What is holding you back?

I think the simplest answer is most likely the right answer, love of sin. I can't think of a single time when I have gone to Confession where, doing an examination of conscience, I have been able to make it past the 1st Commandment before I say, well I certainly fell short there. Trusting completely in God and in his providence is a difficult task because we all experience pride. I suppose that's why the 1st Commandment is first and the 1st Cardinal, or deadly sin is pride - except in the Orthodox tradition where they list it last, saying it is listed last because even though one may conquer the other 6 deadly sins, pride will still be left. Now I hope that initial declaration wasn't startling, or scandalous, because it wasn't meant to say that I (or anyone within this group) "love" to violate God's standards, but I am saying that we constantly "miss the mark", which is to sin, and not so much out of a desire, but out of not learning how to "aim correctly". This is very similar to the Protestant notion of being able to determine for ourselves what Scripture actually means. Yes, the Holy Spirit can guide us, but did Jesus really mean what he repeated over and over in John 6 or not? Protestants choose to "skip that lesson" on aiming correctly and so will not know Jesus fully. It does not fall simply to Protestants though. How many Catholics deny the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist? How many try to hide certain areas where we fall short by dismissing this teaching or that teaching as "extrabiblical", or excusing and rationalizing it away? The failure to place God at the absolute highest possible peak and make him Lord over even that prideful part of our lives is what holds me back. That first deadly sin is a doozy to try and conquer.