NOTES for Luk 11:15-22
We often spend a long time asking God to deliver us from some fault of ours, from a sin we lack the strength to fight, from temptations. If we also make efforts toward this, then the Lord, of course, helps us. If we do not make those efforts, then He does not help us not because He does not hear us, does not want to help, or cannot help, but because that would be violence against our will. After all, if we ask for something but in reality do nothing to fulfill our desire, it means that we do not fully want to change; we may simply be afraid of it. Therefore the Lord waits, and when we take even a very small, but still first, step, the Lord adds a thousand to it.
But what happens after that? The Lord helps us overcome a temptation, or even fully frees us from some sin or fault... and we stop there, quite satisfied. Most often we are satisfied with ourselves. At best, we thank God for it. Yet the Lord has freed a place in our soul for good, for His Light, for the Holy Spirit; but He never enters without being asked. He does not want violence, because He is Love, and love is possible only in complete freedom. He "stands at the door and knocks" and waits for us to call Him, to invite Him into the place where He helped us clear space for Himself. And if we do not call Him, the freed place in our soul again becomes clogged with dirt and dust, overgrown with weeds, and the second time it is often harder to pull them out by the roots than the first.