05/10/2025
How do we practice our faith? Do we add to it each day by striving to make the level of faithfulness that we reached the day before something we can perform automatically…a spiritual reflex? I hope that our faith becomes reflexive and doesn’t require us to relearn or concentrate on it day after day. I pray that our faith becomes ingrained in us by repetition and working to deepen it over time. For this to happen it requires us to continuously practice our liturgy, study scripture, and to do the other things of faith that we have already mastered, and then to build upon them by adding God’s new lessons and revelations atop this foundation. We need to continue practicing what we have heard preached in church, what we have learned during our walk of faith, and then to build upon these things as we continue walking in a newness of faith each day.
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
2 Peter 1:5-7 ESV
We take our next breath and never really give it a moment's thought, but if we miss one or two breaths then the thought of it rushes into the forefront of our consciousness. Each breath serves to sustain our lives. The average person blinks fifteen to twenty times a minute. As a matter of fact, we spend about ten percent of our waking day with our eyes closed; but I'll bet that until you read this fact you couldn’t tell me the last time you blinked. Blinking moistens the eyes, but it is also a reflex that protects them, and this can happen in one third of a second. It happens quicker than we can consciously form a thought. Our faith needs to be as automatic as these actions and reactions… breathing and blinking.
We make other things automatic by practicing them. Repetitively doing something embeds it in our sub-conscience. Musicians, artists, writers, assembly line workers, and Athletes understand the importance of practice (just to name a few). Have you ever been driving to work and started thinking about something in your life when suddenly you find that you are pulling into the parking lot at your place and it scares you to realize that you don't remember how you got there? When this happens we have no memory of the drive… it was done out of habit and reflex. When we practice our faith we are doing the very same thing. We no longer have to think through the more elementary aspects of what we believe, but instead we use this time to build upon what is already there.
The Empire State Building in New York and the Eifel Tower in Paris are impressive structures, but would they be here today if the construction crew had to begin anew each day they showed up on the job? NO! Some people treat their faith like a make-believe crew of workers who must reconstruct something from the ground up every time they come to work. They treat faith like a remake of life in the movie "Groundhog Day." Their faith becomes trapped in its early stages and never progresses... it never becomes a reflex or happens automatically. Jesus is referred to as the cornerstone in scripture. His gospel story is the foundation on which we are meant to build; not the starting point that we have to revisit in detail after every new experience. He wants us to treat Him as if we were building a tall building as we grow in our faith. It is the same desire we have for our children... we want them to mature and grow into fully functional adults.
“built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”
Ephesians 2:20-21 ESV
Today is my 73rd birthday and I have grown older in not only years, but faith as well. I look back on my life and realize that I am not the same person I was in my twenties, and I look at my faith and realize that it has changed too... it has matured. These are both parts of God's plan for me, and us. Jesus was born as a baby and then grew into a man; following the same aging process that we do. His ministry changed as well, so that by the time He changed water into wine, He was a fully mature physical and spiritual being... ready to accomplish God's will for His life as a man.
Life takes practice, and spiritual things take practice too. We recite certain creeds and prayers as a part of our individual Liturgies, but as fully mature spiritual beings, we already know what we are about to say... we say them for those who are spiritually younger, and we repeat them to practice once more, lest we grow distant from them. When I am handed the wafer during communion I instinctively think "the body of Christ" and when I am offered the cup of wine/juice I don't really have to be reminded that it is the blood of Christ... yet it is important to practice and keep these thoughts honed to a keen edge.
What spiritual practices of faith have become second nature to you, reflexes, and that you have already mastered? Do you even think about them consciously anymore? How about a new revelation in scripture that the Lord blessed you with just yesterday... are you going over and over it again as you tell others? Are you making it a reflexive part of your increased faith that will one day join such breaths of your spiritual life as the liturgy of communion? We need to assimilate our lessons of faith. We need to draw them into us through practice, prayer, and repetition until they are as integral to us spiritually as our own DNA is to our body. How are we growing? Are we growing?
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for filling me with your Holy Spirit, and becoming so engrained in me that I find myself comfortable just sitting quietly with you. Thank you for the blink reflex of my faith that shields me from sin, and the old familiar path that leads me away from evil. You are my comforter and the peace I feel inside while reading your Word. No longer am I anxious about our relationship or my knowledge of your Word and will. I know that you will walk with me in the cool of the evening and explain to me the new depths of your thoughts regarding scripture. Holy Father, I practice prayer and all of the behaviors you have previously instructed me in... Each repetition makes them more familiar and their reenactment easier. Lord, it is hard to believe how the way that was once so hard for me, and full of pitfalls, has become so easy for me to traversed. I am amazed that the road has not changed, but my ability to walk it has. You are truly remarkable and long-suffering. You lead me on the paths of righteousness and I know that you do this for your pleasure and not my deservedness. You are merciful and full of grace, and knowing this is yet another thought that comes so naturally to me now. It is yet another breath that I take without thinking.... Praised be your name Father for Holy, Holy, Holy, are you my God who was, and is, and is to come. Holy are you who builds me up.
Amen!
“And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”
Acts 20:32 ESV
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Matthew 16:18 ESV
“For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.”
1 Corinthians 3:9 ESV
Rich Forbes