Wednesday, February 4, 2009

How about 'them apples'?
When God comes and upsets the applecart of your life, do you stop and spend time picking up the apples? No, you leave them scattered and follow Him. You drop everything. You count all your losses as rubbish, as Paul says (Phil 3:8). You don't stop to bury the dead. Get thee behind me, Satan. Isn't this what Lewis is basically saying in Ch. 14 (end) when he says, "Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased."

After hearing a call our focus must be outward, not inward, and our attention given to removing and avoiding the "obstacles" to responding (moving closer to God). We see that in Ch. 27, when our "patient" (I'm starting to like that guy!) lays his problem of distraction in prayer before God and makes it "the main theme of his prayers and his endeavors. . . Anything, even a sin, which has the total effect of moving him close up to the Enemy makes against us in the long run."

So, the attention we give to our sins (weaknesses), and our attitude toward them, is to repent and move on, hopefully to thrust away once and for all (knowing it's not so easy) the roadblocks of sin as so much chaff, so we can walk in His Way. (Ps.1). This is our "work" of "progressive conversion." I think that's a fitting end for Eden's "apple," don't you?