A man runs endlessly to God and demands, requires benefits: happiness, contentment, health. He runs up to God with his need, but does not live by Him, and every time he receives what he is asking for, he returns to his usual former sinful life. And this barren crush of a man near God more and more often causes in leper souls grumbling at his Creator, grumbling at everything. Then God becomes guilty of everything: it is He who does not respond to requests, requirements, this He does not give a person the fullness of life’s happiness. But the fact that man himself does not live according to the instructions of God and in the law of God, that he reaps the bitterness of a life destroyed by his own iniquities, does not come to his mind.

He does not have a true faith, a true life of spirit, and his life path will not end in salvation. That’s all! How clear and simple!

—Archimandrite John Krestiankin