O, Lewis, you are so helpful...

"The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy. Ever since our Father’s first great victory, we have rendered the former very difficult to them. The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing up as a way of escape. We have done this through the poets and novelists by persuading the humans that a curious, and usually shortlived, experience which they call ‘being in love’ is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding."

This is from C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, letter #18, in which the Uncle Demon Screwtape is advising and teaching his rookie tempter "demon nephew" about how to get a certain human to sin and disobey the Lord.  It's an incredibly helpful and insightful book, and we have been studying it in the C.S. Lewis Reading Group all Fall and now are continuing all Spring. 

We started up again today at noon, and had another student come, named James.  He saw a poster (of which we put up about 100) in Hansen Hall and was very interested.  He contributed do our discussion today several times, and I'm meeting up with him tomorrow afternoon to get to know him a bit and talk about Jesus!  Please pray that God would anoint that time and that perhaps a fruitful relationship would result.


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ps. Want to keep posted on what is going on with the Reading Group? (various articles posted, some sermons and message about or inspired by Lewis?  Then go here!

"Make yourself at home in SDSU’s Living Room"

Courtesy of SDSU's facebook page

This is the opening line of the website for SDSU's "Student Union".  It is appropriate.  The Union truly is the "living room" of the campus.  It's where the vast majority of the food is on campus, where most of the various clubs and organizations have their offices (greek life, University Program council, etc.), it's where the big Campus & Community Fall Festival (C2F2, as they call it) is held each semester.  We just had the Spring "festival" this past Wednesday, in fact.  Student come to the Union to do everything from studying as if at the library, to eating lunch or just hanging out all day (lots of students do this).

The Union is also where we hold a substantial number of activities and gatherings, from Bible studies to one-on-one meetings.  It being the "living room" of the campus makes this a no-brainer, since every single student knows where the Union is, and it is centrally located around most everything.

This past Wednesday we were in the Union for our first Large Group meeting of 2014, this new Spring semester. In fact, this whole semester we are experimenting with having our Large Group meetings in the Union the first Wednesday of each month (four times total).   We have been thinking of moving back onto campus for years now.  There are several details I'll leave out, the basic rational is accessibility to freshmen and sophomores.  It is incredibly easy to walk over to the Union on a Wednesday night, while it is certainly more work and planning to make it to one's car, get off campus, find the church and make it to Equip.  Plenty of students have done it for years, but we are hoping and praying that being on campus may make the access even better and the ability for students to invite and bring their friends all the more fruitful and easy to get them there.