Narnia: Aslan On The Move Series

Aslan Is On Them Move pt. 2 of 5

[This message makes use of audio clips from Focus on the Family Radio Theater’s audio version of “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.]

“You have a good imagination!” Paul Friskney describes that statement as an effective way to compliment a child or criticize an adult.

Last week we talked about our life as story and that understanding the truth that our life only finds meaning in the grander story that God is writing through history, really can give us the framework to discern the next steps we ought to take. If you believe that it should help us learn to play and dream and work and love with meaning.

You and I are free to imagine because even our imagining finds a right focus in God’s story.

This month we’re going to learn from the biblical tracks in the classic book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, now also a movie. How many of you have already seen “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe”?

This morning we’re going to step into a world of fantasy that may help us think better about the world of reality. And, I want to pull back the curtain on where I’m going with this, this morning. I’m aware of some of the challenges some of you are dealing with in your life. There are many, many more that I’m not aware of, here is the key: God is.

Some are on the front edge of a life crisis. Some are a long way into the very long and painful journey. Still others are in a good season and may even feel guilty for being there or think it will always be this way-that maybe now you can coast because you’ve got it figured out. In all this, wherever you are in life you need to know this…God has a plan.

God’s design is that you would know Him well and enjoy Him a bunch. The way He has designed us to do life requires that we lean hard into Him. If you’re wondering about your next step in this life adventure, you can only come to know of your next step on your knees. God designed you and me for relationship. We can only do life well if we learn to listen well to the One who made us…the One who loves you…the One who has both the wisdom and power to pull off His plan.

In The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children find themselves away from their parents and everything familiar to them. They’re in a strange, huge house and left to themselves. Lucy, the youngest of the four kids discovers a mammoth wardrobe that she can’t resist. And she crawls in. The feel of fur on her skin pulls her further in, to the second row of coats. Then she feels the cold and the scratchy branches of trees. Lucy took her first steps into the land of Narnia completely alone. And, God had a plan.

There are several layers of aloneness in the early part of this story. The Pevensie children are separated from their parents which may well help us understand the most important steps we take in life, we have to take on own. As much as parents may want some kind of insurance for their children there isn’t this kind of life insurance available. We have to either give ourselves to worry or we have to take the place of God, or we come to the place where we bow to the One who loves us and our children even more than we do and release our grip and understand, God has a plan.

Lucy is even separated from her brothers and sister. She is the youngest of four and probably able to count the number of times she’s been all alone on one hand. Maybe one finger. So, this is really a strange experience her. And probably uncomfortable. For her and for you. Really alone.

The point, I think, is that we enter the spiritual world alone. We can see the wardrobe; the invitation, and pass it by. We can feel the cold and turn around. We can see the invitation to a new world of trusting God, a world that’s completely foreign to us and run back to the familiar.

Or, we see the light and are drawn to it.

The entry point into the world of Narnia is the wardrobe and the marker on the other side is… the lamppost. The light.

John 12:35-36 Jesus replied, "My light will shine out for you just a little while longer. Walk in it while you can, so you will not stumble when the darkness falls. If you walk in the darkness, you cannot see where you are going. Believe in the light while there is still time; then you will become children of the light."