From the Inside Out

“My God, I feel it is heaven to please thee, and to be what thou wouldst have me to be.”  (“Consecration and Worship” p. 232 from Valley of Vision.)  I yearn to have this kind of holy desire flowing more powerfully in my heart.  Love for Christ, heartfelt devotion to God is the proper and effective motivation for right living.   When I get so focused on pleasing the divine Audience of One that I lose sight of all other desires and all other audiences, I am on the right track.  But only the Almighty can make this happen!

“…it is heaven to please thee, and to be what thou wouldst have me to be.”   Being what our Lord would have us to be involves much more than occupation or even the ministry we do for Him.  It is primarily a matter of the heart.  First of all it is allowing the living Word and Spirit to shape us on the inside.  

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  Psalm 37:4, ESV.  Does this mean, “If I get happy in God He will give me everything I want?”  Sort of, but please pay close attention – if we really get so focused on God that He is the number one joy in our lives, He is going to be transforming us so deeply that our desires will change!  Think about it, when young people fall deeply in love with a person what is their number one desire?  To be with that person and to make that person happy.  If we delight ourselves in the Lord, more than anything we will crave His presence and burn with desire to please Him.  “And he will give you the desires of your heart”!  

The more we see God changing us on the inside the more that will overflow to the outside!  Let Him shape your thoughts, affections, desires and your choices and actions will flow out of that.  

The Book of Common Prayer offers this prayer (“collect”) for the Fifth Sunday after Easter, “O LORD, from whom all good things come: Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”  The author of this prayer recognized right living starts on the inside!  Right thinking comes before right living.  The Collect for the Sunday before this includes this phrase, “Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”.  “Change me from the inside out” needs to be our earnest prayer.  

Right being precedes right doing.  Right being only comes from profound transformation at the hand of the Master Potter.  The greatest contentment in life is to be the person God intends for us to be.