Pastor Steve’s Weekly Letter for Thursday, August 28, 2008
If you need to be encouraged or challenged in your walk with Christ, then I encourage you to read The Weight of Glory, an essay by C. S. Lewis. It is available online (just do a ‘Google’ search), or you can buy a paperback copy at almost any bookstore. You can read it in less than an hour, but you will be thinking about it for weeks! I re-read it every year, and yesterday happened to be the day that I pulled it off the shelf.
What I love about The Weight of Glory is the way that Lewis helps us think biblically about desire and its connection to our ultimate destiny. Lewis reminds us that while the New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, self-denial is not 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.”
Desire, then, is a good thing. It is even a holy thing. The problem is that in a fallen world, “the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object.” So, says Lewis, we fool around “with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. . . . We are far too easily pleased.” Our challenge is to realize that the beauty we experience in books or music or relationships as well the good memories from our past are simply “good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols.” What we really desire is a better country – life in the new heaven and new earth! Our desire frequently gets misdirected or misplaced in a fallen world.
There’s another problem, though. The pain of life in a fallen world has a way of killing our desire. I love what Lewis says about this. He is so blunt that he makes me laugh and cry at the same time! He writes: “Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning.” Wow, that’s my world! It’s your world! Life is tough, but our longings will not go unfulfilled forever. They point us to a better life. As the Apostle Paul says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
Hopefully, our worship and our times together as a church family will awaken the desire that we have for life in God’s presence and the glory that goes with it. This Sunday, August 31, we will consider one more ‘back to school challenge.’ Clay Edens, our Pastor of Youth and College Age Ministries, will preach from Matthew 5:33-37 on “Speaking with Integrity. Then, on Sunday, September 7, we will have a “Celebration Sunday,” including a “Celebration Picnic” at noon. If you have not yet signed up for the picnic, please do so by this Sunday, August 31! Our Fellowship Team needs to know about how many will attend in order to prepare for this event. The way to sign up for the picnic is to fill out the little donation envelope that will be available again in Sunday’s bulletin. Your donation will not only help with the cost of the food but also goes toward the expenses of the afternoon’s entertainment. Also, if you plan to bring friends, include them in the number of people you indicate on your sign-up envelope.
If you have questions about the back-to-back worship format which will begin on September 14, please go to our web-site and check out the answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about it.
Finally, have a safe Labor Day weekend. We plan to be here this weekend. We’ll celebrate Labor Day by watching football on Saturday – Luke’s first high school (freshman) football game in the morning and then Trinity International University’s game on Saturday afternoon. Manny Deanda, whom our daughter, Erin, is dating, plays for Trinity. Then, some of us will watch the Missouri-Illinois game on TV Saturday night. Of course, I look forward to worshipping together with you on Sunday. I’ll you on Sunday!
