Yikes, my legs still hurt from Tuesday. I couldn't go yesterday because I went to institute last night. We discussed Jeremiah 16:16, Ezekiel 37, and a few other scriptures (we are currently studying the Old Testament). We also discussed Christ and temptation, and I was enthusiastic in sharing what James had taught me concerning Christ, and the preciousness of His gift of Atonement.

Brother Christensen then shared a quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity that really explains the reality of temptation and the gloriousness of Christ's Atonement:

"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly
idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an
obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.
After all, you find out the strength of the German Army by fighting it, not by
giving in. You find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it,
not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply
does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad
people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a
sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil
impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the
only man who never yield to temptation, is the only man who knows to the full
what temptation means-the only complete realist" (C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity).

Because I love C.S. Lewis so much, I thought I'd close this blog by including a few more miscellaneous quotes from him. Enjoy.


"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."


"The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting."


"[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation."


"Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them."


"God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense."


"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..."

For more quotes, check out this page:

Quotes from C.S. Lewis