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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Devotion: Inside Out

 

Inside Out

 

Luke 11:39-40   39 Then the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  40 You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?

 

Right now, there are two coffee cups sitting on my desk.  They look the same from the outside, but if you were to walk up and take a peek into them you would realize that one of them has stale coffee from a week ago encrusted into its porcelain while the other has never been used and is sparkling clean.

Neither of which is what God intends for our lives: 

One of them looks good from the outside but the inside is a mess.  The other has never been used for its mission and has sat passively on my desk.

God, rather, intends to restore us and then use us in the world. 

God has chosen to come into this world, to love, care, die, and be restored for us.  This makes it possible for all of us to experience an amazing love that fills our cup, in order that we may live our lives as a response to God’s love.

God seeks to clean up the mess within our own lives.  He does not want us just to look good from the outside, but also to be made whole inwardly so that God can place us into difficult situations where we pour out the love of God to those around us; where we can demonstrate a life filled with God’s mercy and grace. 

What areas of your inward life is God seeking to clean up?  What ways are you allowing or preventing him from entering that mess?

What ways are you being used by God to pour into the life of another person?  Who may be someone around you in need of a word of hope?

 

 

1 comment:

Mary said...

God doesn't have the same relationship with all of us, and we have different relationships with God at different times in our lives. To some God is more like a Father, to others a Friend, a Lord, a Lover, a Conqueror. A woman will have a different relationship with God at eighty-two than she did at fifteen.

Since we're all different, God has different plans for our lives. There are people called to live in solitude and there are others called to head social committees. Some are called to prayer, some to help the poor, some to destroy a nation, some to have sex.

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