You may wonder, Won’t the body naturally change its habits if the heart is transformed? While a change of heart is primary, the outer change is not automatic. You work on inner and outer change concurrently, and each process informs the other. While we guard our heart and readjust it as needed, we also need to confront the body in its regimented habits.
We teach our body to “fake it till we make it” (as the twelve-step saying goes) to help it behave according to what the heart is learning. To live a life of faking it is wrong, of course, and so we’re always working through heart issues. While I’m learning to pray for the coworker who exasperates me (and therefore let my heart be changed), I ask God to help me regularly form my lips into a smile at that coworker. If I do this, I will be amazed at how that smile makes it easier for my heart to adjust.
TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Pick one of your body movements that doesn’t reflect the love, joy, and peace of Jesus. Don’t start with something too big. Something like tapping your foot in impatience will do. Choose what you could do instead. Perhaps you could try the humble stance of putting your hands behind your back. This makes it easier for the heart to be humble, which in turn makes it easier to stand that way.
At the same time, refocus your thoughts (and heart), perhaps praying Psalm 23 as we did earlier. Even as you theoretically “fake it,” you can be authentically honest: “I’m operating on the theory that you, O Lord, really are my Shepherd, that you have provided everything I need, even though I have no idea what’s going on.”
Picture that sheep lying in the green pasture so content, not needing a thing, even as you wait anxiously at a traffic signal thinking of your child waiting in the cold, as you lie on a gurney in an emergency room waiting for the nurse to return with the pain medication, or as you wait in line wondering why all these people chose to come to the same store at the same moment.
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