Inside Impacts Out! (Proverbs 14:30)
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Proverbs 14:30
A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh,
but envy makes the bones rot.
There’s an old basketball philosophy from as long as I can remember that emphasizes the importance of easy buckets. My dad always told me to warm up with closer shots like layups and form shots so that I could eventually back it up and start draining threes.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t always heed that advice, but maybe I should have, because when you are making shots from inside the arc, it tends to translate well to hitting shots outside the arc. If only my Tar Heels knew this – INSIDE IMPACTS OUT! It does!
It does so on the basketball court, but even more so with our lives. That’s what Proverbs 14:30 tells us: Inside impacts out.
“A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh,
but envy makes the bones rot.”
When our hearts are at peace, when they rest secure, that brings life to the flesh. Health on the inside leads to health on the outside. Inside impacts out.
But envy within “makes the bones rot.” Poor health on the inside leads to poor health on the outside. Inside impacts out.
What’s the point here? The condition of your heart is to be valued and guarded above all things.
And yet, although I think most of us would agree in principle that that’s true, we don’t live that way. Many of us are like the Pharisees Jesus rebukes in Matthew 23:25-26, when He says:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.”
You see, the Pharisees were huge on externalities. They loved behavior modification. They loved going to volunteer, they were all for church attendance, they made sure people knew when they fasted or what Bible verse they were reading that day. They were all for cleaning the outside of the cup and plate. All for that.
But they didn’t realize their blindness to what was inside. They thought the evil in the world was greater than the evil within. But that’s a grave mistake. Why? Because inside impacts out.
The Pharisees didn’t need more religious rules – they needed Jesus to change them from the inside out. And so do we. But here’s the real question:
If inside impacts out, then what’s shaping your inside? Are you just cleaning the outside of the cup while letting bitterness, envy, or pride fester inside?
We need Jesus to sit on the throne of our hearts. He needs to make our heart of stone one of flesh, to give us peace, a tranquil heart, so that we might have life!
Without Him, envy and strife and bitterness and wickedness sit within us, and our bones are rotting away. We’re dying. And like the Pharisees, we won’t look to Jesus for salvation unless we recognize the impurity within. We cannot receive the good news of the gospel until we’ve come to realize the bad news that is our inward condition.
So, what’s inside your heart today? What’s shaping you?
Think about that, and also ponder what it would look like to allow the Lord to transform you inside out today – because inside impacts out. Let’s pray.
