1. Thanks to Barfield’s opposition, several important things happened to C.S. Lewis.
  2. The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
  3. Jesus’s story in Luke 16 draws definitive attention to whom God helps — namely, God always comes close in order to help those who cannot help themselves.
  4. It is of the utmost importance that pastors teach their congregation that through faith in Jesus Christ, they are fortified against the machinations of the adversary.
  5. Christ shows up in the middle of our storms and our nightmares. That’s where he sets up shop.
  6. Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.
  7. While midnight might seem long, the mercy of God assures us that the morning will come.
  8. This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  9. The Holy Spirit unleashes his power through us, his vines, and we then get to watch as his fruits blossom and ripen.
  10. The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
  11. It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.