I have a new ambition. My new ambition is not to praise my Creator but to be praised by my Creator.
In The Weight of Glory CS Lewis writes: “I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child—not a conceited child, but in a good child—as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised…. Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator…: the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared.”
He continues: “I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God… to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
My motivation, my driving force for success, my ambition to reach lost souls and to build Christ’s Church is not so much to praise my Creator but to be praised by Him with the words, “Well done good and faithful servant!”
