Friday, July 08, 2011

Schaeffer: internal & external greatness & awfullness

So this is where true spirituality in the Christian life rests: in the realm of my thought-life...

...the reverse of this: the blows of the battle from the external world of man fall upon me outwardly.  The blows fall in many ways...All of them come upon me in the external world, but if they stayed in the external world of the body, as though it were a machine, they would being no tears to me.  Instead they flow through my sense, my body, into that which I am in the thought-world.  And as the blows come to my thought-world, I either say "Thank you" to God, as we have already considered, or I rebel against Him.  In either case the result is soon seen in the external world...

...That is even after I am a Christian I can be a death-producing machine;  though I have life, eternal life, if I yield myself to Satan instead of to Christ, I can be an instrument of death to this external world.  How sublime to be a man, made in the image of God!  But how sobering, that I can bring forth out of my thought-world into the external world either that which leads to life or that which produces death in other men.

TS, pp106-107

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