Is Jesus pleased that such things come out with less of an edge now? "How wonderful! You made that negative, unnecessary comment in quite a positive way. Well done!"
Of course not.
But neither is He surprised or shocked by these things -- I'm a work in progress.
Yesterday in conversation, I heard myself make a couple of these unnecessary positive negative comments. Almost immediately, I heard another familiar old voice -- self-recrimination. I'm sure God's enemy thought, "That was easy. She'll be beating herself up for hours." No, this time the Lord stopped me in my tracks with,"Do you think I only love and forgive you when you get it right?"
It's taken me until today to see the fuller picture.
The Lord isn't pleased or shocked when I fall short. Yet what probably does please Him is that even a kinder version of my old voice now sounds acrid to me, in contrast to the sound of His own exquisite voice, which so thrills and cleanses my heart.
I expect that as I experience God more and more fully, I'll become increasingly disappointed with my own failures to do things that are pleasing to Him. But here's the wonderful part: Showing me how I fall short of the beauty of Christ is part of the Holy Spirit's deep work in me. Yet He doesn't do it to just leave me there, frustrated. He does it to show me Christ, to make me more keenly aware of who Christ is, and to show me His grace; to make me increasingly thirsty for Christ, hungry to share His nature; to heighten my spiritual awareness, so that I will come more quickly to Christ's feet, then into His arms, where transformation can take place.
The King James Bible had a wonderful word for this work of the Spirit: to quicken. To make something become faster or more responsive, to animate or bring to life. Nowadays, we hear the word "quicken" almost exclusively in reference to the pulse and heartbeat, which quicken in the presence of the one we most deeply love. No small wonder that quickening is one of the works of the Holy Spirit, since it's one means by which He prepares Christ's bride for Him, purifying her heart, conforming her to His image, making her desire Him more with each passing day.
What a victory there is in this: My failures and shortcomings no longer have to send me into fruitless self-recrimination. When I fall, I can see it as simply the immediate prelude to falling at His feet, and then falling into His arms -- where all true transformation takes place.