This Christmas, I saw one of the most unique ornaments I’ve ever seen. As
soon as you see it, you think how beautifully and exquisitely this glass
decoration is painted. But what’s amazing is that none of that artwork is
on the outside of the ornament. It’s been painted entirely on the inside!
For centuries, the Chinese have perfected this “inside painting.” Through
a small opening in the ornament, the artist repeatedly inserts a miniature
brush to paint the artwork. Of course, the process is painstaking and time
consuming. It takes two days to just paint one ornament, but the result is
a beautiful, one-of-a-kind miniature masterpiece.
It takes quite an artist to make something beautiful from the inside out,
and God is the master of that! Every one of us needs His beautifying
touch, because every one of us carries our share of ugly inside us. And it
keeps spilling out in our words, our attitude, how we treat other people,
and it causes trouble. It causes hurt.
It’s like there’s this Grand Canyon between the person I want to be and
need to be and the person I really am. The battles are different for each
of us, but we all battle our dark side; things that the people close to me
hate, things I hate, things God hates. The ugliness of self-centeredness,
of our destructive anger and the scars we leave with it, the deceit, the
passions, and the addictions that we can’t seem to master; all those
things I say and do that hurt people I love and often people who don’t
deserve it. We want to change. We can’t.
And we’re frustrated by so many attempts we’ve made to be the right kind
of person, to finally find some inner peace, to find a purpose that just
gives every day some meaning. We look to religion to help us be what we
need to be, but there’s a problem. Religion basically tries to redecorate
us from the outside and it keeps coming off! Jesus said of some very
religious people in His day, “On the outside you appear to people as
righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness”
(Matthew 23:28). There’s some of that in all of us.
But for those of us who are tired of being one thing on the outside and
something very different on the inside, for those of us who want to beat
our darkness and become the person we need to be and we want to be, well
for us the Bible has liberating good news. It’s found in 2 Corinthians
5:17, and it’s our word for today from the Word of God. “If anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” The
Bible tells us that Jesus does what no religion could ever do. Like those
Chinese artists, He beautifies us on the inside so we’re genuinely changed
and we’re permanently changed.
All of the ugly stuff and the dark stuff in our heart are summed up in one
Bible work – sin; rebellion against God and His laws. I’ve tried to be the
god of my own life, and it’s not working.
That’s why Jesus came. Our only hope of sin’s power being beaten was for
God Himself to conquer it, which He did when Jesus paid the debt for our
sins on the cross. Then when He conquered death on Easter Morning. He
proved there’s nothing He can’t conquer. This makeover miracle in your
soul begins from the moment that you are, as that verse said, “in Christ.”
Not just around Christ, but really belonging to Him. He did all the dying
for all your sin. What’s left is for you to put your total trust in Him as
your Savior – your deliverer from your sin.
I can’t think of a better way to begin a New Year… with a new me. It
really has nothing to do with resolutions; it has everything to do with
RESTITUTIONS though. God has restored us in only a way He could have made
possible. Through the gift of His Son. He came into the world this time
of year to sort of take out the old and let in a newness that never grows
stale.
May this new year bless us in ways we’ll never begin to imagine and never
fail to thank Him for. He will make you new on the inside as soon as you
open the door.
Happy New Year… Happy New You!
See you in Church
Chuck
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