Facing the True "I"

“We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are exceptional single acts and make the opposite mistake about our virtues – like the bad tennis player who calls his normal form his ‘bad days’ and mistakes his rare successes for his normal. I do not think it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long, inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed, and self-complacence, simply will not go into words. But the important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

True Humility is Born in the Presence of Christ

“The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.” Phillip Brooks

“He, Jesus, understands the relationship of faith: that if anyone continues in loving relationship with Him, it is His love that preserves it, not the love of the other, nor all the piety, nor all the goodness a Christian can muster. …” His heart cries out to His vulnerable Friend, “Peter, Peter, Christian! Soon, in pain, you will discover that it’s not your love, not your goodness or knowledge, or prayer, no, not all your strength that keeps us together. I do that. I alone, your Lord, do that.”

Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion

Pharisees ... The Great Pretenders

The deadliest attitude of the Pharisees that we exhibit today is not hypocrisy but that which comes from unconsciously living a lie.

Oswald Chambers

Remember

“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
Samuel "Dr." Johnson

Particular Persons

“ O Lord, catch us up … in the whirl of your holy history. We seem to be but particles in the wind; but you declare each one of us to be a particular person, spokes in the great wheel of your covenant-loving of the world.

Let us be meek in your kingdom, but not abject; humble, not self-pitiful; obedient, not obsequious; servants, not servile; childlike, not childish; yours in love and willingness, and then our smallness shall be your greatness indeed.”

Walter Wangerin Jr., Preparing for Jesus

God ... You Must Do This I Cannot!

"The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure. ...

All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, ‘You must do this. I cannot.’"
C.S. Lewis

I'm not Afraid!

"I'm not afraid! I was born to do this!"
Joan of Arc