A friend gave me a book, Extravagant Grace, written by a Reformed author, I forget the name. It takes a radical view of the sovereignty of God in sanctification. Rather than the goal of sanctification being obedience, it proposes that the goal is our taking our creaturely place and walking humbly with God. Sometimes God, at conversion or thereafter, radically changes one's desires. Sometimes He does not; it is in His interest to let some saints struggle seemingly endlessly and hopelessly, with certain sins. She does not use this analogy, but it seems to express the message. It's like the Outward Bound program, where forest rangers take troubled teens on extended hiking/climbing trips, orienteering through wilderness to get to some peak or other destination. The goal is not arriving at the destination; that could be done in a helicopter. The goal is the teens learning the lessons they need to learn in the process of achieving arrival: cooperation, courage, patience with discomfort, orienteering skills, living off the land, and the like. Her thesis resonates with me; now initially, I'm buying into it. But I'd like to hear scriptural arguments, if there are any, to the contrary before totally embracing the idea.