The Divided Self-Centered Life

I had to copy the whole text of this document because it just really rings true with some things that I (and I'm sure others) have faced recently. Anyone who knows me, knows I read My Utmost For His Highest. This is taken from the August 19th entry and can be found at the following link (http://www.rbc.org/utmost/index.php). I also posted it here so that I could come back and read it again and again over the coming weeks. Without further delay:


God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— "Come to Me . . . ." The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.

Was Christ Simply a Great Moral Teacher?

Well, while all of our internal connectivity is undergoing maintenance here at work, I guess I can post something. It's been a long time since I've done so and I feel as though I am neglecting a friend from whose companionship I could benefit greatly if I'd only take the time to sit down and talk to them.

Today's inspiration for writing comes from a quote by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (Lewis 1952, pp. 43).

There's a lot to take in here, but I think what really gets to me is the statement "...but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to...". Christ makes no small effort in expressing that He is the Son of God, endowed with the very divinity of God. The disciples make no efforts to disguise this and all but one of them were killed proclaiming this truth adamantly. There is no middle ground on the deity of Christ. Either He is the Son of God or he is, as Lewis states, a madman.

Within my own soul, I have struggled with this question. "Is He really still alive? Is He really the Son of God? Was He just an exemplary man?" Within my own heart I have settled upon these responses based on the evidence He has shown me. The answers to the first two questions are most emphatically "YES" and the answer to the last question is "No".