Luke 11:39 (NLT)
Then the Lord said to him, “You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness!"
Ever been told you would make a great actor? While some of us wear our emotions on our sleeve, others among us drape on masks. We play roles. Roles we used to play in the world, we now play in church. We, like the most gifted actors of our day, go about our day to day lives looking good on the outside, even as we flail helplessly on the inside.
The temptation we then fall into is carrying our old lives, our old way of doing things, into our new lives in Christ. Piper puts it this way in his book, “…conversion is the creation of new desires, not just new duties; new delights, not just new deeds; new treasures, not just new tasks.”
Ponder this statement. Now we don’t have to complete our Christian “duties” out of obligation; we serve because it’s a “desire” of ours to be Christ-like. We’re no longer concerned with mere good “deeds” but “delighting” in being the hands and feet of Jesus to others. We’re not preoccupied with the “tasks” at hand, choosing rather to linger in the “treasure” that is time and relationship with Jesus.
GOD’s divine grace, given the opportunity, converts the inside, then changes the outside. So its not only our actions that matter…but the heart and motives behind those actions. Do we possess “faith-in-action” or “faith inaction”? Our joy depends on the answer.
