“Faith is like a muscle; it must be exercised to get stronger.” Billy Graham

My workouts have been pretty much spotty at best over the past couple of months. No excuses, just reality. However, it would have been much easier on my body if I didn’t have the big gaps between them.

You all know it. The day after you start back up again, your muscles scream at you, “What in the world have you done? Why do you want to hurt me again?”

In my case, I have to stay in good physical shape to do what the Lord called me to do. So, if I love Him, I’ll do these workouts with and for Him no matter how I feel (last week’s blog) or uncomfortable I am, which is what we’ll see today.

I once read that “success is being comfortable while being uncomfortable.”

And success for the Jesus believer is not what you do for Him. It’s what He does in you: Transforming your way of thinking, choosing and living into His way of thinking, choosing and living. What does this require? Strengthening your faith muscles.

If the Father doesn’t choose to do a miraculous instantaneous life change (believe me, I’ve asked for it!), which by its definition is rare or it wouldn’t be a miracle, He uses a process of daily and sometimes hourly hard faith choices to walk into His arms.

And this process by its definition is uncomfortable! You’re letting go of what you’re comfortable being (“the known”) into being uncomfortable (“the unknown”) while the Spirit’s transformation process does its job.

Living by hard faith choices, then, means learning how to be comfortable while being uncomfortable, which is not a contradiction and easier said that done.

It’s not that you don’t have faith. It’s that your faith is being stretched like a muscle causing “good soreness” or uncomfortableness while your faith is being increased.

Life change is a process, not a one-off event. And those hard faith choices will be very uncomfortable. And, who wants to be uncomfortable? The person who loves Jesus while being uncomfortably comfortable.