Inside Out

            The other day I went on a drive through a neighborhood of absolutely gorgeous houses. I looked up a couple of the houses, and some of them cost up to as much as $4 million. The landscaping was beautiful. There were huge fountains, lots of flowers and plants, and even some private tennis or basketball courts at almost every single one of these houses. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the inside of many of those houses, but I’m guessing they were probably incredibly beautiful as well.

But imagine I walk into one of those houses and it is nearly empty besides dust everywhere, bugs crawling out of cracks in the walls, spider webs draped across the ceiling, and it actually isn’t very pretty at all. The outside would’ve been a complete misrepresentation of what the inside was really like. Just as these statement could be true for a house, it could also be true for your life.

Maybe you put on a good front and act like you have it all together. Maybe it seems like from the outside everything is going well, but really on the inside it’s the exact opposite. Maybe you’re hiding struggles or sins from the people that think they know you the best or from God. Whatever it may be, the beautiful thing is that God can make us new and help us fix up the areas of our lives where we fall short.

As spring is finally here and maybe you have some spring cleaning to do on your house or your yard or whatever it may be, it may also be time to take a look at your life and do a little spring cleaning within yourself. Maybe you’ve made some bad choices or made some mistakes and you’re feeling like a mess on the inside. It doesn’t have to end there and you don’t have to feel the pain of those mistakes forever. God has the ability to cleanse and make you new.

In 2 Corinthians, God says that if we are in Christ we become a new creation in Him. No matter how much of a mess you really feel like you are on the inside, God has the ability to restore you and make you new. Just as the new flowers grow and the weather changes, God can change you too if you let him…

 ^“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”- Romans 12:1-2 The Message (MSG version)