An excerpt from The Great Divorce

I'm currently reading C.S Lewis' The Great Divorce, which is an allegorical novel about one man's experience of Heaven and Hell. The main character, who has not yet been named (I'm only about halfway), boards a bus and meets a plethora of supernatural beings and finds himself in a beautiful forest (a place like Narnia perhaps--minus the talking wildlife). Here he learns that there are significant consequences for living life apart from knowing Christ. He realizes this through encounters with other spiritual beings, who seem to be abounding in peace and joy, whilst he and his other bus-mates, find themselves struggling to enjoy the scenery due to the local plant life wreaking havoc on their ghost-like bodies. The following excerpt I found particularly profound. The main character is eavesdropping on a White Spirit trying to tell another ghost, one who calls himself a skeptic of the resurrection of Christ, that it has come to a point for the skeptic to either give up his endless search for truth (for he confidently suggests that there is no end to his thirst for knowledge), or choose to live the futility of his quest in Hell:

"Listen!" said the White Spirit. "Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now."

"Ah, but when I became a man I put away childish things."

"You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage."

Wait, shouldn't I know this already?

I found the following passage very encouraging/convicting. It's an excerpt from Martin-Lloyd Jones's book, Spiritual Depression: it's causes and cure. D. Martin-Lloyd Jones is the man. Or a man. But he's a wise one for a sure.

"Do not think in terms of bargains and rights in the kingdom of God. That is absolutely fatal. There is nothing so wrong as the spirit which argues because I do this, or because I have done that, I have a right to expecting something because I have done that, I have a right to expect something else in return. This is met with frequently. I know very good evangelical people, who seem to be thinking like that. 'Now,' they say, 'if we pray for certain things, we are bound to have them, for instance if we pray all night for revival we must have revival.' I have sometimes described this as the 'penny in the slot' idea of Christianity. You put in your coin and you draw out a bar of chocolate or whatever else you want...

...but that surely is to deny the whole principle which our LORD is teaching. I do not care what it is, whether prayer or anything else, in no respect must I ever argue that because I do something I am entitled to get something--never. And of course the principle can be seen to be true in practice...

...Let us get rid of this bargaining spirit, that if I do this then that will happen... The Holy Spirit is LORD, and He is a sovereign LORD. He sends these things in His own time and His own way. In other words we must realize that we have no right to do anything at all...even rewards are of grace. He need not give them, and if you think you can determine and predict how they are to come you will be quite wrong. Everything is of grace in the Christian life from the very beginning to the very end. To think in terms of bargains and to murmur at results, implies a distrust of Him, and we need to watch our own spirits lest we harbour the thought that He is not dealing with us justly and fairly.

If you start in that way you end by robbing yourself. I like the way in which our LORD teaches that. If you strike a bargain with God, well then it is almost certain that you will just get your bargain and no more...O Christian friends, do not make bargains with God. If you do, you will get only your bargain; but if you leave it to His grace, you will probably get more than you ever thought of. Of the Pharisees our LORD says: 'Verily they have seen their reward.' They do these things in order to be seen of men; they are seen of men, that is what they wanted and that is all they will get, they will get no more..."

Second Letter

excerpt from The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

In a conversation...with a person of piety, he told me the spiritual life was a life of grace, which begins with servile fear, which is increased by hope of eternal life...consummated by pure love, that each of these states had its different stages, by which one arrives at last at that blessed consummation.

I have not followed all these methods. On the contrary, from I know not what instincts, I found they discouraged me. This was the reason why, at my entrance into religion, I took a resolution to give myself up to God, at the best return I could make for His love, and for the love of Him, to renounce all besides.

For the first year I commonly employed myself...with the thought of death, judgment, heaven, hell and my sins...such was my beginning, and yet I must tell you that for the first 10 years I suffered much. The apprehension that I was not devoted to God as I wished to be, my past sins always present to my mind, and the great unmerited favors which God did me, were the matter and source of my sufferings. During this time I fell often, and rose again presently. It seemed to me that all creatures, reason and God Himself were against me, and faith alone for me. I was troubled sometimes with thoughts that to believe I had received such favors was an effect of my presumption, which pretended to be at once where others arrive with difficulty; at other times, it was a willful delusion, and that there was no salvation for me.

When I thought of nothing but to end my days in these troubles (which did not at all diminish the trust I had in God and which served only to increase my faith), I found myself changed all at once; and my soul, which till that time was in trouble, felt a profound inward peace, as if she were in her center and place of rest.

Ever since that time I walked before God, simply, in faith with humility and with love, and I apply myself diligently to do nothing and think nothing which may displease Him....

...when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit and all my soul lift itself up without any care or effort of mine and it continues as it were suspended and firmly fixed in God, as in its center and place of rest. I know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion and self-love...yet I cannot bear that this should be called delusion, because the soul which thus enjoys God desires herein nothing but Him. If this be delusion in me, it belongs to God to remedy it. Let Him do what He pleases with me; I desire only Him and to be wholly devoted to Him.

Profound.

"The problem is that there are important aspects of our experience that we ignore. Many of us...refuse to face our feelings of shame. They make us feel too vulnerable. so we pretend they do not exist and hope they will go away. Or it may be our broken and wounded self that we try to deny. When we do so, however, these unwanted parts of self do not go away. They simply go into hiding. If for example, I only know my strong, competent self and am never able to embrace my weak or insecure self, I am forced to live a lie. I must pretend that I am strong and competent, not simply that I have strong and competent parts or that under certain circumstances I can be strong and competent. Similarly, if I refuse to face my deceitful self I live in illusion regarding my own intergrity. Or if I am unwilling to acknowledge my prideful self, I live an illusion of false modesty.

Our knowing of ourselves will remain superficial until we are willing to accept ourselves as God accepts us--fully and unconditionally, just as we are. God's acceptance of us as we are is not in any way in conflict with Divine longing for our wholeness. Nor is our acceptance of our self. But until we are prepared to accept the self we actually are, we block God's transforming work of making us into our true self that is hidden in God. We must befriend the self we seek to know. We must receive it with hospitality, not hostility. No one--not even your own self--can be known apart from such a welcome...

...Until we are willing to accept the unpleasant truths of our existence, we rationalize or deny responsibility for our behavior.

If God loves and accepts you as a sinner, how can you do less? You can never be other than who you are until you are willing to embrace the reality of who you are. Only then can you truly become who you are most deeply called to be.
Some Christians become quite upset at the suggestion that self-acceptance must precede transformation. They argue that self-acceptance is the exact opposite of what we are supposed to do to the parts of self that do not honor God. What we are supposed to do, they say, is crucify them, not embrace them.
Scriptures seem clear enough about the importance of crucifying out sin nature (Romans 8:13). But attempts to eliminate things that we find in our self that we do not first accept as part of us rely on denial, not crucifixion. Crucifixion should be directed toward our sin nautre. And we must first accept it as our nature, not simply human nature. Only after we genuinely know and accept everything we find within our self can we begin to develop the discernment to know what should be crucified and what should be embraced as an important part of self.
Freud noted that things about ourselves that we refuse to acknowledge are given increased power and influence by our failure to accept them. It is that which we avoid, he asserted, that will most tyrannize us. In this he was absolutely right. Self-acceptance does not increase the power of things that ultimately need to be eliminated. Rather, it weakens them. It does so because it robs them of the power that they develop when they operate outside of awareness and outside the embrace of self-acceptance."
[The Gift of Being Yourself, David G. Benner, 53, 56-57]