The Doctor: Holding On or Being Held?

Is our religious life a mechanical effort, or is it there within us and mastering us?  That is how we should think about the matter.  The man who is trying to be a Christian is trying to hold on to something.  The man who is a Christian feels that he is being held by something.  It has been put into him, it is there; it may even seem to be in spite of him, but it is there.  It is not what he is doing that matters to him; it is what has been done to him, it is what he has become, it is the awareness of this power within him – ‘life’.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 7, p. 40