Changed From the Inside Out

I have been aware for several years now that I learn best by visualizing things. Words, pictures, peoples' names, and concepts tend to “stick with me” longer if I am able to visualize them. That must be why God shares “God Moments” with me as a learning tool.

What I call a God Moment is something that God wants me to see or hear or experience. Some of these experiences don't last very long at all – seconds - and others last for several minutes, such as the scenery when Mike and I are kayaking. God just makes them “pop out” and become so very vivid. I treasure these times when God shares his glory with me.

Recently I had some God Moments on the way to and from work, but let me start with the one on the way to work.

On the way to work one fall, crisp morning, I rounded a curve in the road, and the morning sunlight shone on a beautifully rounded spider's web among the trees on the side of the road. In an instant, it was gone, but what I had seen was a perfectly oval-shaped web with all of its woven intricacies. Before I realized it, I had traveled further along the road and had passed that magical moment when the light shining on the web was in a perfect position for me to see it. As quickly as God had shown it to me, it disappeared.

As I traveled further down the road thinking of what I had just seen, I passed a field of tall grasses – a field just waiting to be cut. The dew drops were glistening on the tops of the grasses, and the sunlight shone on them in another beautiful, perfect way. The grasses looked like they were covered with diamonds. Again as I traveled down the road, that shining effect was gone in a matter of seconds.

These quick instances reminded me of another God Moment that happened to my friend, Carol, and me on the way home from work one day. This is yet another example of how God's light in the natural can change things. One summer afternoon about a year ago, Carol was driving us home, and we rode past a pharmaceutical company's manufacturing plant on the right side of the road. Typically we will see a plume of smoke coming out of a small smoke stack in one section of the plant. I casually glanced over to look at the plant. Just at that exact moment, the sunlight shone on the smoke coming out of that smoke stack and gave a prism effect with all of the colors of the rainbow. I was like “Wow!” I turned to Carol and said “Did you see that?” and at the same time, she was saying the same thing to me – “did you see that?” We both witnessed this miracle at just the exact moment. It was an awesome display of beautiful rainbow colors that only occurred because of God's light shining on that plain white smoke that we saw every day.

As I continued my drive to work, I began wondering what this new lesson from God would reveal to me. The first thought I had was about how I just hate walking through a spider's web. Sometimes it's really hard to see a spider's web until you walk right through it. It is at those times that I wonder why God made those spiders! I thought about the spider's web as something that I don't like when I walk through it, but God's shining light demonstrated how beautiful the web was – a magnificent work of art.

And the same with the tall grasses - they would be awfully wet and messy to walk through at that time of the morning because they were covered with dew, but God's light shining on them gave me a very different perspective.

Considering the white smoke at the manufacturing plant, it is not normally something that I think we should be putting into our breathing air. Who knows what chemicals are in there? But God's light gave me a whole new perspective on it.

Without God's light shining on them, the web, the grasses, and the white smoke are ordinary parts of our landscape that we see everyday and take for granted. But the light created a beauty that I would otherwise have missed.

Isn't that the way it is in life? We stress over problems because we can't see any solutions, but when we bring God into the picture & let Him take over, He provides a way through it. We may encounter people who look different in their appearance from what we are used to and are comfortable with, but with God's light shining on them them, they are different creatures on the inside from what we might expect. Situations that might normally present themselves as nuisances could be seen differently with God's light shining on them just as I saw with the light on the spider's web.

For a few days, I meditated on these God Moments, and then God gave me the following scripture:

2 Cor. 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”

Another way to phrase this is: “Having obtained new wisdom, we have become new creatures in Christ because He lives in us.”

Unfortunately I could not find where I read this so I cannot give credit to the author.

With the sunlight shining on the spider's web and the tall grasses, it showed me a totally new perspective about these creations. They looked a certain, ordinary way in the natural, but when God's light shone on them, they looked anything but ordinary. When God enters the picture, things change. When God entered our lives, we changed and became very different creatures on the inside.

Have you ever thought about the development of a butterly? There is a process that God takes us through when we accept Christ into our lives. We are changed. I think it is very much like that of a butterfly's evolution. Very simply, here are the 4 main stages:

Butterfly Christian

1) A butterfly starts its life as an egg.	A Christian's life starts when God comes to dwell inside of them - in His holy temple.
2) The larva or caterpillar hatches from an egg and eats leaves or flowers almost constantly. The caterpillar actually molts or loses its old skin many times as it grows	A Christian begins the slow process of change from the person they used to be into a different person. God directs them to read, study and eat the Word constantly; to find a shepherd who teaches the Kingdom message. They will “lose some old skin” like the butterfly, but it will be from the inside out, as God sends them through trials and hard times to clean them of everything that is not like Him. See the word “molt” for the butterfly's change means to cast or shed in the process of renewal.
3) It turns into a pupa or a chrysalis; this is a resting stage or transformation stage	The Christian grows and matures in faith and love and learns to “dwell in the secret place of the most high and abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1) They are in the resting place of God
4) A beautiful, flying adult butterfly emerges. There is no growth during this stage. This adult will continue the cycle and reproduce.	A beautiful, faithful, trusting Christian emerges from the inside out. They will continue this cycle and reproduce Sons of God. Unlike the butterly, there is definitely growth during this stage and forever as we seek to learn more about God – who he is and who we are in him.

So what does God do to change us and give us a totally new perspective from the inside out? How are we changed by the shining of His light in us?

First, we need to understand about the light.

We know that God is light. Isaiah 60:19 “The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light”. In John 8:12 Jesus says “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” 1 John 1:5 "God is LIGHT, and in HIM is no darkness at all"!

The word “Light” means illumination or luminary. As our pastor has taught us, illumination is the state of being provided with understanding, comprehension, realization, or knowledge of something or someone. This knowledge and understanding of the truth of the gospel is what has changed us.

Listen to these scriptures that tell us about 4 qualities of God's light:

1) Understanding:

1 John 5:20 states “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”

2) Renewal of our minds:

Romans 12:2: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

We have gained and will continue to gain knowledge about Him and His true Kingdom message. You and I are not the same people that we were before God's light shone on us and before we became his holy temple. We see the Word of God with a different understanding, and we see God with a renewed mind. We are beginning to see who He really is as He teaches us and who we are in Him.

In the spiritual, the light coming from the east shines on us and infiltrates us, and we are changed creatures from the inside out. Our eyes are opened, and we are brought out of darkness and into the light. Thank God for that!

3) No more darkness:

In Genesis 1:3-4, it states “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” Darkness comes from the Hebrew word “choshek” which means misery, destruction, death, ignorance, wickedness. Who would want to be in darkness? Who would want to continue to be taught wrong information – that we must die to go to heaven – when we know that we have heaven right here?

Ephesians 2:5-6: “Even when we were dead in sins,” (God) “hath quickened us together with Christ, [by grace ye are saved;] And hath raised us up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

Our old way of thinking definitely has to be changed to understand that we are IN Christ – have come into union with Him.

4) Knowledge of the glory of God:

2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 1:17-18: “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.”

God wants to give us this wisdom. We receive this wisdom when we receive God's grace and salvation. Remember a couple of months ago when we each spoke on the various parts of the Armour of God? I talked about the Helmet of Salvation, and during that message, I referred to “internal combustion”. Let's review this again.

Salvation takes place in the gradual cleansing of our minds and changing of our thoughts or our consciousness. It takes place as we change internally. As I thought about this, the term “internal combustion” came to my mind, and I wondered what internal combustion had to do with the cleansing of our minds. Here is a definition:

“Internal combustion uses a fuel-air mixture to create a controlled explosion in an enclosed chamber. The explosion creates mechanical energy that can be used to power something."

In the spirit, this internal combustion or “controlled explosion” is fueled by the air, meaning the breath of God. This breath of God creates a God-energy that is used to power us and change us for the kingdom of God.

As this cleansing takes place, we begin to take on the mind of Christ, and God burns out of us all that is not like Him.

In the natural, we think of an engine when we use the phrase “internal combustion”, but let me expand on the spiritual definition.

The definition of internal combustion defines this as a “controlled explosion in an enclosed chamber”. Let's examine this:

1^st – “controlled explosion”: Controlled means to exercise restraint over or to hold in check. Explosion or to explode means to burst, fly into pieces or break up violently.

2^nd - “enclosed chamber”: Enclosed means to hold or contain. Chamber means a room, usually a private room.

So let's insert the new definitions to better understand this spiritually - the internal combustion uses air (breath of God in us) to break us up into pieces (or to break up that religious system's old way of thinking) through exercised restraint (in other words, the change does not all take place in one big burst) in a private place that is contained (meaning this holy temple or the secret place of God). This process continues over time, just as it does with the butterfly, and it creates that God-energy that is used to power us and change us for the kingdom of God.

There is a song that I heard recently on KLOVE called “From the Inside Out” by Seventh Day Slumber. I think it has relevance to this message so I want to read a few verses from it:

My heart and my soul                                  Your will above all else
I give You control                                        My purpose remains
Consume me from the inside out Lord           The art of losing myself
Let justice and praise                                    In bringing You praise
Become my embrace                                    Everlasting, Your light will shine
To love You from the inside out                    When all else fails

                                                                  Never-ending, your glory goes
                                                                  Beyond all fame

My heart and my soul                                  Everlasting, Your light will shine
I give You control                                       When all else fails
Consume me from the inside out Lord          Never-ending, Your glory goes
Let justice and praise                                  Beyond all fame
Become my embrace                                  And the cry of my heart
To love You from the inside out                  Is to bring You praise

                                                                 From the inside out
                                                                 Lord my soul cries out

How often do our souls cry out because of what we see happening in the church and society today? In 1 Corinthians, we read about how the church in Corinth allowed the worldliness of the city (or its carnality) to infect its believers. In the book “What the Bible is all About”, it summarizes the situation:

“Practices common to this wicked city soon crept into the church. There were divisions among them; Christians were going to law with Christians before heathen judges; behavior at the communion table was disgraceful; the women of the church no longer observed standards of modesty; the church membership was arguing over marriage and even spiritual gifts.”

Does this sound like thousands of years ago or the present time? Unfortunately – both! It does describe the church over 2000 years ago, but it also describes the church now.

Why??? Because they don't have Christ on the inside any more!

I believe that the body of Christ must change from the inside out to heal the church. For that to happen, each person must change from the inside out. Let God consume each person to change our thinking so that we are the body of Christ – new creatures - united in the Kingdom message

To bring this to closure, let me ask one last question - what does it mean to be a new creation or creature in Christ?

I believe that 1 Corinthians 15:49-55 gives us that answer:

And as we have borne the image of the earthy (a heap, dusty, rubbish), we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (happiness, power, higher elevation, above)

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption (decay, ruin, perish) inherit incorruption.(genuineness, sincereity, immortality, undecaying)

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep,(be dead & unchanged in our thinking) but we shall all be changed. (not necessarily physically but by the renewing of our minds – Ro 12:2)

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, (we don't know when this will happen for each of us; when God will manifest His truth in us) at the last trump; for the trumpet (vibration, sound, message) shall sound, and the dead shall be raised (not the dead in the graves but those in church pews who do not know the truth; to be awakened from sleep, roused from death, stand up, raised from nonexistence) incorruptible (genuineness, sincereity, immortality, undecaying), and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, (deathlessness) then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

This is the change that takes place in us when we receive Christ. He comes to dwell within us; He penetrates and infiltrates us in our heart, soul, spirit and mind; His knowledge pervades our mind and changes to become like His; He cleans out all that is not like him; and we are then, and only then, new creatures from the inside out.

Amen and Amen!

~ Rachel West