Interior Design - Part 1

     "Oops! I did it again!" I bet you never thought as a Christian your theme song would be so Britney Spears heavy! You were doing so well when BOOM!! You've messed up again. It feels as if someone has snuck into your house just after you've tidied it and gone Family Guy chicken fight on it! You just got everything where you wanted it and now it's a mess again. What to do? What to do? The answer may well be in interior design.


2Corinthians 4:16 says - So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.


     Our first point is to not lose heart. It's easy to grab a silly hat and a party popper and join the pity party but hold your horses a second! If we start to understand that we are designed in a particular way on the inside (each of us different) we begin figuring why we fall into the cycles that so frustrate us. Many of us go for a long time trying to make certain things in our life work for us and wonder why everything else keeps collapsing.


     It's kind of like when your friend gets some furiture or a painting that goes with nothing else in the house and they spend hours trying to find a good place for it. When they ask for your advice all you can hear in your head is the beeping of the binmen's truck! Or when someone who lives in a tiny house gets a gigantic television that means you have to turn your head to see who's talking to who! There's not enough room! Sometimes you just have to throw things out. Not because they're bad but because they don't suit your interior design.


     Sometimes you need a sovereign act of God to destroy a sin cycle and sometimes you need to pay attention to interior design. The devil wants to decorate your interior with sin that he can hang shame and guilt on for the world to see and as a constant reminder to you that you're not good enough for God. If you do nothing, he'll just carry on. Broken promises are scattered around the house and every cupboard in the kitchen is made of cynicism with a rough, bitter finish. It's up to you to decide if you want to help him.


     People have a tendency to delve deeper into sin once we've made a mistake because we want our interiors to match (and often we start trying to make our exterior match as well).

Refined in a Fire

     I think that God often doesn't want to change our situations when we think that they're bad because He doesn't want us to miss out on the opportunity of going through some adversity with Him at our side and emerging with more wisdom, understanding and faith in Him. I've definitely been guilty of thinking that if a situation is difficult, "God can't be involved because Jesus died to make my life easy. This is hard so it must be the devil!" Ha! A quick look in Paul's letters and I find verses about horrible words I wish weren't in the Bible like struggle, perseverance, endurance and suffering. I hear Paul telling people to get excited at these things! Are you kidding me? Come on God just do everything for me! Sometimes God will ride in dropping miracles everywhere but apparently sometimes He has other plans...
     As we spend time in His presence, He draws out from us His own image and equips us to take on our situation. I am the one who needs to choose that instead of complaining about my situation I can renew my mind knowing that if He hasn't removed the situation He must believe in me! I'm starting to understand that any situation I encounter God is ready to use it to build me up. Any situation. Good, bad, big, small, whatever. This should give us confidence right? If we strap on our armour and go into battle He goes before us leading us as we learn on the job. If we lose now and again we can still claim victory over fear because we didn't run from the battle line! When we emerge victorious, we come out with the keys to see others liberated in the same way but usually quicker. God is a genius and one thing I've been blown away by is the way He produces progression in the Church. One person can spend a year working through an awful situation and emerge stronger having been equipped with wisdom and character so that they can see 10 people come through the same situation in half the time with twice the blessing! WHAAAT??? That's big picture thinking! I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be God hearing your children cry out for deliverance and withholding it because you know that their perseverance will mean so many more get impacted by what they learn!
     Before crying out to God to change the situation, how about we ask Him, "So what do you think Dad? Can we take em?" Sometimes He'll say we're not ready and others He'll say "Put on your armour lad/lass, it's gonna be a tough one but I know you can do it!" Are we willing to take hits so that we learn hard lessons for the benefit of others? If the answers is yes, let's suit up!
     I've grown up thinking that praying for the instant miracle is always the way to go and then not really knowing what to do if it doesn't happen instantly. I'm starting to think that committing in my heart to a potentially long process that will require me to trust God long-term is better because either I will walk that path and grow and develop with Him or He will see my faith and perform the miracle anyway. Just another thought. Thanks for reading.

"One person and God is the majority."