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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: elapse and with nothing to hinder him yet never feels a desire for it.
If you wish such liberty, you may just as well have the liberty to be
no Christian, and neither have to believe nor pray; for the one is just
as much the command of Christ as the other. But if you wish to be a
Christian, you must from time to time render satisfaction and obedience
to this commandment. For this commandment ought ever to move you to
examine yourself and to think: See, what sort of a Christian I am! If I
were one, I would certainly have some little longing for that which my
Lord has commanded [me] to do.
And, indeed, since we act such strangers to it, it is easily seen what
sort of Christians we were under the Papacy, namely, that we went from
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