The cry of our heart should be to have more of God, to be filled with Him, to be changed by Him. He said seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened. The more you pursue Him, the more willing He is to be found. But we have to remember that He is God, and His ways are not our ways.

In our desire for holiness, we assume that God will move and act the way we expect Him to, because that’s the way we would do it. We have the Holy Spirit in us, so we expect that His Godliness will emerge in us because we want Him to. To some degree that will happen, but it is more probable that God will move in ways that you are not looking for.

Transformation takes time.

Do you want Him to change your heart so you will be kind and loving and generous of spirit? Don’t be frustrated that it hasn’t happened over night because you prayed, no matter how earnestly. Stop and look at your circumstances. Are you in the middle of a trying situation that you can’t wait to get out of? Bingo. There’s your answered prayer. He will use those circumstances to change you in the way you want and need to be changed. Stop looking at the conditions as something to be free of eventually. Look at them as the tool that God is using to shape you and mold you into His image. Once you see what He is doing, you can be free. This is a journey. The shaping takes time if it is going to be real.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.. (1Peter 1:6-7)