Wasting my teaching--follow up

My last post was just about a year ago. I didn't want to 'waste my teaching'. As I reread that post I was struck by how I was able to share my struggles clearly and at the same time voice an answer that I believed, but wasn't nearly as strong within me---"Lord, use my circumstances to change me to fit right now better." I have learned some in the past year. I pray this differently, now. "Lord, help me love you and others well no matter what circumstances You give to me." It hasn't sunk in deeply yet, but my goal is to be less self-centered and more God-, and other-centered. When I pray, "change my circumstances," my center is obvious--what is happening to me. When I pray, "use my circumstances to change me," I easily twist that prayer into selfcenteredness to. I make it into a prayer to "be a better me." And that has been a hidden motivator for years. I have tried to get better. Because I want to be better. Because I want people to see me as better. Because I so often hunger and thirst for approval more than for the kingdom of the heavens and His righteousness. I'm not sure if this is right, but it seems that God's purpose is to make us so we can serve Him and others. I think that is probably some way we share in his divine nature (2 Peter 1.4) and it certainly is the love that comes from His first loving us (1 John 4:10). I wonder if it is not the message of the whole Bible. (I am working on that, thanks to a writer named Larry Crabb!) Crabb says it something like this... faith that in Christ God has made us his own, hope that He will make all things right in His time, and love that is relating well to Him and to others because we are His, even while we wait, no matter what circumstances we wait in and through! May it be so, in increasing measure, above all we can ever think or hope or imagine.