In the quest for a good spiritual life, you are either cold or hot. There is no place for lukewarmness
The struggle to live a good moral and spiritual life is always a difficult one. At some point, we give off strong devotion to our spiritual practice, and at the other point, we become lukewarm that we barely say a prayer in a day.
Growing up there is a saying, " He who endures till the end will get to heaven and he who stopped at a point will lose the value of the goods he has done so far".
Another set of people change the saying to " he who endures till the end will make heaven and he who stops on the way should be helped by his brethren".
The former, even though it is a bit strict and discouraging, is more acceptable to me than the latter because it encourages one to persevere till the end. This doesn't however imply that the latter is wrong, for we need each other to be able to thrive in the storms brought by the evil one. The problem I see is that it can create opportunities for lukewarmness.
Lukewarmness comes from a lack of determination. Most times a lukewarm one thinks he is better than he who is cold, but that is never true, at least to me. The cold one knows that he is living a bad life and there are chances that he will one day turn to the right part but the lukewarm one sees himself as one who falls and gets up. He fails to understand that he is like a bird tied to a tree with a long rope, which flies to a certain height only to be dragged down when the rope reaches its maximum length. He is in no way different from one who lives a bad life because he is stagnant.
He who makes an effort after each fall and does not do the things which led to the last fall but falls yet again after a while is never lukewarm. What matters is not our inability to fall but the ability to keep living better after each fall. In whatever we do, may we pray for the virtue of perseverance and employ efforts towards that, because God will never do for us what we can do for ourselves.