Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters was literally the first C.S. Lewis book, except for Narnia of course, that I was able to read critically. The imagination of Lewis truly shines like a light in the darkness. As Christians we are constantly tempted, but what constantly eludes us what it really behind those temptations. Lewis uses his powerful gift with words and his unparalleled gift of imagination to portray a small sense of what the devil may be utilizing. What I thought was interesting was how the devil does not necessarily use any evil of his own, but instead uses our own perverted nature and sinful desires against us. What I thought was so shocking in the entire book was the devils aversion to prayer. Screwtape begs young Wormwood not to allow his patient to pray, not to communicate with God. It made me ponder exactly how powerful prayer is. Prayer is our defense against wills of the devil. Interestingly enough we don't pray for God's own assurance or understanding of what we need, for God obviously knows what we need even better than we know. God gives us prayer as assurance to us, without prayer we lose hope. We are like children who need constant reminders to learn things, constant time and a constant parent saying that everything will be fine. Without prayer we are turned away from God and turned towards the only thing we have left ourselves. Once we become reliant on ourselves the devil can then come in and in a sense use us against ourselves.
Screwtape also focuses heavily on the issues of church attendance, habits, and desires. The tempter desires to sink us into an apathetic state, where outside out church life or christian surroundings we live hypocritically, but we can justify ourselves because we "still attend church or have christian friends" we are a social representative or idea of what a good christian is to what everyone who sees us.
As we constantly fight against temptation we must never under estimate what we are up against. It is very reassuring however that we are told in scripture that God will never give us over to temptation that we cannot overcome. We are held in the palm of Gods hand and must remember that all things work together for the good of those who serve the Lord.