How God Works with Us

Jesus has invited you into a love relationship. You’re getting to know each other, growing together. The spiritual practices and habits are designed to facilitate that growing relationship. That said, he doesn’t expect you to do all the work and your growth in love doesn’t depend solely on your efforts.

I love the way Teresa of Avila describes the changing relationship between our effort and God’s grace and initiative, as we grow in intimacy with him. She uses the analogy of watering a garden, the garden of the soul, where the water is God’s grace. The garden of your soul needs the grace of God to thrive. So how does the Holy Spirit water the garden of your soul? What can you expect as you grow in your love relationship with God? How much is your effort and how much is his work?

Here’s my experience through the lens of Teresa’s analogy. When you commit yourself to spiritual practices, the habits and disciplines that will help you escape the noise and learn to swim in deeper waters, it often feels like hard work, involving a great deal of human effort. In the beginning, it can feel like you’re doing all the work, digging a well, then drawing water up from the bottom using a bucket. Does it ever feel that way to you?

Carrying Buckets

That’s what it feels like in the beginning, like you’re doing all the heavy lifting. I’ve been practicing the discipline of silence for several years now and sometimes, it still feels like I’m dropping a bucket into a well and hauling it back up again. I’m easily distracted. It often feels unproductive. I have moments where it’s just me and Jesus, sitting quietly together, in unforced conversation, but not for long! I just begin to get comfortable, settling into his presence, when my mind, my active imagination and my persistent memory pop up to distract me. More time is often spent on distraction — chasing rabbits or watching squirrels — than abiding with the lover of my soul, but he’s patient and faithful. The bucket is getting progressively lighter. The ability to simply be with God in silence, beyond words, is becoming easier. I’m encouraged to keep practicing. And if you continue to practice, eventually, it will get easier for you, like cranking a water wheel and delivering the water to the garden through an irrigation channel. This is Teresa’s second image.

Water Wheel

You’re still working, it still requires effort and intentionality. You still have to practice the presence of God but you have better tools that require less exertion and you’re getting better results. Your efforts yield more water, more grace, less striving. Eventually, you’ll notice that the water enters the garden as the result of an overflowing river or stream. That’s the third picture.

Overflowing Stream

The river of God’s grace overflows and the water saturates the garden of your soul. Some areas get more than others. Some require a bit more attention, but keeping your garden watered is more grace and less about your efforts. Until, finally, the Holy Spirit waters your garden through a gentle but abundant rain and you just stand there, receive it and are grateful for it. This is the fourth picture.

Gentle Rain

And this is my experience. As I’ve applied myself to spiritual practices, as a means to cultivating a listening heart, I’ve experienced all four stages. It started out as a chore, got a bit easier, became a more natural part of my life until now, it’s just grace. I open the book — read, reflect, respond and rest in what he’s saying to me — and it’s so personal. It’s just grace. In that area, at least, I’m more often than not standing and enjoying the rain.

Here’s how God works with us as we pursue him. As you apply yourself and practice, as you give yourself to spiritual disciplines, forming holy habits, there's a gradual decrease, over time, in your effort and control and an increase in his initiative, grace and power. This is incredible news! It was news to me. Normally, we would expect the opposite — the more we advance, the harder it gets, the harder we have to work. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve made a start only to give up because it was just so hard. My prayers felt like they were going nowhere. My efforts at reflection, meditation and rest seemed futile, like something was wrong with me. Satan wants you to believe something’s wrong with you, that you’re the only person on the planet who can’t live in love with God. He works overtime to make it as hard as possible in the beginning. He doesn’t want you to know about the gradual decrease in effort and the overwhelming increase in God’s initiative, grace, and power.

Yes, it’s hard at first. It’s like anything else in life. Decide that you want to run three miles a day and it will be hard, nigh unto impossible, depending on what shape you’re in. I started doing interval training years ago, alternating between running and walking. When I got home from the gym, my wife asked me, “How was your workout?” To which I replied, “I hated every minute of it.” But I’m doing it on the promise that it will get easier, that I might eventually enjoy it, that I might actually want to do it someday.

Did you know that maturing believers who just “try harder” often find that their increased efforts in the spiritual disciplines are not fruitful and they get discouraged? That’s because they’ve missed the idea that our efforts at godliness should ultimately grow into a greater yielding to God’s direction and power.