The Secret

I will speak this weekend about something I think is deep within us all (though we may have found ways to cover it up as we grow older). It brings people all over the world to Jesus. For many of us—including your SP—it keeps us convinced that faith in Jesus Christ is real. German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote about it in his poem "Selige Sehnsucht," i.e., a "blessed longing." Goethe said that in the quiet and lovely evenings when we are alone by candlelight, we become aware of a longing for something to fill our inner beings. He wrote that we often wonder whether that longing can be filled with anything in this world. Goethe seemed to think that we will discover fulfillment only after this life is over. For him, "sehnsucht" refers to a deep, seemingly inconsolable, longing for something to satisfy deeply our inner beings.

C.S. Lewis wrote about this longing more than anyone else. He experienced a longing that he called "joy" again and again since he was a boy. For 25 years (until he was 31), Lewis tried to satisfy that deep longing—and failed. On a September evening in 1931, Lewis invited J.R.R. Tolkien to dinner. After dinner, they strolled through the gardens of Oxford, talking late into the night. Tolkien asked Lewis whether it might be possible that, if we have a longing for something that nothing in this world can fill, we might be creatures made for something beyond this physical world. Tolkien shared with Lewis that his own soul was satisfied when he met Jesus Christ. Twelve days later, Lewis told his friend that "I have just passed on...to definitely believing in Christ..."

Lewis compared his conversion to waking up from a sleep, "a long sleep." After his surrender to Christ, he experienced a peace and delight he had never known before. He told a friend that the skies seemed bluer and the grass seemed greener. Lewis believed that we are strangers and aliens in this world and that our true country is Heaven: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world" (Mere Christianity).

This is also what Paul discovered. We will learn from him today as we consider his words "I have learned to be content..." (Philippians 4:11).

To His Glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor