Saturday, July 11, 2009


Why is life seam to always be in such a big hurry all the time. Maybe its not so crazy busy for you but it sure is for me! it seems that the day is just started and it is gone already. I am beginning to read Desiring God by John Piper, as always it is challenging for me. The questions that I end up asking myself are these. Does God satisfy all my desires? Am i content with God and nothing else? Can I trust God with every aspect of my life? Am I motivated by the pleasure of God? The concept that joy should be our motivation in serving God makes perfect sense yet I struggle with putting it into practice. I think I will give you a quote from C.S Lewis from his sermon the "Weight of Glory"


"If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, love. You see what has happened? a negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this of more then philological importance. the negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily securing good things for others, but but going without them ourselves,as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the christian virtue of love. The New Testament has a lot to say about self-denial but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our lord finds our desire not to strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased.

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