Spiritual growth with ups and downs

"The chart below represents spiritual growth. It vastly oversimplifies what is actually a much more complex series of ups and downs, but it is adequate to illustrate what we are discussing.

You'll notice there is a period of struggle and slow upward growth toward the rebirth. When this period is conducted under the direction of the Holy Spirit, there follows a spiritual event – in our chart, the rebirth. After the spiritual event, there is a sudden rise in spiritual power. With the rebirth the blessings include losing the desire for sin, reception of the Holy Ghost, and other blessings. Immediately after this growth there is a 'honeymoon period' wherein we are left nearly without opposition to enjoy the blessings flowing from the event. During this time we receive charity, singleness of heart, total dedication, meekness, humility, and many other attendant refinements brought on by the Holy Ghost.

Some weeks or months following this event, the adversary is allowed to return with greater opposition than they were previously accustomed to. This brings on a spiritual decline which is unavoidable. This decline has nothing to do with our desires. During this time most people struggle valiantly to maintain their spiritual high. Without exception they find it impossible, not because they are weak or the spiritual event was not real, but because it is their ordained process of growth. We keep all the spiritual refinements – The faith, humility, patience, childlike obedience, and many others which we have discussed throughout this book. However, they are no longer unopposed, as it was during the honeymoon period. Now, we must struggle to exercise our gifts, and fight to keep spiritually attuned. Again, as it was before the rebirth, we must do what is right, because it is right, not because we are aglow with a hundred megawatts of spiritual power.

The spiritual decline lasts until we recommit ourselves to the same level of the obedience we found so easy during the honeymoon period. A diamond-hard resolve to regain the former blessings begins the journey upward again. This is not a climb toward former blessings as one may be tempted to think, but a journey beyond for greater things.

You will notice that the next virtual event occurs when we reach our former spiritual level in spite of everything the evil one has raged against us.

In fact, the period of struggle and growth which follows any major spiritual event lasts exactly as long as it takes us to dedicate ourselves to, and actually achieve, perfect obedience at that new level in spite of the opposition. It seems odd that we must keep re-learning to be flawlessly obedient, but each spiritual level requires a new level of obedience, one of which is easy at first because of the spiritual gifts acquired, and later difficult because of the increased opposition. When the new level of obedience becomes perfected in us, again in spite of increased opposition, then another spiritual manifestation unfolds itself, and the process begins anew."

John Pontius, "Following the Light of Christ into His Presence", p. 84-85