All we want to do is make God happy with us. We want so much for Him to speak of us the way He had Luke write of David, “A man after My heart…” (Acts 13:22). Our greatest desire AND need is for God to be pleased with us. If we are successful in that most important endeavor of life we are complete, satisfied, full of joy, relieved, grateful, humbled, excited – we are what the Lord created us to be.

So how can we make that happen? Can we earn God’s favor? Can we do enough good deeds that God is moved to being impressed with us? The answer is in the song From the Inside Out. It is also found in 1,000 places in scripture. Here are just a few samples:

*Hebrews 11:1,6 – Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for those who come to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. This means we need to trust God. We announce that there is no way on God’s green earth we could ever deserve to be in a relationship with God. We trust Him, we commit to following His word, and we believe He will reward us with eternal life in His Son because we acknowledge He is great and we need Him to save us. We admit we cannot save ourselves. Those changes must come from the inside out.

*Mark 8:34-37 – And He summoned the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it benefit a person to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what could a person give in exchange for his soul? We can’t flip Jesus a few crumbs of our life (attend church, give some money, etc.) and think God is impressed with us. We need to SURRENDER ALL – NOT SURREDNER SOME. We need to be changed from the inside out = total conversion to following Jesus above anything and everything in this life. When we do that we have not earned anything; rather, we are simply responding to how marvelous and majestic our Messiah is. He deserves ALL of us. We must change from the inside out.

 *John 20:1,11,13,18 – Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already removed from the tomb… But Mary was standing outside the tomb, weeping; so as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb… And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they put Him… Mary Magdalene came and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her. Mary Magdalene loved, adored, honored, and worshipped Jesus. He was Her Savior and Lord. Jesus not only spared her life from massive misery, He also saved her soul. She was so thankful that she was changed from the inside out with gratitude to the degree that her entire life changed.

Read II Corinthians 5:14-17. Then listen to From the Inside Out by Seventh Day Slumber. Then be changed from the inside out.

2 Corinthians 5:14-17

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!