Faith: The Muscle That Must Be Exercised
by Royce
I just went back to the gym after a long ‘holiday’, eager to jump into my favorite spin class. I used to be able to do back-to-back classes without issues, feeling energized and strong. But today, after just one class, I could barely even walk. My legs were like jelly, and every step reminded me of how much strength I had lost during my time away.
This humbling experience made me realize a profound truth: our faith works exactly like a muscle. When we don’t use it regularly, it atrophies. We might not notice the weakness during calm seasons, but when life’s storms hit and we’re forced by circumstances to rely on our faith, we discover just how much spiritual strength we’ve lost.
Just as physical muscles require consistent exercise to maintain their strength, our faith requires regular spiritual disciplines to stay strong. Prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and acts of service are the “workouts” that keep our faith muscles toned and ready for action.
When we neglect these spiritual exercises, several things happen:
Our spiritual endurance weakens. We find it harder to persevere through trials that would have been manageable before.
Our discernment becomes cloudy. We struggle to hear God’s voice or recognize His leading in our lives.
Our trust wavers. What once felt like solid confidence in God’s goodness begins to feel uncertain and shaky.
Our joy diminishes. The deep, abiding peace that comes from walking closely with God fades into anxiety and worry.
The tragedy is that we often don’t realize how weak our faith has become until we desperately need it. A sudden illness, financial crisis, relationship breakdown, or a personal loss forces us to reach for spiritual strength that isn’t there anymore. Like my wobbly legs after that spin class, we discover that our faith muscle has grown weak through neglect.
But here’s the good news: just as physical muscles can be rebuilt with consistent exercise, our faith can be strengthened through intentional spiritual practices. Every time we choose to pray instead of worry, to trust instead of fear, to serve instead of withdraw, we’re doing spiritual reps that build our faith muscle.
The key is consistency. We can’t cram for a spiritual crisis any more than we can get physically fit the day before a marathon. Faith must be exercised daily, strengthened regularly, and maintained continually.
20,000 Hours For 3 Minutes
On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger faced every pilot’s nightmare scenario. Just 2 minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese, causing both engines to fail completely. With 155 souls on board and less than four minutes before impact, Sully had to make split-second decisions that would determine whether everyone lived or died.
What happened next wasn’t a miracle of luck—it was the culmination of a lifetime of faithful preparation.
Captain Sullenberger had been making “small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training” for 42 years. He wasn’t just an experienced pilot; he was a man who had devoted his entire career to the pursuit of safety. He served as an instructor and as the Air Line Pilots Association Safety Chairman, where his safety work led to the development of Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circulars. He was instrumental in developing and implementing the Crew Resource Management course used by US Airways, and he taught the course to hundreds of other airline crewmembers.
For decades, Sully had been faithfully attending training sessions, running simulations, studying safety protocols, and preparing for scenarios he hoped would never come. By 2009, he had logged more than 20,000 hours of flight time.
When disaster struck, Sully’s years of faithful preparation kicked in. In those critical moments, he made a decision that wasn’t even in the standard emergency procedures manual: he immediately turned on the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU). According to the investigation, this step was “the 15th thing” on the emergency checklist, but Sully’s experience told him it needed to be done first.
The emergency checklist was designed for dual-engine failure at cruising altitude (around 10,000–12,000 metres high), where pilots would have plenty of time to slowly and carefully work through a three-page checklist. But Sully hit the geese at only 859 metres above the ground and had just three minutes from bird strike to impact—not nearly enough time to read through 14 other items to get to the APU instruction.
The APU provided backup power to the aircraft’s systems and helped maintain the flight envelope protections, which prevented the aircraft from stalling once the airspeed dropped below operational levels. The National Transportation Safety Board later stated that Sully’s decision to start the APU was “critical because it improved the outcome of the ditching by ensuring that electrical power was available to the plane”.
This wasn’t luck or a stroke of genius in the moment—it was the fruit of decades of faithful training. Sully later reflected: “I think, in many ways, as it turned out, my entire life up to that moment had been a preparation to handle that particular moment”.
Because of his years of faithful preparation, Captain Sullenberger was able to successfully ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River. All 155 people on board were rescued by nearby boats, with no fatalities. An NTSB official described it as “the most successful ditching in aviation history”.
The “Miracle on the Hudson” wasn’t just about one man’s heroism—it was about the power of faithful preparation meeting an extraordinary moment. The Board’s final report credited the outcome to four factors: good decision-making and teamwork by the cockpit crew (including decisions to immediately turn on the APU and to ditch in the Hudson), proper equipment, skilled cabin crew, and effective emergency response.
When the moment of crisis came, Sully’s muscle memory took over. Years of training had built such strong brain muscle memory in his professional life that he could perform perfectly under unimaginable pressure.
Just as Captain Sullenberger’s faithful training prepared him for his moment of crisis, our faithful spiritual exercises prepare us for life’s inevitable challenges. We don’t know when our “three-minute crisis” will come—a medical emergency, family crisis, job loss, or devastating loss. But we do know it will come.
The question is: Will our faith muscle be strong enough when we need it most?
Here’s how to keep your faith muscle in fighting shape:
Exercise it daily through prayer. Don’t wait until crisis hits to have deep conversations with God. Build that relationship now.
Strengthen it through regular Bible study. Fill your mind with God’s truth so it’s readily available when you need hope and guidance.
Train it through worship and fellowship. Surround yourself with other believers who will strengthen your faith and hold you accountable.
Test it through acts of obedience. Each time you choose to trust God in small things, you’re building strength for bigger challenges.
Practice it through forgiveness. One of the simplest yet most powerful exercises of faith is releasing forgiveness and asking for forgiveness. When someone hurts us and we choose to forgive—not because they deserve it, but because God commands it—we exercise tremendous faith. We trust that God’s way is better than our natural desire for revenge or resentment. Similarly, when we humble ourselves to ask for forgiveness, we exercise faith that relationships can be restored and that vulnerability leads to healing rather than further pain.
Maintain it through service. When we serve others, we exercise our faith and witness God’s faithfulness in action.
Remember: faith is indeed a muscle. If we don’t use it, we lose it. But here’s the deeper truth—you will never know how strong your faith really is until it’s tested. The daily spiritual exercises we do are actually small tests that prepare us for bigger ones. Each time we choose to trust God in a minor disappointment, forgive when we’d rather hold a grudge, or give when money is tight, we’re testing our faith muscle and discovering its current strength.
These small tests reveal weaknesses we need to address and build the confidence that comes from seeing God’s faithfulness in everyday situations. If we exercise our faith faithfully through these daily challenges, when our moment of major crisis comes—whether it lasts three minutes or three years—we’ll discover that our spiritual muscle is able to hold us steady.
Prayer
Lord, help us to be faithful in the small moments so we’re prepared for the significant ones. Strengthen our faith muscle through daily exercise in Your Word, prayer, and service.
May we, like Captain Sully, be able to say that our entire lives have been a preparation for whatever moments You have planned for us. When our testing comes, may we find that our faith is strong enough to carry us through.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.