Every faculty you have is given you by God.

[soso]

On God

As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out,

 every father is pleased /at the baby’s first attempt to walk:

no father would be satisfied /with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son.

In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”

I think () [every one //who has some vague belief in God], until he becomes a Christian,

has the idea of an exam or of a bargain in his mind.

[The first result of real Christianity] is [to blow that idea into bits]. 

When they find [it] [blown into bits],

some people think () this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. 

They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! 

In fact, of course, He knows all about this. 

[One of the very things () Christianity was designed to do] was [to blow this idea to bits]. 

God has been waiting /for the moment //at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam

or putting Him in your debt.

Then comes another discovery. 

Every faculty () you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment,

is given you /by God. 

If you devoted every moment of your whole life /exclusively to His service

you could not give Him anything //that was not in a sense His own already. 

So that when we talk of a man /doing anything for God or giving anything to God,

I will tell [you] [what it is really like]. 

It is like a small child /going to his father and saying,

“Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.”

Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. 

It is all very nice and proper, 

but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence /to the good /on the transaction. 

When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. 

It is after this [that real life begins].

* It is = [that real life begins].

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in Words to Live By