God stoops to conquer - Mountain Movers

“God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense all His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give and nothing to receive. Hence, if God sometimes speaks as though the Impassible could suffer passion and eternal fullness could be in want, and in want of those beings on whom it bestows all from their bare existence upwards, this can mean only, if it means anything intelligible by us, that God of mere miracle has made Himself able so to hunger and created in Himself that which we can satisfy. If He requires us, the requirement is of His own choosing.

“It is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up “our own” when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.” – C.S. Lewis*

Good God Almighty,

Thank you that you invite us to you, even when we seem to prefer everything else to you. Thank you that you open your hand and satisfy our desires. Thank you that you are with us in trouble and you answer us when we call upon you. You are righteous and faithful in all your ways and actions. Give us a deep and abiding hunger for you because we know only you can satisfy us. Deliver us and show us your salvation, we ask in Jesus’s name, Amen.

“He will call on me, and I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble,
    I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.” (Psalm 91:15-16 NIV)

“The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.

The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and faithful in all he does.” (Psalm 145: 15-17 NIV)

* From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in Words to Live By