When Statues Start To Breathe
In his classic book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote: “A man who changed from having [natural life] to having [spiritual life] would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man. And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumour going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.” With trademark creativity and insight, Lewis is saying that in Christ God has already made us spiritually alive, and one day he will do so finally and fully; we will become totally and forever the people God made us to be.
Over the past six weeks we have been on a journey through the book of Psalms to become more awake and alive to God. Of course, the good news of Christianity is that God, by his sovereign initiative and because of his divine grace, wakes us up to his reality and makes us alive to him. In the words of Ephesians 2: “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…” (vv.4-5). Because of Christ we have been ushered into the privilege of walking through life awake and alive to the reality and goodness of God. We are on a journey with God and to God.
My prayer and hope for this series has been that we all might pay conscious attention to our relationship with God; that we might ask God to open new doors to us, so that, in the words of Ray Ortlund: “…we become light-hearted and free and brave, our fellowship and our music and our gatherings become electrified with his presence, and this church makes an impact to the ends of the earth and to the tenth generation in evangelism, justice, reconciliation, education, child-rearing, the arts, government, scholarship, philanthropy, creativity, everything.” Amen.
We finish the series this Sunday, but we will never finish the journey of life with God. My encouragement to you in this final week is to commit to taking one small step to draw nearer to God this year. It might simply be reading a psalm or some other portion of Scripture when you wake up or before you go to sleep. It might be setting a reminder in your calendar at a certain time during the day to remind you to pray. It might be to commit yourself to attending corporate worship on a Sunday more regularly. It might be memorising Scripture. It might be reading the Bible with your kids after dinner. It might be turning off the radio in the car to enjoy some time of quiet prayer and reflection, or to listen to an edifying podcast. The steps we can take are endless, and we can’t do it all, but we can all do something. So, let’s all take a step to draw near to our great God, who has already drawn near to us in Christ and by his Spirit.
Next week I look forward to kicking off a new 4-week sermon series called ‘Lost and Found: The Heart of Jesus’. We will be looking at a few episodes from the life of Jesus that reveal his heart for those who don’t yet know God. Our hope and prayer for this series is that we will all be moved to reach out to those in our lives with the good news of God’s love in Christ. We are especially hoping to encourage you to invite someone to our upcoming ‘Easter on the Lawn’ event and our Easter services. Please join me in praying that God would fill our heart with love for the lost and move our hands, our feet, and our mouths to action.
Grace and peace,
Adam
