today's 'revealed by the Spirit' devotion was taken from Romans8:38 "I am persuaded...". i really, really am.

below are extracts from 'mere Christianity' by CS Lewis. amazing pieces of writing.

Free will is what has made evil possible. why, then, did God give them free will?: Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. a world of automata - of creatures that worked like machines - would hardly be worth creating. the happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstacy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and woman on this earth is merely milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Why is it so difficult to find happiness?: Satan has put into the heads of our remote ancestors the idea that they could 'be like gods' - could set up on their own as if they had created themselves - be their own masters- invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history- money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery- the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

The reason why it can never succeed is this -- God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. THERE IS NO SUCH THING.