Learn Humbly: Changing From the Inside Out March 10, 2010

Learn Humbly:

Changing From the Inside Out

March 10, 2010

One Month to Live

30 days to a no-regrets Life

by Kerry and Chris Shook.

Principle 1: Live Passionately, Living each day as if it were your last.

Principle 2: Love Completely, showing others love that transcends and transforms.

Principle 3: Learn Humbly, growing through your problems and pain

Principle 4: Leave Boldly, Creating a legacy that will impact generations

Day 19, March 10, 2010—Changing From the inside Out

“Making room for that which is capable of rejoicing, enlarging or calming the heart.” — Gerhardt Tersteegen

“How does one become a butterfly?…You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” –Trina Paulus

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 12:2

People who discover that their time is limited often make radical lifestyle change. They give up workaholism and slow down the pace of their lives. They relinquish the pursuit and collection of material possessions and finally enjoy the fullness of what they already have. They rediscover the simple pleasures of curling up by a fire with a good book or sharing a picnic in the shade of a huge oak tree on a summer day.

Our restlessness manifests itself as a dis-ease of the soul, a growing discontent that has reached epic proportions today. We make much more money and enjoy many more conveniences than our grandparents did, yet most of us are not happier. We decide that a vacation will enable us to slow down, but when we arrive at our destination, we discover that we have forgotten how to relax. We have difficulty spending time alone. We don’t know how to connect with ourselves, let alone those we love most.

Motion Sickness

We move at such a rushed pace each day that we begin to suffer from spiritual motion sickness. To counter the motion sickness, we move even faster. Were always moving to the next big thing, new house, new car, new spouse, a new relationship. The restless of your soul can’t be satisfied with things.

Paul suggests that we must be transformed. The word “transformed” comes from a Greek word, metamorphous, from which we get metamorphosis, literally meaning “to be changed from the inside out.” Faith-filled maturity is changed from the inside out.

“If you have to move one inch from where you are right now to be happy, you’ll never be happy.”

The antidote to the motion sickness of our souls is stillness, the ancient art of just being still. “Be still, and know that I am God!” Psalm 46:10. Motion and commotion steal the soul, but stillness restores the soul.

When was the last time you were still? When was the last time you turned off the television and just sat quietly? When was the last vacation that you did not check e-mail or answer your cell phone?

Mission Control

We are people who enjoy being in control. We control our image, our problems, and our pain. We try to control other people, but they don’t always cooperate, and it’s frustrating. The antidote to the control-freak fever that we all experience is solitude, time to be silent with ourselves and with God. Time with God reminds us of how little control we actually have over our lives and how faith and trust are God’s ways of prevailing in our lives.

Comparison Compulsion

Another symptom of our soul’s dis-ease is when we feel compelled to compare ourselves to everyone around us in order to know who we are and what we’re worth. When we use status symbols to determine our worth and identity relative to others, our souls will dry up. Once again, this is trying to change from the outside in, not the inside out.

Metamorphosis originates within. In butterflies, the coloring on their wings is not caused by pigment but rather by a prism like effect as light is reflected off their transparent wings. Transparency transforms in our lives too.

The opposite of metamorphosis is the Greek word metaschematizo, meaning “to change the outward appearance.” We get the word masquerade from its root. God wants a metamorphosis, not a masquerade.

Service is the best antidote for comparison compulsion. Service transforms us from comparison to compassion.

Crisis of Comfort

Often our goal in life is to be comfortable. Yet when our commitment to comfort affects our pursuit of God, we can become stagnant, bored and depressed. The final symptom of soul sickness in modern life emerges when we try to insulate ourselves from pain, suffering, inconvenience, and discomfort. The comfort-zone virus will steal our happiness and shrink our soul.

You don’t have to go looking for suffering. Suffering will come into your life. I wish I could promise that, “If you love God, you’ll never have a death in your family, never lose your job, never have a failed relationship, and never get sick.” But that is a promise I can’t make. Suffering comes to all of us. God offers his grace in the midst of the suffering.

Grace is the power to change – not what we can do for ourselves but what God does for and through us. Metamorphosis comes only by grace.

If you had one month to live you would want to:

Stop the ceaseless motion of a busy life and enjoy stillness. Stop the comparisons and look for ways to love and serve others. Stop living for comfort and drink deeply of God’s grace.

Prayer: Lord, come and be lord of my life. Help me this Lent to slow down and be still with you. Show me ways to love and serve others in tangible ways that change my life. Enrich my life with your grace and change me from the inside out. Allow my soul to find its rest in you. Amen.