Put a story into the world that resonates enough to start changing that mindset

Seth Godin

https://onbeing.org/programs/seth-godin-life-the-internet-and-everything-sep2018/

What’s magical about this story is that he understood that the worldview, the story of the typical person on the street of New York is not “I wish I could find someone I could give a dollar to.” So people who are making change, and the people you’ve interviewed through the years — that’s what they have in common. That they don’t stand up and say, here is a recitation of things that are true, therefore you must agree with me. What they have figured out how to do is understand the mindset of the person before they even met them. And then put a story into the world that resonates enough to start changing that mindset.

 

Seth Godin

https://onbeing.org/programs/seth-godin-life-the-internet-and-everything-sep2018/

Praise – C.S. Lewis

 

“But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. … The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. … I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

C. S. Lewis

 

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/praise-the-consummation-of-joy

 

What Lewis is touching on here is how the love of God for sinners like you and me is ultimately made manifest. God desires our greatest good. But what greater good is there in the universe than God himself? If, therefore, God is truly to love us, he must give us himself.

 

Here’s how Lewis explained it:

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.

So, Lewis is telling us that God’s pursuit of our praise of him is not weak self-seeking but the epitome of self-giving love! If our satisfaction in God is incomplete until expressed in praise of him for satisfying us with himself (note well, with himself, not his gifts), then God’s effort to elicit my worship (what Lewis before thought was inexcusable selfishness) is both the most loving thing he could possibly do for me and the most glorifying thing he could possibly do for himself.

For in our gladness in him is his glory in us.

 

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/praise-the-consummation-of-joy

 

Psalms 19:1.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.