C.S. Lewis on the Lord’s Prayer: The Fountainhead of Mission Philip Miller, Senior Pastor, The Moody Church March 6, 2021

God intends us for mission. • Matthew 28:18-20 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” o Commission for all of us… Co-Mission.

For the average person… this will not mean preaching or tribal bible-translation or any other official Christian vocation… • It happens in the ordinary stuff of life. o Neighboring o Vocation o Family o Recreation o School

I’m convinced the Way of Jesus is more caught than taught. • We see a life animated by the love of God, and we’re drawn in. o Awakens a longing for real life. § The Spirit draws us in.

o Think in your own life… wasn’t there someone (or many) whose embodiment of the life and love of God… drew you in?

Question: How do we become people like this? • Overflowing with the irresistible life and love of God?

o Mission flows from our Being. o Our Being flows from being with God. o Being with God flows from a life of prayer. § Mission is the overflow of life with God. § Prayer is the inflow of life of God. • So prayer is the fountainhead of mission.

Now we come to a problem: I am ill equipped to guide you here. • But we share two guides in common: Jesus and C.S. Lewis. o Read his letters some years back. “Keeping you in my prayers.” § Prayerfulness was one of the keys to his effectiveness.

The Lord’s Prayer – Matthew 6:9-13 (Luke 11:2-4) • Skeleton by Jesus, fleshed out by C.S. Lewis. o PRAY – Teach us to pray Matthew 6:9-13 “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.]’”

“Pray then like this…”

• Not like Pharisees with words rehearsed to impress. • Not like Gentiles with manipulative emotional fervor. o But like a Child in earnest simplicity: “Our Father…” § The Pharisees and Gentles pray to get things from God. • A child prays to be with his Father.

• Insight… A Grief Observed (from chapter 4) “I know perfectly well that He [God] can’t be used as a road. If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching Him at all.”

§ God will not be used as a means to our ends. He himself is the end.

• In Essence… The World’s Last Night (from the Efficacy of Prayer) – “Prayer is… personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. (Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.) In it God shows Himself to us.”

o Prayer is, at its essence, communion with God.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

• “Our Father” o Father is Jesus’ favorite title of address: 165 times § Greek “pater” // Aramaic “abba” • dada – intimacy o Because of Christ.

o “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” – 1 John 3:1

o “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”” – Romans 8:15

§ Our father – Christ’s, and now ours in Him. • Intimacy. Closeness. Abiding.

• Mere Christianity “An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life—what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself.”

• “In the heavens” – plural o Atmospheric, Cosmic, Spiritual – All three § Enthroned in the heavens § Everywhere and all around § loser than the air we breathe

• Anytime, anywhere… Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 15) “This situation itself is, at every moment, a possible theophany. Here is the holy ground; the Bush is burning now.”

• “Hallowed be your name” o To sanctify, set apart. § Which God already is! o But that we might treat God as he deserves… see Him as He really is. § We are, in fact, praying for ourselves. • He would smash our little ideas of Him with his Holiness.

o God is an iconoclast (image/idol breakers):

• A Grief Observed (from chapter 4) “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?”

• Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 15) “He must constantly work as the iconoclast. Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter. The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking ‘But I never knew before. I never dreamed...’” • A Grief Observed (from chapter 4) “Not my idea of God, but God.” “I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.”

• The Business of Heaven “The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’”

o There are two sides of the equation here… § To encounter God as He really is… Hallowed… • And to approach Him as we really are… Honest…

o But here we have a problem… for we do not know ourselves truly. § 76% of people consider themselves above average drivers. • We do not see ourselves rightly.

• Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 15) “Only God Himself can let the bucket down to the depths in us.”

• Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 4) “We are always completely, and therefore equally known to God. That is our destiny whether we like it or not. But though this knowledge never varies, the quality of our being known can.”

“We must lay before him what is in us; not what ought to be in us.”

• Lewis calls this the “real nakedness of the soul in prayer” in The Screwtape Letters (Chapter 3): “Once… the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur.”

• Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 4) “We have unveiled. Not that any veil could have baffled His sight. The change is in us. The passive changes to the active. Instead of merely being known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view.”

“To put ourselves thus on a personal footing with God could, in itself and without warrant, be nothing but presumption and illusion. But we are taught that it is not; that it is God who gives us that footing. For it is by the Holy Spirit that we cry “Father”. By unveiling, by confessing our sins and “making known” our requests, we assume the high rank of persons before Him. And He, descending, becomes a Person to us.”

• Reflections on the Psalms (from chapter 5, “The Fair Beauty of the Lord”) In the Psalmists’ prayers… “I find an experience fully God-centered, asking of God no gift more urgently than His presence, the gift of Himself, joyous to the highest degree, and unmistakably real.”

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

• The Kingdom of God is the “reign of God” o Psalm 103:19 “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” § Range of his effective will. What he has “say” over.

• We’re praying that the range of God’s effective will would extend and envelope the here and now. o There’s cause and effect here: § May your kingdom come, with the result that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

• This world, hijacked by sin, Satan and death, so full of pain, suffering, injustice and tears… would be put to rights.

• But in this too we are praying for ourselves. o “Not my will but yours be done.” § A prayer of submission… all of ourselves to Him. • “Your will be done”… and often that hurts (crucifixion).

• Notice “Give us this day our daily bread” comes after “Your will be done.”

• The Screwtape Letters (from Chapter 6) – Written from the devils’ perspective: “Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy’s will. What the Enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him—the present anxiety and suspense. It is about this that he is to say ‘Thy will be done’, and for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided.”

• The Problem of Pain (from chapter 7, “Human Pain, Continued”) “What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.”

o As I pray for the Kingdom to come and set everything to rights… § Two main goods: • Submission… “Thy will be done” – in suffering • Compassion/Mercy – extended toward suffering

o As we pray “Your will be done”… § We may ourselves be the answer to our own prayers.

• Letters to Malcolm “I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him.”

§ Praying moves our hearts to align with God’s will and unleashes us unto acts of mercy and justice.

• The World’s Last Night (from “The Efficacy of Prayer”) “We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work, ‘to wield our little tridents.’”

o In praying “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” § We become God’s co-conspirators in bringing Heaven to earth.

“Give us this day our daily bread”

• Bread – Life necessity. Staple. Die without. o Manna daily in the wilderness. § Deuteronomy 8:3 - “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”

• Physical and Spiritual sustenance. o Famished. Parched. Empty. Desperate. Needy.

• Notice: Daily bread

o Lewis knew it takes spiritual discipline to live in the present.

• Letters to an American Lady “The actual present is usually pretty tolerable, I think, if only we refrain from adding to its burden that of the past and the future.”

o CLS knew past regrets and future anxieties conspire to steal our present joy.

• A prayer from Lewis’ personal correspondence March 18, 1952 (Collected Letters) • “Almighty God, who are the father of lights and who has promised by the dear Son • that all who do they will shall know thy doctrine: give me grace so to live by that • daily obedience I daily increase in faith and in the understanding of thy Holy Word, • through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

o Notice his attentiveness to the daily needs of both body and soul.

One of the great mysteries that Lewis wrestled with in several of his writings is this: “How is it that our prayers really do influence the future when we know it is God’s will which will unfold?”

• How do His eternal purposes and our prayerful participation fit together?

• God in the Dock - “Scraps” – A friendly conversation: • “’Praying for particular things,” said I, “always seems to me like advising God how to run the world. Wouldn’t it be wiser to assume that He knows best?” “On the same principle,” said he, “I supposed you never ask a man next to you to pass the salt, because God knows best whether you ought to have salt or not. And I suppose you never take an umbrella, because God knows best whether you ought to be wet or dry.” “That’s quite different,” I protested. “I don’t see why,” said he. “The odd thing is that He should let us influence the course of events at all. But since He lets us do it in one way, I don’t see why He shouldn’t let us do it in the other.” • For Lewis, part of the answer to this riddle of fitting together God’s Eternal Will and our Real Prayerful Participation in outcomes… was found in the notion that God is outside of time: o While we reside in time… a small dot labeled “present” moving down a timeline at 60 sec/min… with past and future relative to our existence… § God himself resides outside of time – and therefore all moments which are to us past, present and future are to Him always “present.” • He is the “I AM.”

• Miracles (from Appendix B: “On ‘Special Providences’ ”) “Almost certainly God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments one following another... every… moment from the beginning of the world--is always Present for Him.”

o So when we pray about a particular event in our future:

“The event certainly has been decided—in a sense it was decided ‘before all worlds’. But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering.”

“My free act contributes to the cosmic shape. That contribution is made in eternity or ‘before all worlds’; but my consciousness of contributing reaches me at a particular point in the time-series.”

“When the event you prayed for occurs, your prayer has always contributed to it. When the opposite event occurs, your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused, for your ultimate good and the good of the whole universe. (For example, because it is better for you and for everyone else in the long run that other people, including wicked ones, should exercise free will than that you should be protected from cruelty or treachery by turning the human race into automata.)”

• The Joyful Christian “Prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.”

• Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 11) “I’m not asking why our petitions are so often refused. Anyone can see in general that this must be so. In our ignorance we ask what is not good for us or for others, or not even intrinsically possible. Or again, to grant one man’s prayer involves refusing another’s.”

“If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?”

• God in the Dock (from the chapter titled “Work and Prayer”) “God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing [prayer]; except on that condition, prayer would destroy us. It is not unreasonable for a headmaster to say, “Such and such things you may do according to the fixed rules of this school. But such and such other things are too dangerous to be left to general rules. If you want to do them you must come and make a request and talk over the whole matter with me in my study. And then—we’ll see.”

o And one’s holiness doesn’t guarantee our request will be granted!

• The World’s Last Night (from “The Efficacy of Prayer”) “For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.”

“I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.”

o “Thy will be done” is the rightful post-script to all Christian petition.

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” • Matthew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

o Unforgiving people are unforgiven people. § Not Causative… but Correlative • Forgive others SO God will forgive me. o Works righteousness. • Forgiven SO I forgive. o Natural and necessary fruit.

§ Unforgiveness comes from Pride. • I have to feel superior to be unforgiving. o And self-righteousness is not the posture of someone who has received forgiveness from God. § Forgiveness comes from Humility. • We’ve been forgiven much… so we forgive.

o Forgiven people forgive people.

• So this prayer is about forgiveness… o The forgiveness we receive… and the forgiveness we extend.

• When confessing, Lewis advises… God in the Dock (“Miserable Offenders”) “It is essential to use the plain, simple old-fashioned words that you would use about anyone else. I mean words like theft, or fornication, or hatred, instead of “I did not mean to be dishonest,” or “I was only a boy then,” or “I lost my temper.” I think that this steady facing of what one does know and bringing it before God, without excuses, and seriously asking for Forgiveness and Grace, and resolving as far as in one lies to do better, is the only way in which we can ever begin to know the fatal thing which is always there, and preventing us from becoming perfectly just to our wife or husband, or being a better employer or employee.”

“Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others. It is healthier to think of one’s own.”

“A serious attempt to repent and really to know one’s own sins is in the long run a lightening and relieving process. Of course, there is bound to be a first dismay and often terror and later great pain, yet that is much less in the long run than the anguish of a mass of unrepented and unexamined sins, lurking the background of our minds.”

• The Four Loves “All those expressions of unworthiness which Christian practice puts into the believer’s mouth seem to the outer world like the degraded and insincere grovelings of a sycophant before a tyrant . . . however, they express the continually renewed, because continually necessary, attempt to negate that misconception of ourselves and of our relation to God which nature, even while we pray, is always recommending to us. No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is love, but because we are intrinsically lovable.”

o In spite of all our unloveliness, He loves us because He loves us.

• January 8, 1952 Letter to Mrs. Lockley (Collected Letters) “I certainly believe (now really, long since with a merely intellectual assent) that a sin once repented and forgiven, is gone, annihilated, burnt up in the fire of Divine Love, white as snow.”

o His kindness leads to repentance. § To be forgiven… • Naturally and necessarily o leads to extending forgiveness.

• The Weight of Glory “As regards my own sins it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by at- tending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent of guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

“This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. To forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son – how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what he says.”

• January 5, 1951 letter to Mrs. Arnold (Collected Letters) - Encouragement “All our prayers are united with Christ’s perpetual prayer and are part of the Church’s prayer. (In praying for people one dislikes I find it helpful to remember that one is joining in His prayer for them.)” o “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

• The word for “temptation” is peyrasmos o Hard word… idea of “test” § Moment of assessment that proves out, reveals what’s really in you. § Test could actually be a trap - Depends on you. § Test could be a temptation – cheat - Depends on you. § Test could be validation - Depends on you.

o School – pop quizzes – the worst! § Had to face reality. Couldn’t cram. • Reveal strengths, expose weaknesses.

o Tests make you face reality. § Think you’re eating well – scale - Forces us to face who we are.

• Jesus is teaching us to pray… o Father, don’t lead us into these tests… into these troublesome tough spots… we might fail… fall § We’re frail and weak… we can’t handle much pressure… steer us clear of tests of life • “Lead us not into temptation…”

• But if we do have to go through them… o “Deliver us from evil.” § Keep us safe to the other side. • May these tests not be traps where we fall, but moments that make us strong o Let this test not take us down. § Preserve us. Sustain us. Keep us. Deliver us.

• Jesus modeled… The Problem of Pain (from chapter 7, “Human Pain, Continued”) “Hence the Perfect Man brought to Gethsemane a will, and a strong will, to escape suffering and death if such escape were compatible with the Father’s will, combined with a perfect readiness for obedience if it were not.” o Lead us not into trials… yet not my will, but yours be done.

o But even trials have a place in the redemptive purposes of God.

• The Problem of Pain “Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”

o But put a little trial, a bit of pain in the mix, and we discover that what we mistook for sanctity turns out to be mere contentment. § Trials in life are sometimes God’s revealing mirror.

• “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

o In trials, pain and suffering, not only does God gain our attention… but over time, our transformation.

• “We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re- commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”

• “Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved.”

• “We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”

• The Screwtape Letters “He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.”

o These light and momentary sufferings are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

• Earthly trials and suffering are preparatory… for glory. o To loosen our grip on earth… and take hold of Heaven.

• The Problem of Pain “The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

o These trials which work redemption in us, are nonetheless a burden to bear… • Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 8) All may yet be well. This is true. Meanwhile you have the waiting. . . And while you wait, you still have to go on living. . .

• The Problem of Pain “when pain is to be born, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”

• Letters to Malcolm (from chapter 8) “I think it is only in a shared darkness that you and I can really meet at present; shared with one another and, what matters most, with our Master.”

o In our suffering, God is with us. § The Father is near to the broken hearted. § The Son is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. § The Spirit groans with us with us. • The entire Triune God weeps with those who weep. o He comes close when everything falls apart.

[For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.]

• Brackets (footnotes): Earliest and best MSS don’t have it. o Used in early church liturgy/worship. § Ends sort of hanging… deliver us from evil… • In the liturgy, it screamed for an ending…

o “Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.” – 1 Chronicles 29:10-13

• When the prayer was recited in the liturgy, ended this way. o Familiar. Copied into Margins. Copied into Text. § When in doubt, don’t leave it out.

• Not original, but biblical (1 Chronicles), and traditional.

3 key terms in this sentence: Kingdom. Power. Glory. • All belong to Our Father – “yours” o Duration – “forever”

• Kingdom - You have the right to rule. o You’re the One True King. • All this universe belongs to you.

• Power - You have the might to make it so. o All power belongs to you. § None can compare to the power of your name.

• Glory - You have the honor due your Name. o You alone are worthy of all praise, and honor, and majesty, and glory forever!

• Father, you deserve all of this… in all the world… and in me. o Your Kingdom, Power and Glory… are my highest joy and greatest treasure. § This is the theme and purpose and mission of my life. • That your “glory may cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.”

o It is, in the end, the only thing that matters.

• The Weight of Glory (from “A Slip of the Tongue”) “If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead.’ Those are hard words to take. Will it really make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or art, whiskey or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies. Does it matter to a man dying in a desert, by which choice of route he missed the only well?”

o But half-hearted beings that we are, we hedge our bets and straddle the fence, we attempt to serve two masters, though Jesus deemed it impossible. § God invites us to live for his Kingdom, Power and Glory… • The very life for which we were made! o But we hold back. § We retain in reserve a measure of our own Kingdom, Power and Glory, just in case.

• The Weight of Glory (from “A Slip of the Tongue”) “This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that sea (I think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal.”

“Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.

“For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention: it is ourselves.”

“For he claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.”

“Swimming lessons are better than a lifeline to the shore.” o Live for the Kingdom… and you shall know His Majesty. o Live for the Power… and you will fall into the arms of Omnipotence. o Live for the Glory… and you shall behold the Radiance of His Countenance.

• The Weight of Glory (from “A Slip of the Tongue”) “He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only in so far as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls.”

o To have Him… is to overflow with joyous praise.

• Reflection on the Psalms "… all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise… The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game… just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.”

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to “appreciate”, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beautitude… The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

§ The Life of Prayer consists of being with God. § To be with God is to come into our own Being. § When Our Being overflows in contagious praise… that is Mission.

• Thus prayer is the fountainhead of mission.

• How do we become those contagious followers of Jesus… o Overflowing with the irresistible life and love of God? § Pray. Pray. Pray.

Close with a poem Lewis wrote entitled…

“Prayer” in Poems Master, they say that when I seem To be in speech with you, Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream --One talker aping two. They are half right, but not as they Imagine; rather, I Seek in myself the things I meant to say, And lo! the wells are dry. Then, seeing me empty, you forsake The Listener’s role, and through My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake The thoughts I never knew And thus you neither need reply Nor can; thus, while we seem Two talking, thou art One forever, and I No dreamer, but thy dream.