The Ultimate Success

“A faith that doesn’t require success, doesn’t need success is the ultimate success.” -Tim Keller, sermon “A Better Resurrection”

Do You Want Grass or Wheat?

C.S. Lewis:

“The almost impossibly hard thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is remain what we call “ourselves”- our personal happiness centered on money or pleasure or ambition–and hoping, despite this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you cannot do. If I am a grass field–all the cutting will keep the grass less but won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat…I must be plowed and re-sown.”

as quoted in Tim Keller, The Reason for God, 172.

Illustrations: Conversion

“Five years ago I came to believe in Christ’s teaching, and my life suddenly changed, I ceased to desire what I had previously desired, and began to desire what I formerly did not want. What had previously seemed to me good seemed evil, and what had seemed evil seemed good.  It happened to me as it happens to a man who goes out on some business and on the way suddenly decides that the business is unnecessary and returns home. All that was on his right, now is on his left, and all that was on his left is now on his right; his former wish to get as far as possible from home has changed into a wish to be as near as possible to it. The direction of my life and my desires became different, and good and evil changed places…” -Leo Tolstoy