The Screwtape Letters

by C.S. Lewis

the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.

Although we receive Christ's grace and restoration, our physical bodies and minds still experience the presence of sin and crave self-satisfction (curse of the fall) - hence why Screwtape is so confident in his ability to reconvert new Christians. It is our duty to seek out each other and hold each other accountable.

Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.

Wow. The enemy does have a way to allow us to drown in our own imagination and standards of what a spiritual experience should look like. But what we forget is that prayer is an already powerful act in itself, and it's actually God who does the work!

humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose.

Because of our sinful nature, of course