Lessons from a CS Lewis Tweet

I subscribe to @CSLewisDaily on twitter. A while ago, a tweet caught my eye which I meditated on this morning: "God cannot give you happiness outside of himself".

If he could, he would. The nature of God's kindness is such that he would do almost anything to ensure his beloved are happy. However, the limitation of our human design is that we cannot attain it outside of a relationship and constant fellowship with him. It's written in our DNA.

The best way I can describe it is to use marriage as an analogy. In marriage, you make a conscious decision to entrust the provision of your deepest emotional needs to your spouse. That's the way marriage is designed. If for instance, a woman's emotional need is conversation, a husband could choose to ignore it due to his punishing schedule. He could say: I can't adjust my habits and personality for my wife. After all she knew who I was before she married me". The decision not to change effectively sentences the wife to a lifetime of unhappiness. The man suffers too, for as every good man knows, when his wife is not happy, he isn't as well.

It's the same thing with a relationship with God. We could ask: Why did you enter a relationship with Him, if you weren't willing to accept the parameters"? If you choose not to change and make time for him, you sentence yourself to a lifetime of misery and hurt him too.

Try a little experiment. Spend 5 minutes each morning for a week, just talking to him - Letting him know what you think of him, what confuses you about him. Tell him your fears, challenges, hopes and dreams. I'd like to know how it goes. Tell me in a week.