Work analogy concerning the Holy Spirit

In writing this post:

http://electofgod.blogspot.com/2014/05/means-of-grace.html

I found an analogy between the Work teaching that you have to have something already inside you before you can attract more of it into you. A catch-22 sounding thing.

But if you think of the Spirit, we first get it into us by an act of God alone. He regenerates us. That is a monergistic act, God alone working. Yet then when we make efforts to accumulate more of the Spirit by degree it is obviously a synergistic act. Our effort and God's doing at the same time.

Just as definitive sanctification is monergistic, and progressive sanctification is synergistic.

But just that thought that we have to have something already in us before we can accumulate it from without.

I'll just make something up from the Work because I've forgotten the details, but it's like we have to have 'Carbon 24' already in us before we can accumulate more Carbon 24 into us.

Seeing this with respect to the Spirit is interesting.

Along the same lines is we have to have a language in us before we can 'see' things in ourselves and in the world around us. It's not the same thing, but sort of the same interaction/dynamic, object/subject. - C.