened has happened for a reason.  C.S. Lewis once said, “Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.”   I sense that he did learn, otherwise he couldn’t of said that.

Re-reading this I decided that I ramble a lot.  Forgive me.  Maybe there is a scrap or two in it for someone.

ybic,

Bryan

Apr 3 2011

Don’t Waste Your Sorrows

“These little troubles are getting us ready for an eternal glory that will make all our troubles seem like nothing.”

2 Cor. 4:17, CEV

“Before God could bring me to this place He has broken me a thousand times.”                                     

Smith Wigglesworth

 

As we move toward maturity, over time and through circumstance, we will start to develop exciting new ways of thinking.  We engage the Word and combined with our relationships with people we start the work of God.  We soon learn that the Kingdom of God flows through relationships, almost exclusively.

Pain and sorrow are some of the more intense ways the Lord reaches down and into our lives. 

Rick Warren has written, “God intentionally allows you to go through painful experiences to equip you for ministry to others.” 

 

I think that as we dwell on this we will start to see the hand of God, moving things around in our complicated lives.  As we attend class in this school of the Spirit, we learn things that will change our life and ministry.

But we must consider that we can waste our pain and sorrows by not engaging the issues properly.  Will I submit, or will I grow sullen and cynical? Will I worship through my tears?  Surrendering to Christ is not a once-in-a-lifetime event.  It is a daily, and even hourly process.  I regard “cynicism” though, as a hungry predator who is hunting me.  Very dangerous, and I am highly suspectable.

Pain is the way the Father reaches me, he isn’t too concerned about our comfort (it isn’t the real issue, after all.)  When I hurt, I invaribly look for Jesus.  And that cannot be all bad.  Through the trials and pain I begin to reconnect with my Father.  Without the trials, I doubt we would ever call out for His help.

“Don’t waste your sorrows.”  It is easibly done.  We start to stagger by the weight of our personal issues.  Overwhelmed by the pain we start to panic and grab things, and throw them overboard, to lighten the load.  We can be confused, and will do whatever we must do to stay afloat.  But unless we take these sorrows well, we are just short-circuiting God’s intentions.

C.S. Lewis once commented on our issues,

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn—my God do you learn.”

The darkness intends to absorb us.  Satan uses our own bitterness and frustration to do this.  Our discipleship is no longer valid if we commence doing our own will and desires.  Even though we get “flaky” the Father will always love us. But we dare not waste our pain, it comes at too big of a price.