When God speaks...

I really would rather just curl up in a ball and not take the challenge. I've rather liked my easy life. And then I hit a really rough spot in life. And then Pastor Mike has to go and preach on intentionality (something I thought I was doing well. Um, no). And then tonight I sit down to finish Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. And this is what God must be wanting me to really get today...

"When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level putting him into situtations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us."

And a little earlier in the chapter he says,

"'Make no mistake,' [Christ] says, 'if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not...understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life...whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect.... This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less.'"

"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people': but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience."

Dang it. Gotta leave the pity party early and start doing that brave, patient, loving, obedient thing.