There is nothing you can do to change your nature. But there is much you can do to realize the potential and capabilities of your nature.

Your diligent practice and discipline did not create or earn your achievements. They positioned you to realize what God had given into your nature at the first.

Otherwise you may say in your heart, ‘my power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Deut. 8:17, 18

When the Lord declares through the prophet Jeremiah that He will put a new spirit, and new heart within you – to know Me and to love and desire Me, it does not happen automatically.

And why not? Well, for the same reason that the baby, in whose nature God gave the capability to be an upright, walking person, cannot stand immediately. To stand and walk the child must fully engage in the process that draws out what was already in his nature.

You might say that the child then, through his own efforts, learned to walk. In one sense that seems true. Yet, without the gift of God implanted in his nature, walking would never have occurred to him.

Just so, one who says we should merely sit and wait for the Lord to make us righteous (or be found guilty for attempting righteousness through our own works) will never become righteous. Because while righteousness is in his new nature, he does not make room for its manifestation through full engagement in the process.

Grace never precludes faithful effort. Would God require from us less effort and engagement to walk in the Spirit than was required of us to walk upright as a child?

God gives capability into us – the promise is our possession. Filling up the promise (actualization) is attained by diligently cooperating with (obeying) the Spirit of God.