it hurts like anything.

For a long time now, I have been a podcast listener, especially when I’m working. Now that I’m no longer in an office, I spend a good bit of my day listening to podcasts or music I really love. I tend to gravitate towards a lot of sermons, or shows like the Popcast or the Bible Binge. If it can make me laugh or think, I’m usually pretty interested. Bonus points for both. Pastor Tim Keller is one of those people who can always make me think. After following him on Twitter for the last several years, I decided to plug into some of his sermons. If you don’t know much about Pastor Keller, he has led one of the prominent Presbyterian churches in New York for years, Redeemer Presbyterian. He is incredibly thoughtful and calm (when you were raised Pentecostal, sometimes, you need a little calm).

As someone who spent a significant amount of time around academia (why did I go to college that second time?) and who watches documentaries for fun (would you like to talk about whales?), I enjoy learning from people who are methodically thoughtful. One of his sermons featured a story from a book dear to my heart - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. My parents spent so much time reading to me as a child. I’ve always loved fairy tales, and no one writes them like CS Lewis. While many came to know him as a Christian apologist, I came to know him as a man who loved his niece so much, he wrote a whole series of stories for her. If you know anything about Narnia, you are probably aware that Aslan is often used as a metaphor for Christ. We don’t see Aslan as often in this book as we did in the first few stories. We are primarily following the story of Edmund, Lucy and their annoying cousin Eustace. Eustace is not a young man who lives in fairy tales, but dwells firmly in reality. He is overwhelmed and unamused when he is thrown into the world of Narnia. He is rude and hateful to everyone. One day, their ship (the Dawn Treader) lands at an island after sailing through terrible storm that has destroyed the mast and other key sailing elements. Eustace, determined to be unhelpful, runs off to hide and take a nap while the others scout for materials and a safe place to make camp. He ends up in the cave of a dragon and falls asleep among the horde of treasure. Because he fell asleep “thinking dragonish thoughts,” he awakes as a dragon. He is terribly frightened - he is in an unfamiliar world, in an unfamiliar body, with no idea how to change back to the boy he was. He manages to find the rest of the crew from the ship and communicate who he is. Over the next several days, he seems to undergo a transformation - helping to gather supplies, lifting heavy objects to rebuild the ship, and keeping the others warm during cold rain. He begins to become more and more fearful that he will never again be Eustace the boy. One night, unable to sleep, he becomes aware of a large lion, illuminated in moonlight. Eustace later said that even though he was a dragon, he was afraid of that lion, illogical as it was. Aslan, for that is who it truly was, urges Eustace to follow him. He leads Eustace toward the pool where he encountered the original dragon (read the Dawn Treader to learn more about this dragon), and tells him to shed his skin and bathe. Eustace begins to understand that like snakes, dragons can shed their skins and become like new. So he claws and rips and tears, and goes to step in the water - but realizes he is still covered in scales. He repeats the process again with the same results. Aslan rumbles, “I will have to do it for you.” He produces the mighty claws of a lion and rips away at the dragon skin, ripping, pulling, and extracting it from Eustace’s body. Eustace told Edmund later that he had never felt such pain! When Aslan was finished, he told Eustace to bathe in the pool (“it smarted like anything at first!”) and when he came out of the water, he was a boy again.

Pastor Keller read the entire excerpt of Eustace’s encounter with Aslan at the pool. I cried quietly at my desk, so moved by this story that I have known since I was a child. He closed with this thought: if you have truly known Jesus, and He has changed you - you know He comes with claws. This Jesus character we see personified through Aslan comes to rip away our metaphorical skin after He commands us to follow Him. Our thought lives, our proclivities, our tendencies, our addictions - He wants to rip all of it away and make us new, make us more like Him. Much like Eustace, this hurts like anything! But Eustace told Edmund, once the smarting had stopped, his time in the pool was the most delicious swim he had ever taken. Friends, the ripping away and the separating hurts like anything. There is no sugar coating it. It is choosing to allow Him to separate you from patterns, places and people that would keep you from being wholly His. It burns and is unpleasant. I often think we do not know what we are asking for when we sing, “God, refine me.” The seasons of refining that I have been through have laid me bare before Him. But what has followed and the relationship I have come to have with Him has been, to quote Eustace, the most delicious swim I have ever taken. The best part for me is knowing that this is only a shadow of what is to come.

If the idea of Jesus with claws is unnerving to you, I am simply asking you to reconcile the idea of the hippie, go lucky Jesus with the Jesus of the Bible. While He is kind and gentle, He is as fierce as a lion. He is holy, and He urges us to be as He is. To be more like Jesus does not mean going to church more, although that is good. It does not mean to do more works in the community, although you should. It doesn’t mean read more books or spend time in seminary, although that is admirable. The only thing that will truly make us to be more like Him is the ripping away and remaking. Everything else is just details. My prayer and deepest hope for you is that you will allow Him to begin and complete this painful work in you. It may feel like everything is falling apart, but maybe, it is really all falling together.

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Nicole Worm is the founder of Redeemed Collective, a recovering perfectionist and is committed to eventually seeing the Atlanta Falcons win a Super Bowl. Also, committed to being dog mom to Bear.