Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Averil and I saw our first 3D movie tonight, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and it was great. The 3D was cool I guess but I think I could take it or leave it...certainly cool though. And I thought the movie was great: great story and adaptation and interesting and enjoyable. I don't really like all those movie critics who say it wasn't good...lol...some people are too critical...I'm only critical of the critics...haha...the movie was excellent and highly recommended! I hope lots of people see it and enjoy it and that it does well with the box office numbers and all that!

Sixpence None The Richer

Today I learned where the band Sixpence None The Richer got their name!

“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

C.S. Lewis and Pride

I read this on the Desiring God Blog:

As a new Christian in 1930, C. S. Lewis was learning terrible things about his heart—the unfathomable layers of pride. It is astonishing how similar his description of his own heart was to the description Jonathan Edwards gave of our inscrutable strata of self-admiration.

Here is Lewis writing to his friend Arthur, amazingly within a year after his conversion:

During my afternoon “meditations,”—which I at least attempt quite regularly now—I have found out ludicrous and terrible things about my own character. Sitting by, watching the rising thoughts to break their necks as they pop up, one learns to know the sort of thoughts that do come.

And, will you believe it, one out of every three is the thought of self-admiration: when everything else fails, having had its neck broken, up comes the thought “what an admirable fellow I am to have broken their necks!” I catch myself posturing before the mirror, so to speak, all day long. I pretend I am carefully thinking out what to say to the next pupil (for his good, of course) and then suddenly realize I am really thinking how frightfully clever I'm going to be and how he will admire me...

And then when you force yourself to stop it, you admire yourself for doing that. It is like fighting the hydra... There seems to be no end to it. Depth under depths of self-love and self-admiration. (quoted in The Narnian by Alan Jacobs, 133)

C.S. Lewis Quote

C. S. Lewis: “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusement, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our giving does not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say it is too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our commitment to giving excludes them.”

Sermon on Heaven

I quoted the old beautiful paragraph from The Last Battle in my sermon conclusion on Sunday. Here it is again for anyone to read:

Conclusion

So in conclusion, let me read you an incredible paragraph. If you have read it before, you will probably agree that it is one of your favourite paragraphs in all of literature. It takes place at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia. At the start of the book Jill and Eustace were traveling on a train when they were suddenly thrust into Narnia. After their amazing adventures in Narnia they are afraid they will be sent back home but Aslan (who is a picture of Christ) tells them this good news:

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And then here is the beautiful paragraph I want you to hear:

“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; and in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Heaven will be glorious – both the present Heaven that we go to the second we die, and the future New Heavens and New Earth. Our joy will increase daily forever and ever and ever. I can hardly wait. Tears will be wiped away. There will be no more sickness, no more children dying of aids, no more cancer. There will be no more depression. There will be no more struggles with sin. There will be love and joy and peace and perfect fellowship. There will be Jesus Christ in all His glory.

Final Application

Look forward to it and think about it everyday! Remember everyday that if you know Jesus you will go there not because you are a good person but because of God’s incredible grace in having His Son die on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins. Remember everyday to set your mind on things above. Remember that there is only one life and it will soon be passed and only what is done for Christ will last. So let us dedicate ourselves afresh today to living for eternity, and to storing up treasures and joys in Heaven by being true disciples who are fully committed to Christ and His church and committed to worshiping God, walking with God, and working for God. I wish I could go on but I must close – so come back next week and bring your friends and we will go on to talk about the final New Heavens and New Earth.

C.S. Lewis and Laughter

I read this quote from Josh Harris' blog. It would have fit well with my message a few weeks ago.

Laughter is a divine gift to the human who is humble. A proud man cannot laugh because he must watch his dignity; he cannot give himself over to the rocking and rolling of his belly. But a poor and happy man laughs heartily because he gives no serious attention to his ego....Only the truly humble belong to this kingdom of divine laughter...Humor and humility should keep good company. Self deprecating humor can be a healthy reminder that we are not the center of the universe, that humility is our proper posture before our fellow humans as well as before almighty God..."I suppose," wrote C.S. Lewis, "we should mind humiliation less if we were but humbler."