Building A Mansion

 

Good day! I’m Duane Matz and this is Today’s Living Word:

 

I have been re-reading the classic “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it and if you haven’t read it in a while, again I highly recommend you pick it up and go through it again, one chapter at a time, and be sure to bring your marking pen!

 

I was reading his chapter on “Counting the cost,” and almost ran out of ink as I underlined some of his thoughts on Christ’s admonition to “Be ye perfect.”  There is much to be said in response to this admonition, and although Lewis doesn’t mention the verse specifically, this chapter could be summed up in the words from  Php 1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;

When God calls you to saving faith, He has more in mind for you than cleaning up your more obvious sins. You and I are,  “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.(Eph 2:10) 

Lewis quotes the Christian writer George MacDonald  who pointed out, “every father is pleased with at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm , free, manly walk in a grown up son.”

And like a good earthly father, we can be sure that if we fall, He will pick us up again.

 

One of the dangers associated with coming to Christ is once Jesus has cleaned up our obvious gross sins we are inclined to stop there and feel that now we are “good enough.”  But God wants us to continue down the road and strive toward perfection. (there’s always more work to be done in that arena before we get to heaven! Amen?

 

Lewis says “to shrink back from that plan is not humility; it is laziness and cowardice.” (Ouch) Of course we know that “the job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible in this life.”

 

One more quote from the chapter: When you came to Christ, Lewis says, “you thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace,”

I might add that with every step of obedience and trust, we take in the here and now is just more material for that mansion Jesus is building for you in heaven!

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word