If you do not use your right arm, it will eventually lose all its power to move. Its muscles must be exercised to stay alive. If you have faith, you must exercise this also. If you don’t, it dies.
A widely known professor in a New England university started out as a practicing Christian, a man of faith. Over the years, however, this all changed. He became known as an agnostic, or an atheist even.
He said, concerning that change, that he never consciously abandoned faith. He said, “It was as though I had just put it away in a drawer, and later when I looked for it, it wasn’t there.” Of course it wasn’t, the man had let faith die for want of exercise.
If you have faith, keep it out and keep it active. Faith does not survive packed in an old trunk or kept in cold storage. Some fine musical instruments must be played to survive. Leave them idle and they will no longer make music for you. Have you let the exercise of your faith become inactive, like during and after the pandemic?
Use the faith you’ve got, and it will grow stronger! Fail to use it, and it will weaken and perish. Exercise your faith!
There are many ways of doing this: helping others, loving them, forgiving others, living with integrity and firmly holding high values and ideals. Being able to go to church weekly is a blessing many people in the world do not have.
But your faith is best exercised when you ask it to do the thing it alone has the power to do — when you ask it to lift up your soul to feel the touch of God. This you do when you take the time and make the effort to worship God.
Exercise your faith or you won’t have the spiritual muscles when it’s time to fight!
Faith, like the human body, was never meant to remain idle. Muscles grow strong only when they are used; left unattended, they slowly waste away. The same quiet truth applies to the life of faith. It is not lost in a dramatic moment or abandoned in anger. More often, it simply weakens through neglect.
My Commentary:
The story of the New England professor is a sobering reminder of how faith often fades — not through rebellion, but through disuse. He did not reject belief outright. He merely set it aside, assuming it would be there when he needed it. But faith, like strength, does not wait patiently in a drawer. It lives only when it is exercised. When it is ignored, it slips away almost unnoticed.
The pandemic revealed this truth for many. Disrupted routines, closed churches, and prolonged isolation made it easy to put faith into “temporary storage.” Yet faith does not survive in cold storage. Like a fine instrument, it must be played. Like a muscle, it must be stretched. Otherwise, it no longer responds when called upon.
Exercising faith is not complicated, but it is intentional. It shows itself in love that costs something, forgiveness that stretches us, integrity that holds firm when it would be easier to bend. It shows itself in service, compassion, and courage. And it shows itself — most powerfully — in worship, when we deliberately place ourselves before God and ask for the one thing faith alone can give: the lifting of the soul and the touch of the divine.
Church, when available, is not an obligation but a gift — a weekly opportunity to keep faith alive, active, and responsive. Worship strengthens spiritual muscles that cannot be built any other way.
Because when the moment comes to struggle, to endure, or to stand firm, it will be too late to begin training. Faith must already be strong.
Exercise your faith NOW — so it will be ready when you need it most.
How is YOUR spiritual exercising going?
IF YOU SPEND YOUR TIME PRAYING FOR PEOPLE INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT THEM, YOU’LL GET MUCH BETTER RESULTS!!
Please share this with YOUR children and YOUR grandchildren to help them maintain a strong practice of their faith. Please listen to my Podcast.
