We are in a starting place, A, and we want to arrive at a destination, B. The distance between A and B is the journey, and no matter how close or far apart A and B are, we cannot go from one to the other instantaneously.
And this is the way our salvation works: getting from wherever we are to a state of being reborn or regenerated is not instantaneous, but necessarily requires a journey, or process.
Well, during that process, we experience these things called intermediate goods, or we might call them mixed motives. In the work Secrets of Heaven, it says this about intermediate goods: When someone is being regenerated, the Lord maintains him in an intermediate kind of good, a good which serves to introduce genuine goods and truths. And later: [These goods] partake both of worldly affections and of heavenly ones (4063). Intermediate goods serve to take us from old loves to new loves—from our old life to our new life.
My wife and I have a monthly individual budget. Just for the sake of example, let’s say it’s $50 each. In addition to that “base budget,” we can each earn extra cash, for example, an extra $50, by performing some sort of daily life-improvement activity. Life-improvement activities could be exercise, reading the Word, having a certain diet, avoiding social media, daily prayer—anything we wish we did more, but haven’t managed to put into our daily routine. If this sounds like a chore allowance chart, that’s basically what it is.
In order to keep track of these activities, we put a monthly calendar on the wall, and at the top of the calendar or on a paper next to it we put a code: B=Bible; E=Exercise; D=Diet, etc. And then, next to each activity code, we put a number, which is the number of times we plan to do that activity during the month. Exercise has a 10 next to it, because I plan to do some exercise of my choosing on ten of the days. When I do one of the activities, I write the letter code on that day. So, if I read the Bible, and do exercise, and avoid social media in one day, I write B, E, and S on that day—I’ve earned an extra $3 towards my individual budget.
This is our version of intermediate goods. We want to incorporate both mundane and spiritual practices into our daily lives, and we reward ourselves for it. The hope and plan is that these spiritual practices will become part of life, and the heavenly affections will take the place of the worldly affections.