(Reflection on Outside Reading)
Psalm 51:6 (NIV)
Surely You desire truth in the inner parts ; You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
This Sunday one of the things my pastor preached on was the difference between asking God to change our circumstances and asking God to change our heart. It's easy to mistake one for the other, and that's a trap that I fall into often.
It's easy to mistake the consequences for the causes. I often ask God to teach me how to love people better-- but sometimes, what I'm really asking for is for people to like me more. What I really want is what I imagine to be the result of love: friends who want to be around me and support me. I imagine that if I can just learn to love better, then the certain result is that I will be made happier in this way. However, that is not only self-defeating but selfish.
It's important to want a pure heart for the sake of having a pure heart. If I love perfectly and am perfectly selfless and for whatever reason do not instantly gain the most fun and best friends I can imagine, it is still right and good and true for me to love and be selfless. Those things are the point, not the perks of being popular. Trying to be popular on its own is empty, and trying to fake love in order to gain friends is a gross mistake.
We have to realize that the point of changing our hearts is not so that we get rewarded, but so that we become more like we were created to be and more like the God who made us. The Psalm above says that He desires truth in the inmost parts, not a facade of truth on the outside. He doesn't care how many friends we have or how much money we make or how much we help people if our hearts aren't in it, if our hearts aren't true. This is what I want to start living, start believing on a daily basis. It's a slow transformation from selfishness to truth, but one that is ultimately life-saving and life-giving.
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