Certain events in life require a lot of planning and preparation, and some of them trigger a desire for personal change. The wedding of one of your kids takes months to organize, and realizing that you’ll be in a bunch of pictures might motivate you to get a bit more fit.
Less often, it seems, does something such as buying a new house and moving trigger the need for individual change, let alone heart work. You might think that seeing (and packing up and picking up) your whole collection of stuff would provoke some personal reflection, but it’s not automatic. And that’s okay.
We are about to move locations after assembling for worship in the same place for over eleven years. A lot of things will be different; the parking and the chairs and lighting and the layout. The external alterations are very unlikely to provoke your own internal examination. Again, that’s fine, but I’ll remind you that whatever your problems are here will still be your problems there (including temptations to be impatient with and annoyed by others). If you aren’t repenting and learning to obey all that Jesus commanded now, don’t think that a different building will fix it.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:23–25, ESV)
Ancient wisdom teaches that wherever you go, there you are. Wherever you are looking into God’s Word and obeying, there you are blessed.