I confess that I struggle with a problem faced by many today: I blame my lack of contentment on my circumstances, not my heart.
I do not hide the fact that one of the reasons I love the Army and Malawi is that they cause me to lose myself. I am not given the time to be lazy and self-indulgent. I am not given the means to be self-sufficient. I am not given the control that makes me arrogant. So I speak in pious terms about how these roles and places help me lose myself and make me a better person.
And yet, these pious terms are merely window dressing on a serious sin struggle--I use circumstances to affect heart change, when all they can do is impose an artificial reprieve for my selfishness.
I wonder why it is that the newfound sense of piety I gain from these endeavors doesn't long carry over into my "normal" life in the States. Isn't it clear? The only thing that truly changes on these endeavors is my circumstances, not my heart. So when the circumstances change back, I am exposed as having experienced no lasting change.
This is not to deny that God can and is changing me, for He works in me to will and work according to His good pleasure. He sanctifies me in spite of myself. His Word pierces my heart even when it seems closed to it. Though God doesn't deny me grace in Christ, I deny His grace in Christ.
I deny it every time I look to circumstances to break the strangle-hold of my sin. I deny it when I give the circumstances the glory rather than Him. I deny it when I boast of my desire to "lose myself," when I make no attempt on an ongoing basis to lose myself in Christ.
The grass is not greener on the other side of whatever my present circumstances are. The grass is most green in the valley of the shadow of death, for You are with me, Your rod and staff--they comfort me. The grass is most green in pasture of the Good Shepherd, who knows me, calls me, feeds me, protects me. Change is most readily found feeding within His fence-line, not hoping for a new trough.
Every source of change apart from Christ is fleeting and hollow. I think that I will find contentment by wandering from my father's house into the wilderness, nourished by His previous graces as I seek satisfaction in other places. I wake up mid-day at what I thought was my watering hole, and find that I was feeding upon the discarded pea pods of worldly existence, starving for the grace that makes me whole.
And behavior change is not heart change. So much of our philosophy and psychology today is oriented toward changing behavior. But if you change my behavior, you have not changed me. My poison-tipped tongue and poisonous fruits of the sinful nature arise from a heart that pumps poison and rebellion against God. My heart must be changed. You change my heart, you change me.
And avoidance of suffering and struggling against the self does not mean avoidance of sin. I cannot cloister myself in a monastery of my own thoughts and feelings and think that I have escaped from my sin. Suffering exposes my sin and need for grace. It teaches me to trust the One who saved and changes my heart, even through circumstances that seem to wound my heart.
Here, at the bottom of my pride, I come to this pride-crushing conclusion: This deployment in itself will do nothing to change me. It will not make me a more effective minister of God's grace, let alone a more grateful recipient of God's grace. It will not teach me dependence. It cannot give me peace or enable me to persevere.
A change of scenery doesn't produce a change of heart. Jesus does.
