“Henry Drummond, a 19th century Scottish evangelist, comforts our mind about spiritual growth. He reminds us that we have the “divine germ” in us, as Christ does. He contrasts the fretting and slaving to build the Christian moral character with truly attaining the Christ-like nature. He says:
He observes that he who thinks to approach the mystical height of the Christ-like nature by anxious effort is really receding from it. He does grant that by hard work and self-restraint a man may attain to a very high character, but what is missing is the true Christian process, that mysterious quality that is difficult to define, but is the test of spiritual birth—that you cannot tell from whence it comes or whither it goes—but which seems to rise up from some fount within: The otherworldliness of such a character is the thing that strikes you; you are not prepared for what it will do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off center, and in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills you always with awe. A man never feels the discord of his own life, never hears the jar of the machinery by which he tries to manufacture his own good points, till he has stood in the stillness of such a presence. Spiritual growth, he says, is a process maintained and secured by a spontaneous and mysterious inward principle, not manufactured by the person himself. Of course we want to know right away just how such a character is developed, if not according to the usual prescription, as he says, of more earnestness, more prayer, more self-denial, more anxiety, or more Christian work. Strangely, these do not always produce what we are after. “These are,” he continues, “prescriptions for something, but not for growth. Not that they may not encourage growth; but the soul grows as the lily grows, without trying, without fretting.” He advocates a return to the simplicity of Nature. “
Reclaimed Wholeness: Reclaim Your True Identity 