Building Spiritual Muscles

            Every person who lives on planet Earth has a physical body, and each body has more than 600 muscles. Many of the muscles in our body must be exercised in order to stay strong. When we fail to exercise our muscles, our muscles start to atrophy from lack of use and we actually lose muscle strength. We live in a society where both men and women work to build muscles, while others just want to maintain muscle mass. Either result requires that the muscles be exercised. We must use our muscles in order to keep them strong, and strong muscles are important to protect our bodies from injuries in our day-to-day activities.

            Elder Juan Pablo Villar spoke about building muscles in his general conference talk titled “Exercising Our Spiritual Muscles.”  “We could expend much mental effort reading and learning about our muscles, but if we think this will make them stronger, we will be very disappointed. Our muscles grow only when we use them.” The same is true of spiritual gifts. 

I have come to realize that spiritual gifts behave in the same way. They also need to be exercised to grow. The spiritual gift of faith, for example, is not just a feeling or a mood; it is a principle of action that frequently appears in the scriptures linked to the verb exercise. Just as reading and learning about muscles is not enough to build muscle, reading and learning about faith without adding action is insufficient to build faith.

            Elder Villar had the opportunity to spend a few hours with his older brother who was serving a mission. The brother and his companion taught Elder Villar a great lesson even as they spent their time doing missionary work. “Looking back, I realize that my faith grew that day because my brother gave me the opportunity to put it in action. I exercised it as we read from the scriptures, looked for people to teach, bore testimony, served others, and so on.” After sharing his experience, Elder Villar gave his lesson to us.

Thanks to the Restoration of the gospel, we can come to understand how our Heavenly Father helps us develop spiritual gifts. It is more likely that He will give us opportunities to develop those gifts rather than just granting them to us without spiritual and physical effort. If we are in tune with His Spirit, we will earn to identify those opportunities and then act upon them.

If we seek more patience, we may find ourselves needing to practice it while waiting for a response. If we want to have more love for our neighbor, we can foster it b sitting next to a new face at church. With faith it is similar: when doubts come to our minds, trusting the Lord’s promises will be required to move forward. In this way, we are exercising spiritual muscles and developing them into sources of strength in our lives.

It will probably not be easy at the beginning, and it might even become a big challenge. The words of the Lord, through the prophet Moroni, apply to us today: “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, and have [or exercise] faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27)….

Let’s accept the invitation of President Russell M. Nelson and intently come unto the Savior by identifying those muscles that need more spiritual activity and starting to exercise them. This is a long-distance race, a marathon, rather than a sprint, so do not forget those small but constant spiritual activities that will strengthen those important spiritual muscles. If we want to increase our faith, then let’s do things that require faith.

            The Brethren introduced the “Come, Follow Me” program for 2019. It is a wonderful initiative that will increase knowledge of the Savior’s life and ministry. When we follow the Prophet’s counsel and use the “Come, Follow Me” program to strengthen individuals and families, we are exercising our faith muscles. As we exercise these muscles, our faith will grow stronger. As the prophets have warned us of difficult times in the near future, we can be certain that strong spiritual muscles will be needed in the coming days.