The Inside is Bigger Than It's Outside

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you.
Ezekial 36:26

This week my Bible study corresponds to my exercise in walking closer to God every day. I have a lot of thoughts floating through my head. Let's see if I can make sense of them. Ezekial tells us that God will sprinkle clean water on us, and we'll be clean from all our uncleanness, and we won't have any idols any more in our lives. Nothing or no-one to take us away from our closeness with God. As a result God gives us a new heart and a new spirit. He takes away our stony hearts and gives us a heart of flesh. Not sure exactly what that means, but I'm pretty sure in some way He makes me nicer than I really am!

Bible study is on Revelation focusing this week on how we as Christians are sealed with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a "guarantee of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:13-14), we are "branded as Gods' own, secured for the the day of redemption" (Eph. 4:30) and we are appropriated as God's by "His seal on us and giving us His Holy Spirit in our hearts as a security deposit". Seems as though you can't have a new heart unless you are indeed sealed with the Holy Spirit, doesn't it? But, there's more! 2 Timothy 2:19 tells us "The Lord knows who are His, let all who names himself by the name of the Lord give up all iniquity and stand aloof from it" (scripture is from Amplified Bible). There's still more! 2 Timothy 2:20-21 gives us a little homily on how every home has vessels for special occasions, or honorable and noble use, and then vessels for menial and ignoble use. Guess what. If we are consecrated to the Master (God), then we become vessels for honorable and noble use. Further, if we are truly God's then we have His name on us and will have His seal on our foreheads to identify us as His own (Revelation 7:3). It's like a vast and wonderful story that you can't quite understand. But that's okay with me - I rather like the mystery of it. Which, now that I think of it is kind of weird cuz I really like to know what's happening in my life, both right now and in the future.

As I was thinking about this The Last Battle, the last of the Narnia stories by C. S. Lewis popped into my head. This is such a good story, and my favorite of the series. It's so hard to describe if you haven't read the story, but I'll try. It is the end times for Narnia. There is a great battle waging between good and evil and it appears as though the good will capitulate to the evil as they are cornered and forced into a little stable. But, here is the mystery and the wonder! Once inside the stable, where you'd expect darkness and defeat, there is instead light, and open air and comfort and beauty. In this new country then, you cannot see the stable itself, but only the door to the stable. If you peek into this door, you can still see the darkness of the old world.

Tirian says "it seems, then, that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places." "Yes", said the Lord Digory. "Its inside is bigger than its outside". "Yes, said Queen Lucy. "In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world."

I think this is what it's like to have the Holy Spirit it you. It is bigger than our outside and makes us bigger than we can be without it. It's our seal, but also our, what shall I call it? I think I'll call it our "courage maker". It's what gives me the courage to forgive when I don't want to, stand up for what is right when all are against me, strive to become a Holy woman of God when really, it is just easier to be lazy. God, through His Holy Spirit, makes me bigger than I am, at least on my good days. On my bad days, I just pick myself up and try again!