“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”
Philippians 2:13 NLT
I've tried snow skiing but never really learned. It was always a dangerous scary affair for me, therefore I never really enjoyed it. My basic problem was hesitancy. You have to commit and lean forward, down the slope. If you fight that, you're constantly battling gravity and balance. Good riders just go for it, they commit, lean into it, and off they go. Then comes the joy I have never experienced.
They say surfing is the same dynamic. There's a moment you have to commit to go with the wave or not. Yes there is some paddling on our part, but when the wave picks you up, your choice is to except its power and let it throw you forward. You don't create the wave; The power is utterly beyond you. Once it has you in its grip, your part is to cooperate. Then the beauty comes.
Holiness works the same way. The power is not ours. The power comes from God, from the presence of the spirit living inside of us. He is the wave. If we think we have to paddle fast enough to create the entire experience, we will end up frustrated and exhausting from all the striving. The name for that is religion. God offers us something far better, he wants us to let him be the wave.