Three Years in the Making: How I've Changed

Below is a personal response and reflection after reading the book How People Change by Paul Tripp and Tim Lane.

How People Change seemed to tell the story of the last three years of my life.  When my husband and I first arrived in China, we had a difficult time on a number of levels.  For me, I had great difficulty in my job as a counselor and slowly began to admit feeling incompetent and incredibly insecure.  I fought this notion for the entire first year in China, as I pushed through loving, godly advice and criticism with defensiveness and a personal expectation of perfection (106).  This made my work more difficult and made ministry impossible as I put others’ opinions of me on a high pedestal.  It wasn’t until God humbled me enough to see that the evil inside of me was greater and more dangerous than the evil outside of me (44).  This began a year-long process and painful discovery of my idols and pride.  During this time, God also revealed his holiness, sovereignty, gentleness, and forgiveness.

During our second year in China, God spoke to me in various ways regarding my good deeds that were as filthy rags and my insecurities that were deep-rooted in sin.  One of those ways was through the community of believers around me.  I couldn’t agree more that “living in community pushes us to die to ourselves” (183), since this is exactly what happened as people pursued me with greater love and pushed me closer to the gospel with greater force than any other time in my life.  At the end of this year of growth, our closest friends left the country, and there was some major changes coming for the next year.  In the expatriate community, change is one of the few consistent happenings, and at the end of that year, change proved to be “something God intend[ed] his people to experience together” (170).  We were in this together, for better or worse. There was no hiding from our sin in relationships, incompetency at work, or even our sadness in losing friends.  We grew in Christ as a community, although our community was spreading across the globe.  There are few things that are as equally beautiful and painful as growing in the gospel through community.

In trials, difficulties, and uncomfortable circumstances, God continues to shape me and mold me into what he wants longs for me to be.  Looking back on the difficulty of moving overseas, owning my sin, and placing myself vulnerably into community, I see now that God was “willing to compromise [my] temporal happiness in order to increase [my] Christlikeness” (30).  During this past (third) year in China, God has been continually rooting out my selfishness, specifically with my time and space.  My heart is “easily enticed by comfort” and I sinfully feel that I deserve time to myself (134).  There needs to be room for grace, rest, and Sabbath, but my heart should not consider these things above those God places in front of me.  My flesh wages war on my soul as I make these daily, difficult decisions to follow Christ instead of my desires.  To serve as an example, I am currently praying about getting involved in the local youth group, which would be a great sacrifice to my time, and challenging to do through the little energy I have left at the end of the week.  However, the need is there, and I can think of no better way to starve my flesh and allow Christ to work in my weakness. 

Looking upon the next season of my life, I see that God is shaping me again.  This seems to be a time of preparation for the unknown, for the emotionally draining—a time of war of some sort.  Admittedly, I do not know exactly what this means, although I don’t believe I am looking for a demon behind every bush, so to speak.  Whatever circumstances or trials come over the next year, I want to hold on to the truth that was so beautifully expressed towards the end of How People Change: “Each morning that greets me is full of hope, not because I am successful at what I am doing, or because the people near me appreciate me, or because circumstances are easy, but because God is, and he is my Father. To look at the morning any other way is to believe a lie. To live in hope is to live in truth; To live in truth is to bring him glory; To bring God glory in my daily living is the highest form of worship” (456).