day no. 15,472: activity feeds on action

"Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel." -- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Active pursuits are strengthened by activity whereas passive pursuits are weakened by activity. If you actually bear fruit in keeping with repentance, you strengthen your repentance, but if you contemplate repentance without acting, you weaken your repentance and the more you dwell on it without acting upon it, the more likely you make it that you will never do anything about it.

In other words, doing the word makes it easier to do it more, but feeling like doing it without actually doing anything about it makes it less likely that you will ever do anything at all or even feel like doing anything ever again at some point in the future.

James 1:22-25

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.