Obedience

Miracles 4.13 "But from observing what happens when Nature obeys it is almost impossible not to conclude that it is her very 'nature' to be a subject."

.....in obeying, a rational creature consciously enacts its creaturely role, reverses the act by which we fell, treads Adam’s dance backward and returns. //The Problem of Pain//, chapter 6, paragraph 13

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end. 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened." //The Great Divorce//, chapter 9, paragraph 38

'Regular but cool' in Church attendance is no bad symptom. Obedience is the key to all doors; feelings come (or don't come) and go as God pleases. We can't produce them at will, and mustn't try. //Collected Letters//, to a Lady, 7 December 1950

....in obeying, a rational creature consciously enacts its creaturely role, reverses the act by which we fell, treads Adam's dance backward and returns. //Problem of Pain//, chapter 6, paragraph 13

Do not be deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never in greater danger than when a human being, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our enemy's will, looks out on a world from which every trace of him has vanished, asks why he bas been forsaken, but still obeys. //Screwtape Letters//, Letter 8, 2nd paragraph from the end

We therefore agree with Aristotle that what is intrinsically right may well be agreeable, and that the better a man is the more he will like it; but we agree with Kant so far as to say that there is one right act -- that of self-surrender -- which cannot be willed to the height by fallen creatures unless it is unpleasant. And we must add that this one right act includes all other righteousness, and that the supreme canceling of Adam's fall, the movement 'full speed astern' by which we retrace our long journey from Paradise, the untying of the old, hard, knot, must be when the creature, with no desire to aid it, stripped naked to the bare willing of obedience, embraces what is contrary to its nature, and does that for which only one motive is possible. The Problem of Pain, chapter 6, paragraph 14

"I thought," she said, "that I was carried on the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent me drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming. I feel as if I were living in that roofless world of yours where men walk undefended beneath naked heaven. It is a delight with terror in it! One's own self to be walking from one good to another, walking beside Him as Himself may walk, not even holding hands. How has He made me so separate from Himself? How did it enter His mind to conceive such a thing? The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths--but it seems there are no paths. The going itself //is// the path." //Perelandra//, chapter 5, 11th paragraph from the end