Here's something to think about!

Here is a story I found in the book The Spiritual Life and how to be attuned to it by St. Theophan the Recluse.

A certain man lived somewhere far away in the desert. His internal organs became diseased, either his lungs, his heart, his liver, or maybe all of them at once. The pain made him feel as if he were going to die. He could not expect human help from anywhere, and so he turned to God with the most intense prayer. The Lord heard him. One night after falling asleep he saw a vision. Two angels came with knives, cut him open, took out the ailing parts, cleaned them, washed them and annointed them with something. Then they put everything back in its place, sprinkled something over him, and everything healed, as if he had not even been cut open. When he awakened, the elder got up entirely healthy, as if he had never been ill; he was new like a youth in the flower of his strength.

I told this story to someone who labors over himself. When he heard it, he responded with enthusiasm, "Oh, if only the angels would come and do for my soul what they did for the body of the elder!" (This is exactly what I was thinking!) In this response you can hear both a prayer and also a desire to shift that which is supposed to be done through one's own labors to someone else. (Oh oh... he's got me pegged for sure!) For such a crafty thought is not alien to our heart; we know that we are to be nothing but good, to to have to labor to achieve this - we despair. The angels are not going to come to purify and heal our heart. There exist such things as instructions and advice from angels, but everything must be done by oneself. All means are provided; that is, tools and surgeon's instruments. Take them and cut yourself wherever necessary without feeling any pity for yourself. No one else can do this for you. (I know he's right - but will I be able to do it? I'm not at all convinced that I can.)

The act of cleansing must be conducted by one's own self, without any self-pity. The motivator of this act within us is that efficacious, living zeal - that active, live, fervent, untiring zeal that is the sign our spirit has been rehabilitated and restored to its former power through reunion with God by means of the grace and action of the Holy spirit.

We do have our outbursts of zeal, but they are only outbursts, and then they are extinguished. The zeal which is always fervent, constant and untiring zeal, exists only when our spirit is filled with grace by the Holy Spirit. Thus when you have such zeal, it means also that your spirit has been restored, and - do not quench it - it takes in hand both the mind and body, all the requirements of their nature, all their domestic and civil cares, and it directs them toward one thing pleasing God and salvation...

It is both chopper and knife, which always works extremely well when it is sharpened by grace and guided by it's suggestions. It is ruthless when it establishes itself in the heart; it cuts, ignoring the cries of its victim. It is for this reason that the work goes successfully, and soon achieves its purpose; for the cutting is not the only thing. Once everything has been cut off, then zeal is present, but does not function as a knife. It acts as a guard, and turns all its fierceness on the enemies of salvation, on those annoyances from which no one is free and the shamlessness from which no one is ever left in peace.

Without it, your spiritual activity will get nowhere. Indeed, when it is not there, your spirit is asleep; and when it is asleep, there is no use in discussing the spiritual.