Use It or Lose It

If I come home with three bags of groceries and happen to drop one of those bags, Murphy’s Law guarantees that I always will drop the one with the eggs in it.

Some of us treat our faith like a fragile egg. But faith isn’t fragile. Faith is given to us to use, to stretch, to flex, and to develop. And the more we use our faith, the more faith we will have.

On the other hand, if we neglect our faith, it will atrophy. In other words, use it or lose it. Faith is like a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it becomes.

The Bible says this about faith: “But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life” (Jude 1:20–21 NLT).

Notice the emphasis is on faith doing things. Faith is praying, faith is staying, and faith is keeping. Faith is active.

A big trend now is four-wheel-drive vehicles. In fact, I read recently that half of all vehicles sold have four-wheel-drive capacity. That’s nice if you live in Montana or Colorado. But a lot of people who own these vehicles don’t do any four-wheeling.

Maybe you strike up a conversation with them at the gas station and say, “Wow, that’s an amazing vehicle! Do you do a lot of off-roading?”

“Are you kidding?” they say. “Do you know much I spent on this thing?”

The sad thing is they have a vehicle that’s designed with four-wheel-drive capacity, and they’re not using it.

The same is true of us. God has given us this faith to use, but we don’t use it. Our faith is all show and no go.

World changers have an active, not a passive, faith.