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When C.S. Lewis esteems another author’s work, that is a pretty good indication to me that I should take notice. Lewis wrote, “I was brought back…by the strong influence of two writers, the Presbyterian, George MacDonald, and the Roman Catholic, G.K. Chesterton.” In A Year with G.K. Chesterton, we get a small glimpse of what Lewis found so appealing.
Much like the multitude of genres in which Lewis wrote, Chesterton, too, shows an incredible skill to produce quality works in wide-ranging genres: prose, poetry, fantasy, theology, and political and cultural commentary, to name just a few.
Chesterton was well known for his quick wit and—at times—biting sarcasm. And yet, he could also speak so tenderly of a pastoral scene as he described how this scene showed us hints of heaven. It would be utterly impossible to pigeonhole him into just one genre of literature.
In A Year with G.K. Chesterton, editor Kevin Belmonte takes us across the full scope of this prolific author’s work. Because Chesterton was a devout Catholic, each day’s reading begins with a portion of Scripture, followed by an excerpt or two from Chesterton’s works, which illuminate the day’s Bible verses. Then we get an “On this day” portion, which may include an entry from Chesterton’s personal correspondence or insight into a momentous event on that particular day in Chesterton’s life. As you read through this overview, you may find yourself gravitating to a particular book or genre. I would encourage you then to track that book down and dive in.
After spending a few minutes with this insightful author for a full year, you will not only know more about him but you will have a new lens with which to read the Bible and to observe God’s creation all around you.
Here’s a quote from John Piper that got me thinking: “God loves His people. He loves for them to get good food, rich food. He knows how to put His shepherds in the vice of affliction and squeeze out of us authentic, prayer-soaked, desperation-flavored insight—the unsearchable riches of Christ for the joy of His people.” Pastor, God wants to use you to shepherd the flock He’s placed under your care. So trust Him to give you what you need. And check out my book When Sheep Bite to help you along through this journey.
“Do more than go to church; be the church. Find a place to serve in the promises of your pastor and fight for that vision like it was your own. Do more than give what’s left; give what’s right. Do more than show up as a consumer; show up as a partner, knowing the day will come when you will need partnership to see your dream come to pass. If your promise is concerning business, then be the best employee of the people for whom you work. If your promise will need generous people involved to make it happen, then be generous in the promises of others. If your promise is about your family, be a blessing to the families of those who are around you. Make their dreams come to pass and you will plant the seeds that will, in time, become the fruit of your God-given why.” —Jim Wiegand, in Why is Greater Than What
“You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, ‘Take up your Cross’—in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’ He means both.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
T.M. Moore is beginning a new series of posts on the importance of the spiritual life for the Christian. He writes, “We may thus define the spiritual life in terms of Christ exalted as our focus, Christ indwelling as our sustaining power, Christ at work in and through us as the outcome of our discipleship, and Christ returning as the hope which sustains us through the tests we encounter every day. True spiritual life, in other words, is all about Jesus Christ.”
“The truths of eternity have an infinite power. They are often powerless because we do not give them time to reveal themselves. Taking time to be alone with God is the only remedy. … The Word that we get from the mouth of God brings the power to know it and to do it. Let us learn this lesson: personal fellowship with God alone in secret can make the Word alive and powerful.” —Andrew Murray
Dr. Thaddeus Williams unpacks what Charles Darwin meant when he wrote to a friend, “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.” Check out Dr. Williams’ post, which he opens with, “If our minds came from a capital “M” Mind—God—gifted to us as truth-knowing mechanisms, we have a reason to reason. But if our minds came from a non-mind, a literally dumb process of random mutations and natural selection, then our minds are not fundamentally truth-knowing mechanisms, but mere survival mechanisms.”
“Our first birth brought us into sin and sorrow, but our second birth brings us into purity and joy. We were born to die; now are we born never to die, ‘begotten again’ unto a life that shall remain in us for evermore, a life which shall even penetrate these mortal bodies, and make them immortal, ‘by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’” —Charles Spurgeon, commenting on 1 Peter 1:3-4
Patience is a leadership builder, just as surely as impatience is a leadership killer. When leaders repeatedly make poor choices because of their impatience, there is only one way to fix this leadership killer—lengthen the fuse.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau
“Christian sorrow leads to repentance; repentance leads to forgiveness; and forgiveness leads to true joy over one’s reconciliation with God.” —Henry Halley, commenting on James 4:9-10; c.f. Psalm 32:1
“People who were not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity. But usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important. You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
“And so I labored hard to be a man of full integrity in all my dealings, being careful not to fall into temptation, lest the pagan should some pretext have to denigrate my good episcopate and to disparage me.” —Patrick of Ireland
With all the activity inside even the tiniest of cells, how do the cells keep their proper shape? Scientists have discovered a process called CorMR. “Researchers found that CorM, a protein inside the system, forms thin strands just under the inner cell membrane. CorR, another bacterial protein, helps place those strands in the right area. An additional system, MinC, helps keep them away from the cell ends and the division site.” This is just another example of the precise details our Creator superintends in all He has made!
Thomas S. Kidd writes, “Given the mixed personal record of the American Founders, what accounts for our nation’s impressive history of Christian devotion? The most important factor was the Lord’s providence working through thousands of churches to spread the gospel. A second essential factor in America’s robust religious history was the unusual freedom that churches and Christians enjoyed due to religious liberty.” Check out this thoughtful post about the story of Christianity in America.
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Recently, I read two wise authors who spoke the same message to my heart on the same day.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity wrote—
“And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians ‘being born again’; it talks about them ‘putting on Christ’; about Christ ‘being formed in us’; about our coming to ‘have the mind of Christ.’
“Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out—as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity.”
And Andrew Murray wrote in The Inner Life—
“It is not the interest or success of my Bible study. It is not the increased insight or understanding I am obtaining that brings health and growth to my spiritual life. Rather, this often leaves me very unspiritual with little of the holiness or humility of Christ Jesus. Something else is necessary in order for spiritual growth to take place.
“Jesus said: ‘…My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me…’ (John 4:34). We must take a small portion of God’s Word, some definite command or duty of the new life, and quietly receive it into our will and our heart. We must yield our whole being to its rule and vow in the power of the Lord Jesus to perform it. Then, we must go and do it—this is eating the Word. We take it into our inmost being until it becomes part of our very life.”
Praying a prayer in which I ask God to forgive me of my sins because I believe what Jesus did for me on the Cross is the first step into a new life.
But, tragically, many people stop there.
They believe praying this prayer was both the means and the end. They think that now they have secured their place in heaven and they can simply resume their daily routine—with the exception of adding in some church attendance during their weekend—until “the end.”
They expect that this end will be a very long way off, and it will come to them peacefully, only after they have lived a full and pain-free life. In short, they love the idea of Jesus as their Savior, but they very much want to remain the lord and master of their own life. So they will express their gratitude to God when things are going as they have planned, and they will sulk and angrily, tearfully implore His help in prayer when their plans have gotten off track.
Jesus cannot be merely our Savior—He must be our Lord and Master as well.
The Holy Spirit wants to transform our lives. The Bible calls this process sanctification, but I like to call it saint-ification. This is the daily and ongoing process to bring increasingly more Christ-likeness to us. This is not a replacing of our personality, but a revealing of our real selves as God intended.
Our lives are to grow, expand, and glow with the presence of Christ in us. We are to become more and more satisfied in God as the Holy Spirit conforms us into the image of Christ. Our eternal abiding in God’s presence is to begin the moment we invite Him into our heart—and then continue uninterrupted even after we take our last breath on earth.
As our lives are transformed, we become living, breathing testimonies to others of the life-changing power of God’s love in us and through us.
Our daily transformation becomes our daily testimony. What joy and fulfillment there is in allowing this to happen!
Knowing Jesus as your Savior is amazing, but don’t miss out on the best part of all: Knowing Jesus as your Lord, allowing the Holy Spirit to transform you, and becoming a living testimony of God’s love!
It’s not possible for you to have experienced everything that those around you have experienced. But you can still empathize with them through an empathetic volley of statements and questions. This is what exemplary leaders do.
“The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.’” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity
There are so many resources today to help Christians defend their faith. Check out this post from John Stonestreet and the numerous books you might want to add to your library.
“If we are to influence the Church and the world around us, we must be full of God and His presence. Everything else must be secondary to this one question: How can we have the power of Christ resting on us all day long?” —Andrew Murray
Clinton Manley wants to know why Christians don’t play more. “The Hebrew word most often translated as ‘play’ (śāḥaq) comes from a verb meaning ‘to laugh.’ Intensify that verb, and you get ‘to sport, play, or celebrate.’ So we can say play is to action as laughter is to sound. At its best, laughter is a sound that both expresses and intensifies joy; similarly, play is an action that expresses and intensifies joy. Thus, play can involve almost any activity…as long as it is done from joy and for joy.”
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” —Goethe
J. Warner Wallace shares writings from ancient historians—in fact, those hostile to the claims of Christianity—that point to the historicity of Jesus.
Sometimes leaders will have to part ways with a staff member. The way this is done can either bring resolution or it can create lingering problems. Check out this clip from our conversation on combatting toxicity in the workplace.
I thoroughly enjoyed this commentary from John Piper on the power of silence in the face of critics and revilers. Pastor John noted, “Both the teachings and the sufferings of Jesus are meant to teach us how to respond when we are treated badly, unjustly. We are to glorify God by finding in Him the reward that satisfies our heart deeply enough that we don’t need to return evil for evil.” I really leaned into this supernatural response to critics in my book When Sheep Bite.
“To preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection. … The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought: what we call the ‘gospels’, the narratives of Our Lord’s life and death, were composed later for the benefit of those who had already accepted the gospel. They were in no sense the basis of Christianity: they were written for those already converted. The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it.” —C.S. Lewis, Miracles
“We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why. We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best, and in my view, this benefit of physical activity is far more important—and fascinating—than what it does for the body. Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain.” —Dr. John Ratey
“When it comes to leadership, attitude becomes even more important. You need to see possibilities when others don’t, encourage people when they are feeling defeated, and demonstrate commitment when others want to quit.” —John Maxwell
J. Warner Wallace not only makes the case that original accounts in the Gospels haven’t been changed over time, but he also shows how the corroborating sources affirm the original account—
Doing the duty God has commission you to do isn’t about making you happy. It’s about helping others and glorifying God. Don’t look for the easy way out, but trust that God has empowered you to do your duty!
“We must see that we are no good unless God takes charge of us. When God has real control of us, our future takes on a new outlook. What a wonderful open door of opportunities for God to use us!” —Smith Wigglesworth
“Great men may make despotisms; but democracies make great men. The other main factory of heroes besides a revolution is a religion. And a religion again, is a thing which, by its nature, does not think of men as more or less valuable, but of men as all intensely and painfully valuable, a democracy of eternal danger. For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King.” —G.K. Chesterton
Fossils show some creatures being much larger in the past. This report from ICR reminds us, “This is just one more example of the widespread phenomenon of fossil giantism. Many pre-Flood fossil creatures were gigantic. These include not just extinct giants like dinosaurs but also the ancestors of creatures that are still alive today. … Obviously, the staggering size of many fossil creatures suggests they had access to abundant food and lived in an environment that was, even after the Fall, still “very good” in many ways (Genesis 1:31).”
“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” —Mother Teresa
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” —Maya Angelou
“What was the pitch that covered the Ark? Many have wondered what this could have been. Was it oil or some type of tree resin? A newly discovered Roman shipwreck has revived this debate. But this time, maybe it offers a resolution.”
In discussing how Thomas Huxley coined the term agnostic, John Stonestreet and Dr. Glenn Sunshine note, “If God is rational and created an orderly universe and human beings in His image, we can study the universe. Without these assumptions, there is no reason to assume the world is knowable or that humans are able to know. It is the theistic assumption, not the agnostic assumption, that grounds science. By rejecting God, scientists undercut the foundations for their work.”
“There will come a time when every culture, every institution, every nation, the human race, all biological life is extinct and every one of us is still alive. Immortality is promised to us, not to these generalities. It was not for societies or states that Christ died, but for men.” —C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory
“If Patrick Henry could arise from the dead and revisit the land of the living, and see the vast system and social organization and social science which now controls, he would probably simplify his observation and say, ‘Give me death.’” —G.K. Chesterton, speaking in New York City’s Time Square Theatre in 1921
T.M. Moore has an excellent series of posts about God and reason. In the post Since God is Reasonable, he writes, “If we are sluggish in reason, so that we do not like to have to think hard and long about matters; or if our skills in reasoning are inadequate, poorly honed, or rusty from disuse, then we should make it our business to overcome our laziness and improve our use of reason, since the great prize of reasoning with and knowing God lies open to us.”
I’m always impressed by the historicity of the Bible. “Archaeology has demonstrated that numerous people, places, and events within the books [of Ezra and Nehemiah] are historically accurate,” says this post.
“The Jewish high priests went once a year into the Holy of Holies. Each year as it came round demanded that they should go again. Their work was never done; but ‘He entered in once,’ and only once, ‘into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.’ I love that expression, ‘eternal redemption’—a redemption which really does redeem, and redeems forever and ever. If you are redeemed by it, you cannot be lost; if this redemption be yours, it is not for a time, or for a season, but it is ‘eternal redemption.’ Oh, how you ought to rejoice in the one entrance within the veil by our great High Priest who has obtained eternal redemption for us!” —Charles Spurgeon
“It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be expected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks.” —G.K. Chesterton
“No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as ‘what a man does with his solitude.’ It was one of the Wesleys, I think, who said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion. We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another. … We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” —C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
“One will wickedly say, ‘If I am a child of God, I may live as I like.’ That is damnable doctrine. Another will say, ‘If I am a child of God, I shall not want to live as I like, but as God likes, and I shall be led by the grace of God into the path of holiness, and through divine grace I shall persevere in that way of holiness right to the end.’ That is quite another doctrine, and it is the true teaching of the Word of God.” —Charles Spurgeon
How’s your EQ? We spend a lot of time (maybe too much time) on IQ, but how high is your emotional quotient? Leaders need this self-awareness, and it starts with humility.
“Sin is the most expensive thing in the universe. If it is forgiven sin, it costs God His only Son. If it is unforgiven sin, it costs the sinner his soul an eternity in hell.” —Charles Finney
J. Warner Wallace writes, “What sets Christianity apart from every other theistic worldview is its foundation in history. Many belief systems offer beautiful wisdom and moral guidance—collections of proverbs that inspire and instruct—but they don’t rest on claims that can be examined or tested. … Christianity is different. It rises or falls on a historical event—the resurrection of Jesus.”
“The Love of God is kinder than the measure of man’s mind.” —A.W.Tozer
“If you are worried about the people outside [the Body of Christ], the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man’s fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work.” —C.S. Lewis
Fight The New Drug writes, “Research links porn use to changes in brain circuitry, lower relationship satisfaction, increased loneliness, and shifting sexual expectations.” Check out 17 reasons to not watch pornography.
“But if we are describing, for the moment, the atmosphere of what is generous and popular and even picturesque, any knowledge of human nature will tell us that no sufferings of the sons of men, or even of the servants of God, strike the same note as the notion of the Master suffering instead of his servants. … No mysterious monarch, hidden in his starry pavilion at the base of the cosmic campaign, is in the least like that celestial chivalry of the Captain who carries His five wounds in the front of battle.” —G.K. Chesterton
When C.S. Lewis esteems another author’s work, that is a pretty good indication to me that I should take notice. Lewis wrote, “I was brought back…by the strong influence of two writers, the Presbyterian, George MacDonald, and the Roman Catholic, G.K. Chesterton.” In A Year with G.K. Chesterton, we get a small glimpse of what Lewis found so appealing. 
