
Well I do want to thank you for
your attentiveness and your
endurance, I think at this point
we should probably call this
conference 'Exhausted by the
Christian Life'.
Probably the most spiritual
thing any of us will do this
afternoon is to apply Dane
Ortlund's talk by taking a nap
or perhaps applying Sam Storms'
talk by sitting in a hot tub,
that's up to you.
So for this final talk I want to
keep it simple and I want to
keep it practical, I'm not going
to do any biography of Lewis, I
don't feel qualified to do
biography of Lewis.
Instead what I want to do is to
try and channel Lewis on what I
take to be the center of his
vision for the Christian life
and then close with a few
practical ways to live it out.
One of the things that I think
Lewis does so well, one of the
reasons he resonates so deeply,
is his ability to awaken us to
the reality of our present
situation and so what I want to
do at the beginning here is try
to awaken you to the reality of
the present situation, three
things that we know.
Number one; you are here and
now.
Here is a location word, it
gives us a place, you exist in a
location; Minnesota, Bethlehem,
Baptist Church, that pew right
there.
And there's a realness about
this place, there's a real
realness about reality, you're
just here and reality is just
there.
It's given, it's objective and
real and concrete and
particular, there's a solidity,
a resistance to the seat you're
sitting on, it confronts you
with it's quiddity, it's
what-ness.
Not only are you here but you're
also now.
Now now is the time word; you're
in the present, that astounding
place where eternity touches
time, the infinitesimal points
where the past meets the future.
You have a past and God willing
you have a future but all of you
are living, all of your
thinking, all of your enjoying
and willing takes place in the
present- here and now.
And what are you?
You're a human being, you're a
person, you're created by God
and for God, you straddle the
line between the physical world
and the spiritual world.
You have a body, like the
animals, and you have a spirit,
a soul, a mind, a heart like the
angels.
You have this amazing, clunky,
clumsy, breakable apparatus
called a body by which you take
in the world through your senses
and you have this invisible,
mysterious, marvelous and
terrifying reality called a soul
which perceives and thinks and
hopes and dreams and fears and
imagines and likes and dislikes
and loves and hates.
So what do we know about the
present situation?
You; a human being, a person
with a body and a soul, a mind
and a heart- you are here and
now.
Two; you're not the only one who
has here and now, God is here
and now.
The living God, the Almighty
maker of heaven and earth is
here and now.
The living God is both
omnipresent and in the present,
he is present everywhere and he
is present every when.
Lewis wrote, "We may ignore but
we may nowhere evade the
presence of God, the world is
crowded with him, he walks
everywhere incognito."
Now we're not pantheists, we
don't believe that the world is
God or that God is the world or
that he is diffused in all
things like some kind of gas or
liquid.
Instead we believe that God is
totally present everywhere and
yet he is not identical to
anything in his creation, he's
omnipresent in this world the
way that an author is present
with and in his story.
Everything you see and hear and
touch is sustained moment by
moment by his word, by his
imagination and attention and
yet he is not confined or
constrained or limited by any of
it.
He is transcendent as well as
eminent, high and lifted up as
well as near and close at hand
and this makes God
incomprehensible to us, our
little minds cannot contain him.
He is unimaginably different
from everything that he has
made, he is absolute and
ultimate, he is the ultimate
fact.
Lewis calls him the fountain of
facthood, the absolute rock
bottom reality, the thick center
of reality who pervades all of
reality.
As the prophet Isaiah says, "He
is God and there is no other, he
is God and there is none like
him."
But not only is he here and now
and not only is he the ultimate
fact this God, this living God
is also personal.
Indeed he's more than personal
as Lewis says he's supra
personal beyond personality and
this too makes him unfathomable
to us.
The living God is the triune
God, three in one, three persons
while remaining one God, the
Father is God and the Son is God
and the Holy Spirit is God and
yet there aren't three gods,
there is only one God and we
cannot grasp this any more than
two dimensional beings could
grasp what is meant by a cube.
But though we may not comprehend
God, we may not wrap our mind
around him, we can comprehend
our incomprehension and from
that incomprehension begin to
know him.
So as we begin keep ever present
in your mind these two truths;
you are here and now and God the
eternal, omnipresent, personal,
three in one author of all is
also here and now.
Number three; go another step.
God is not just here and now he
is here and now pursuing us.
This ever present God is after
us, he makes demands of us and
not just any demands- God is not
a tax collector asking for a
percentage of your time and
resources and leaving the rest
to you.
As your creator he demands all
of you, he is the maker and you
are the maid, he is the potter
and you are the pot, he is the
author and you are his character
therefore he has all rights and
claims to you and yours.
As you sit here and now the
almighty maker of heaven and
earth lays claim to your
ultimate devotion and affection
and this again makes
Christianity different from all
forms of pantheism because the
popular god of pantheism is
basically a mysterious life
force that flows through the
whole universe.
But a life force makes no
demands, the life force will
never interfere, this
pantheistic life force is a tame
god giving us all the thrills of
religion with none of the cost.
He's there if you wish for him
but he will not pursue you
because the life force isn't
really even a he or a she but an
it, an impersonal reality that
supposedly lies beneath
everything.
Now Christianity is also
different from other popular
notions about God because some
of us want more than a life
force, we want a personal God
not a impersonal force but we
don't want to go the whole way
with Christianity.
We want a personal God but one
who won't interfere, we don't
want a father in heaven so much
as a grandfather in heaven.
As Lewis says, "A senile
benevolence who as they say
liked to see young people
enjoying themselves and whose
plan for the universe was simply
that it might truly be said at
the end of each day 'a good time
was had by all!'"
But the God who is here and now
is neither a tame lifeforce nor
a senile grandfather, he is
alive pulling at the other end
of the cord perhaps approaching
you right now at an infinite
speed.
The Hunter, The King, The
Husband.
He is not indulgent or soft, he
is the great interferer
insisting that, follow me here,
because he has made us he knows
what's best for us can you
believe that?
He pursues and interrupts, he
confronts and challenges, he is
a lion and he is not tame.
So we begin this talk with three
facts; you are here and now, God
is here and now and this God,
the living God, demands all of
you and these three facts yield
a fourth.
Every moment of every day you
are confronted with a choice you
may either place God, this God,
at the center of your life or
you can place something else
there.
You can either acknowledge the
way that the world really is or
attempt to live in a fantasy of
your own devising, either
surrender to your Creator Lord
or rise up and assert your own
independence.
"Reality," Lewis says, "presents
us with an absolutely
unavoidable either or."
We live in a world of forked
roads, every path regularly and
repeatedly branching into two
mutually exclusive directions
and our task is to reject the
illusion that in the end all
paths lead to the same place.
We must choose and follow me
here our choice will make all
the difference.
And let me be clear that the
choice is not a singular event,
you don't merely make it one
time rather we are always making
it, our little decisions when
gathered up together turn out to
be not so little after all.
One of the lessons I've learned
from Lewis, thinking about
Edmund in 'The Lion the Witch
and The Wardrobe', we are always
sowing the seeds of our future
selves, always sowing the seeds
of our future selves.
This is Lewis, "Every time you
make a choice you are turning
the central part of you, the
part that chooses, into
something a little different
than it was before and taking
your life as a whole with all of
your innumerable choices all
your life long you are slowly
turning this central thing
either into a heavenly creature
or into a hellish creature.
Either into a creature that is
in harmony with God and with
other creatures and with itself
or else into one that is in a
state of war and hatred with God
and with its fellow creatures
and with itself. To be the one
kind of creature is heaven, its
joy, peace, knowledge, power and
to be the other means madness,
horror, idiocy, rage, impotence,
and eternal loneliness. Each of
us at each moment is progressing
to the one state or the other
and this is what really
matters."
These quote "little marks or
twists on the central inside
part of the soul which are going
to turn it in the long run into
a heavenly or hellish creature."
Now at this point we could talk
about the choice in its various
guises, this is what I attempted
to do in the book and if I were
you and you wanted to follow up
on that by reading Lewis I would
encourage you to go pick up the
book, 'The Four Loves' and then
I would encourage you to pick up
'The Great Divorce' and I would
encourage you to read those in
tandem.
And then if you really wanted to
go above and beyond and get
brownie points from your
professor you could go read 'Til
We Have Faces' and that would be
a nice little package.
But what I want to do is talk
about something else, the basic
fact of God's presence and
pursuit of us here and now
yields a basic choice.
Either embrace and welcome
reality surrendering ourselves
to the eternal omnipresent
pursuing God or vainly try to
hide from him, resist his
advances, reject his offer.
And so though it's true that we
are always in God's presence
it's equally true that we are
perpetually called to come into
his presence, to unveil to his
view and often we're very
reluctant to do this.
Sometimes this is because we're
worried that we'll get carried
away and lose our heads, this is
one of Lewis's recurrent
temptations, you don't want to
get to the end of a conference
like this having made any
resolutions or promises that
might be inconvenient next week.
We know what sorts of promises
we can make in the grip of
spiritual enthusiasm and so when
we enter God's presence, we keep
our guard up lest his voice
become too unmistakable.
One of my favorite lines from
Lewis is where he mentions the
sort of fellow who prays quietly
lest God actually hear him which
he, poor man, never intended.
We might be cautious for another
reason, we're afraid.
We know that if we open the door
too wide if if we let God in who
knows what he might show us
about ourselves and we're
terrified, we are terrified of
being known.
We look down into the recesses
of our hearts those dark caves
and we can't see what's down
there, it's frightening.
So if we come into God's
presence and if we open the door
to him what if he goes down
there or worse what if he brings
something back up?
What will happen then, what if
he turns on the lights?
And so like Lewis our recurrent
temptation is quote, "To go down
to the sea and there neither
dive nor swim nor float but only
dabble and splash."
We tell God he may live in our
house but he may not look in
that closet, that is ours and
ours alone.
We want to preserve some area of
our life upon which God has no
claim, some realm of our own
which is none of his business.
But this is what I'm stressing
you right now there is no such
area, God claims all and while
he is very merciful and will
forgive many failures he will,
according to Lewis, accept no
deliberate compromise.
As Lewis says, "There is no
bargaining with him."
He's not claiming this much of
our time or that much of our
attention, he's not even really
claiming all of our time and all
of our attention he's claiming
us, ourselves, the totality of
who and what we are that is his
claim.
And so we must come into his
presence, we must unveil before
him.
So for the remainder of our time
I want to give you 10 brief
practical bits of advice for
coming into God's presence.
You might think of this as basic
counsel from Lewis about how to
pray because that's what prayer
is, prayer is fundamentally the
meeting of persons.
This is Lewis, "It's a personal
contact between embryonic
incomplete persons, half
persons", that's us, "and the
utterly real concrete person.",
God.
Prayer in the sense of petition,
asking for things, that's just a
small part of it.
Confession and penitence? That's
the threshold.
Adoration? That's the sanctuary.
The presence and vision and
enjoyment of God that is the
bread and the wine.
So 10 practical things about how
you can come into God's presence
here and now and wherever you
go.
Number one, begin where you are,
begin where you are.
One of the mistakes we make is
attempting to jump to adoration
too quickly.
"We know", as Lewis says, "that
the highest encounter with God
is worshipping him for who he
is."
And so we go straight there
launching into praise of God for
his mercy, for his salvation to
us in Christ but if we're honest
this can often feel forced and
so let me encourage you to begin
where you are.
Start with the humblest,
smallest gratitude that you can
think of like the coffee that is
sustaining your attention right
now or a good night's sleep the
God willing you got last night
or the comfort of that chair or
the fact that here on January
4th, 2018 Aslan is finally on
the move though to be honest
he's been taking his sweet time.
The best Gratitude is always
concrete and specific not vague
and general and gratitude- real,
concrete, specific thanksgiving-
is often the on ramp to worship.
Number two, recognize the
benefits and dangers of
enjoyment and contemplation,
these are technical terms for
Lewis.
One of his key insights is
simply this, "You cannot hope
and think about hoping at the
same time."
That's incredibly profound, you
cannot hope and think about
hoping at the same time because
in thinking about hope you as it
were turn yourself around and
try to look at hope but as soon
as you turn around and look at
hope the hope is not there
because hope was there so you
can't do one or the other.
Enjoyment, what he calls
enjoyment, is the hoping and
contemplation is the attempt to
look at the hoping which always
ends up looking at the remains
of the hoping after it's just
vanished.
Now all of us have experienced
this in worship, right?
You're there, you're worshipping
God, you're praising and your
heart rises and then all of a
sudden there's a little voice in
your head that kind of steps
outside and looks at you and
goes what's going on here and
you want to strangle that voice
because he just ruined it.
Now that's the bad kind and we
realize that there is a value in
that kind of interrupting
contemplation, Lewis says the
quickest way to disarm a lust or
an anger is to think about the
lust or anger itself.
Do that, divert your attention
from the object, whatever is
making you angry, the
conversation that you're playing
over and over again.
Stop thinking about that and
look at the anger itself and all
of a sudden you find it begins
to dissolve, there's value in
contemplating not enjoying.
Contemplation helps us to kill
sin but contemplation can be
dangerous because the quickest
way to ruin humility is to
notice it.
This is a Screwtape strategy,
"The patient has become humble
have you drawn his attention to
that fact?"
So you notice your humility, you
start to pat yourself on the
back and then God convicts you
of that, you realize you're
taking pride in your humility
and then immediately a part of
you wants to say look how wise I
am to the devil schemes and you
begin to take pride in the
wisdom of noticing your pride in
your humility and now you have
to repent of that and you can
get lost on the endless merry go
round of contemplating yourself.
Lewis' advice for what it's
worth when that scheme of the
devil is being run on you is to
laugh at him and go get a
sandwich.
So what do you do then when
you're trying to engage with God
and contemplation interrupts
your enjoyment?
Here again is an opportunity for
gratitude.
Take the moment when you're
looking at what just was, an
actual engagement with the
living God but has now been
interrupted by this little
voice, take it as an opportunity
to say 'God, thank you for this.
This thing that was just
happening a moment ago, thank
you for this. What a gift now
help me to return my attention
to you and to your glory and
grace.'
Don't get lost in your own head
but thank God for it and then
use gratitude again as the
onramp to worship.
Number three, come to God as you
are not as you ought to be.
For example sometimes we wonder
whether we can bring our
disordered desires to God like
you know your desires are out of
whack, you know that there's
something that you really really
want, some deep desire that you
have and you fear that you want
it too much- that your desires
are out of order- and so you try
to impress God by praying for
other things and pretending that
you don't want the real thing as
much as you do.
Ok, but he's going 'Yep, done
that'.
Lewis says don't try to fool
God, bring your desires to God
as they are, say it is out of
order, say you do want that
thing too much, say it is taking
up too much time, say it is
becoming an idol in your heart.
So what, where do you take it?
To him.
Let him moderate it, let him fix
it, it might be your coming in
petition and you wind up
confessing that's fine.
Don't try to fool God, it's
tacky!
The main thing is to be honest
about where we are not try to
pretend to be someplace else.
Number 4, beware of vague guilt.
One of the main hindrances that
we have to unveiling before God
is a vague cloud of guilt that
often hangs over us.
Okay, we just kind of breathe it
in and we feel like I can't come
to God because there's something
here and vague guilt is
particularly troublesome because
you can't repent of vague sins,
you can only repent of real sins
and real sins are always
specific concrete sins.
So this means that if you find
yourself in the fog of vague
guilt you ought to begin by
asking God to show you the
details.
Press through the smoke to see
if there is really a fire in
there somewhere and if you do
and if you find that you're
unable to discover any real
concrete sin underneath that
vague guilt lewis councils don't
feel compelled to go rummaging
around until you do, you'll
probably just create scruples
and scruples will not help you.
Instead, Lewis counsels, treat
that vague guilt like a buzzing
in your ears like a nuisance, an
annoyance, something to be
endured as you continue to seek
to unveil in God's presence let
him and his glorious, gracious
present dispel the vagueness of
your guilt that has no
foundation.
Now number five is going to be
related here.
Number five, confess your sins
quickly and specifically because
other times our reluctance to
unveil is not driven by a vague
guilt but by a real guilt and we
know exactly what it is and we
know exactly why we're trying to
avoid him.
We know what the guilt is all
about and we want to avoid the
conviction and in those moments,
this is how I feel so maybe you
feel this way, you often feel
like God is standing there- here
and now, present- watching us
hem and haw and dance and make
excuses and saying to us you
know you're only wasting time.
In those cases the best solution
is the simplest one if there's a
specific scene in your life
confess it to God clearly,
honestly, and forthrightly
without using euphemisms, this
is important.
This means using the biblical
words for sins; I've lied as
opposed to I've not been
entirely honest, I've stolen not
I've used something without
asking.
I've committed sexual
immorality, I've envied another
person or coveted his gifts, I'm
full of bitterness God and
hatred toward that person right
there in particular, I'm puffed
up and arrogant over this thing
in my life, I'm full of anxiety
and fear about that, I'm not
trusting you with my future.
In the same way that you can't
really confess vague sins you
cannot vaguely confess real
sins.
Number six; as you do this ask
God to forgive you not excuse
you.
Often when we ask God to forgive
us we are really asking him to
excuse us but according to Lewis
forgiveness and excusing are
almost opposites.
Forgiveness says you have done
an evil thing nevertheless I
will not hold it against you,
excusing says I see that you
couldn't help it, you didn't
really mean it, you weren't
really to blame so I excuse you.
And so to excuse someone is to
let them off the hook because
they didn't really belong on the
hook in the first place, we
don't blame someone for
something that wasn't their
fault to begin with.
And so "When it comes to God"
lewis says, "what we call asking
God's forgiveness very often
really consists in asking God to
accept our excuses. We want him
to remember the extenuating
circumstances that led us to do
what we did."
And we only extend this to
ourselves not to other people
when other people's sin against
us it's because they are wicked,
when we sin it's because we have
reasons.
"We go away", quote "imagining
we have repented and been
forgiven when all that has
really happened is that we have
satisfied ourselves with our own
excuses."
And so when seeking God's
forgiveness set aside the
excuses and the blame shifting,
if there were extenuating
circumstances, and sometimes
there are, God is more aware of
them than you are.
What is required of us is to
find what's left over after
every circumstance has been
stripped away to find that
little ball of sin that's
hardened in our heart like a
cancer that is what we have to
bring to God because that is
what he must, and because he is
gracious will, forgive.
Number seven, don't camp at the
cesspool.
Some Christians have thought
that one of the chief marks of
Christian growth is a permanent
and permanently horrified
perception of one's own internal
corruption.
"It's like the true Christians
nostrils", this is Lewis, "is to
be continually attentive to the
inner stink. Faithfulness
demands pitching our tent by the
dark caves and the slimy bogs of
our hearts."
Lewis thinks this is a bad idea
but it's not a bad idea because
it's not true.
Ok, this is important.
Some people would say that's a
bad idea because you need to
think well of yourself, you're a
good person, stop being so
morbid about your sinfulness.
That's not what Lewis thinks.
It's not a bad idea because
we're not that corrupt, we are
that corrupt and all of us are
worse than we think, all of us
are worse than we think.
Our hearts really are slimy and
when you look in there it's true
there is depth upon depth of
self-love and sin but what Lewis
commends to us is an imaginative
glimpse of our sinfulness not a
permanent stare.
Because the glimps ought to be
enough to teach us sense, to
humble us so that we don't
regard ourselves more highly
than we are but the longer we
stare the more that we run into
two dangers.
One is that we would fall into
despair, you camp your tent by
the cesspool it's easy to begin
to despair that's what happened
with William Cooper.
Or worse, this is worse than
that, we might even begin to
develop a tolerance for the
cesspool or even a perverse kind
of pride in our little hovel by
the bog.
And so we must cultivate the
practice of imaginative honesty
about our sin, look at it
clearly and acknowledge it, no
hiding it or making excuses for
it but equally we must not
wallow in it either.
We need to know that the sin is
in there, we need to feel the
ugliness of it and then we need
to remember Jesus covers all of
it.
Number 8, surrender
self-examination to God.
In our attempts to lay ourselves
open to God's view we must
remember that self-examination
is really God examination.
"Search me, oh God, and know my
heart, try me and know my
anxious thoughts, see if there
be any grievous way in me and
lead me in the way everlasting",
Psalm 139.
That doesn't make us passive
we're active in
self-examination, examine
yourselves, it's something we do
but our activity is mainly in
opening ourselves up to divine
inspection.
Self-examination is only safe
when God's hand is on the reins.
This is what this might look
like; you surrender yourself to
God, you give Christ the keys to
every room in your heart- no
dark closet held back, no
basement corner off limits, the
whole house belongs to him and
he is free to demolish it if he
deems best.
"You lay yourself open before
him and then you ask", this is
what Lewis says, "for just so
much self-knowledge at the
moment as we can bear and use."
Give me enough self-knowledge,
God right now, so that I can do
something with it.
There may be deeper sins down
there in the black black caves
that we don't yet see but
perhaps we don't see them
because God knows we're not
ready to face them yet, we must
learn to crawl before we can
walk.
God wants us to complete boot
camp before he sends us off to
war and then having surrendered
to God, everything's yours God.
And having asked give me enough
daily little self-knowledge to
be useful we believe, and for
some people this really is the
greatest act of faith that they
do in their day, we believe that
God is fully capable of drawing
our sin and sinfulness into the
light, into our conscious
attention where it can be
confessed and killed.
And in the meantime if we're
daily surrendering ourselves to
God in this way you ought to
forget about yourself and do
your work.
Number nine, don't measure your
success in prayer by your
immediate feelings because these
are often out of your control.
All sorts of things can
influence our ability to feel
properly; diet, exercise,
sitting through a conference for
24 hours, how tired you are.
Emotions are important, we're
Christian hedonists, emotions
matter and you ought to feel
certain things about like grief
for sin, hope in God's mercy,
joy in God's presence, gratitude
for his salvation but one
mistake I've often made in my
Christian life, and this is
something that Lewis calls, is
to try to gin up feelings and
conjure them.
Lewis calls them realizations
for the early part of his
Christian life he thought he had
a few experiences meaningful
ones spiritually and his
measurement of success was
whether or not he could recreate
them so he had worked really
hard to feel that thing again
that he felt before and he
called him realizations.
And so we laid down a program of
permanent emotions which can
only be true if the emotions are
false and forced.
It's a recipe for disappointment
if your immediate feelings, in
any given moment, are the
measure instead if you're coming
into God's present and if he
breaks you down into a wet mess
praise him.
If He fills you with joy that
shoots you into the skies praise
him.
And if you are able to simply be
honest before him with no
fanfare or fireworks, without
great wails and with no great
shouts thank him for the small
grace and keep pressing in.
Ten, finally as we close this
conference with all of the
various paradigms and counsel
and biography and help and
demands for living the Christian
life I want you to remember what
God is really after.
Lewis tells this story about his
wife Joy, "Long ago before we
were married she was haunted all
one morning as she went about
her work with the obscure sense
of God so to speak at her
elbow", ok he's here and now,
"demanding her attention. And of
course not being a perfected
saint she had the feeling that
it would be a question, as it
usually is, of some unrepentant
sin or tedious duty."
Just leave me alone, leave me
alone.
"At last she gave in, I know how
one puts it off, and faced him.
But the message was I want to
give you something and
immediately she entered into
joy.".
This is the great paradox that
we carry with us into God's
presence; God is here and now
and he demands all of us but God
is here now and he wants to give
us everything.
He is for us not against us, he
may not be safe but he is most
definitely good and he won't
settle for half measures because
he loves us and he wants to give
us himself and he can't give us
himself as long as we're full of
ourselves.
But if we give up ourselves, if
we die to ourselves then he will
give us himself and in giving us
himself he will give us back
ourselves.
In fact when we unveil in God's
presence we find we become our
true selves; stable, calm,
strong, full of life and joy in
the world and increasingly
conformed to the image of Christ
from one degree of glory to
another.
Let's pray, Father I'm so
grateful for these friends and
their attentiveness over the
last 24 hours.
It's been a long day and I pray
that what's been said will be
helpful to them for some of
them, for some people, there
were things that were
immediately relevant and for
others there were seeds that
were planted that won't bear
fruit for decades.
All of it belongs to you.
So continue the good work that
you have begun in US long before
today and may this conference be
a little step for all of us as
we seek to live the Christian
life.
In Jesus name we pray, amen.
