Trying too hard to love & be good instead of what it takes to achieve heart transformation

WHO WE ARE, NOT HOW WE ACT 

The primary learning in spiritual formation is not about how to act, just as the primary wrongness or problem in human life is not what we do. Often what human beings do is so horrible that we can be excused for thinking that all that matters is stopping it. But this is an evasion of the real horror: the heart from which the terrible actions come. 

In both cases, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices—in the inner life—that counts. Profound transformation there is the only thing that can definitively conquer outward evil. It is very hard to keep this straight. Failure to do so is a primary cause of failure to grow spiritually. Love is patient and kind (see 1 Corinthians 13:4) so we, mistakenly, try to be loving by acting patiently and kindly—and we quickly fail. We should always do the best we can in action, of course; but little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself—the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others. 

Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness will be shallow and short-lived at best. It is love itself—not loving behavior, or even the wish or intent to love—that has the power to “always protect, always trust, always hope, put up with anything, and never quit” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8, PAR). 

Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love. It will make us angry and hopeless. 

But taking love itself—God’s kind of love—into the depths of our being through the way of spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to us at first. 

And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to us and others. Indeed it will, according to the promise, be “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14, PAR), not an additional burden to carry through life, as the attempt to act lovingly surely would be. Spiritual formation is the way of those learning as disciples or apprentices of Jesus “to do all things that I have commanded you,” within the context of “I have been given say over everything in heaven and earth” and “Look, I am with you every minute” (Matthew 28:18,20, PAR). 

You’ve probably heard people say, “I want patience and I want it now.” We laugh because we see how little their character reveals an understanding of the goodness of patience. As we grow in love—the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others—patience flows more naturally out of us.

Johnson, Jan; Willard, Dallas (2014-01-31T22:58:59). Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation (Redefining Life) . The Navigators. Kindle Edition.