Cuz It’s the inside outside
Upside down Kingdom
Inside- outside, upside- down Kingdom. Sounds like a paradox statement. Sounds counter-cultural. Sounds like a phrase Jesus would have said and his audience would have been dumbfounded and confused.
Sometimes I find myself reading a passage in scripture over and over or listening to a sermon over and over and still not quite grasping the fullness of it all. Over the past month and a half that has been me with this song, “Servant of All” by Misty Edwards. I just cannot grasp the fullness of it all. There’s so much deep truth and yet it’s only a 3 minute song.
I want to just break apart a few of the lines in the song with scripture based truths.
Di, Steph, Robyn, and me as we head to ministry ( I’m holding some catch from fisherman)
Cuz it’s the inside outside
Upside down Kingdom
Inside outside upside down Kingdom, what does that mean? All too many times I have fallen into the assumption that God will outwardly bless me and it has clouded my thinking. I have looked for the outward blessings and not completed the inward changing that God still has to do. I listened to a sermon by Brady Boyd and in it he talks about this truth of inside outside working of God. He talked about a day when he received a job offer, a job that he would be crazy to turn down. He described the offer as a dream job; as soon as he got off the phone with the company he told his wife. She was excited as well. He had told the company he would need time to decide, he explained how he was a believer and needed to pray about it. He immediately told his wife that he needed to walk and pray with God for a bit. As soon as he walks outside God says immediately NO. Brady immediately continues praying and God says NO once again. Brady walks back inside the house and just stares at his wife and says we can’t do this, we can’t take the job. He turned down a lot of money and a dream job. Why you ask? Brady describes then how God always works from the inside out.
Our Father in Heaven is delighted and excited to give his children blessings, but as a Father he desires for our hearts to be changed before he can outwardly bless us. God always works in our heart FIRST and then he may desire to prosper us when HE knows our HEARTS ARE CHANGED.
There are different seasons in our walk with God and many times we want the blessings before the building process. But as I learn more about the building process I realize I cannot truly appreciate the blessings without the internal building God needs to do in me first. It’s all about our hearts. Yet as humans it’s so hard for us to fathom that what we cannot see is what needs to be worked on first before outward blessings can flow.
(our bathroom in Mozambique- sink was seperate(= )
This brings me back to the paradox statement of “inside out”. This phrase makes me think about the story in 1 Samuel 16. Samuel is instructed by God to go to Bethlehem to visit a man named Jesse who lived there. Samuel is told by God that the next King of Israel would be one of his sons. 1 Samuel 16 tells the story of how differently the Lord sees things. 1 Samuel 16:7 “But the Lord said to Samuel, “don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” In the end the Lord had picked the youngest son of Jesse- David. The shepherd boy, David, who was not even thought of to tell to come in from the fields. Is it not ironic that just as Samuel did not see correctly at first with Jesse’s sons, so David may have thought there was a mistake. The years that followed this anointing were not followed with amazing royal treatment but with a part of his life running from King Saul who was determined to kill him. God was in the process of building a King for Israel. And the time God allowed David to be changed from the inside out where what made all the difference in his heart, and what separated him as the King of Israel.
(cheetah we saw on our South African safari!)
God may we never postpone the building process because our human flesh wants the outward blessings. God teach us to desire a change of hearts- a change that is unseen.
Romans 12:2 MSG “Fix your attention on God you’ll be changed from the inside out.”
