Good morning friends,
A few pieces went out from me these past few weeks. You can find them below. For everything in one place, my site holds the archive.
The Faith Muscle: When God Stretches What You Claim to Have
It’s Saturday night. By grace, these words will find you tomorrow morning.
I haven’t sent a weekly review in over a month. I’ll be real with you: it’s been a hard stretch. Not hard in my faith, but hard in how far the Lord decided to stretch that faith. To the point of snapping. The questions swimming in my prayers weren’t theological. They were visceral: Will my body give up? Will my spirit break?
I’m coming to think of faith as a muscle.
We claim to possess it in our morning and evening prayers. We speak it into the air. “I believe. I trust. I have faith.” And in return, the Trainer of our souls does what any good trainer does. He stresses it. He stretches it. He twists it to its absolute limit. He loads it with weight we never volunteered to carry.
You reach what feels like the breaking point. You’ve used all the worldly ointments, the plans, the distractions, the logical escapes, the numbing agents. You realize they mean nothing. They are dependencies on systems “highly influenced by principalities and authorities in the unseen places.” They offer no instant relief for a spiritual demand.
So you close the doors. You strip down to your spiritual birthday suit. You sit on the cot of your own helplessness. And you cry out the honest, ugly prayer: “You gave me this assignment. You made these promises. Why have you not equipped me with what I need to carry it out?”
You sit in the silence that follows, convinced it landed on deaf ears.
This is where the muscle grows. Not in the claiming, but in the waiting after the crying.
Slowly, imperceptibly at first, things begin to happen. But you only see them if you’re paying attention. That “unknown number” blowing up your phone? You dismissed it as a telemarketer. It was help. That person who kept texting about oil prices? That wasn’t why they stopped by. They came to help. The siblings, preoccupied with their own busyness? They brought that busyness to your house, and their presence was medicine.
The moments pass. Then days. You notice the soreness is gone. You haven’t reached for the ice pack of anxiety. The pain relievers of control lie untouched. Your body, your spirit has healed. Not by your strategy, but by a provision you never saw coming.
You look back over the wreckage of the week and see it: a thousand little prayers, answered not in the way you expected, but answered nonetheless. The muscle, sore and torn, has repaired itself stronger.
This isn’t a theology lesson. It’s a praise report from the other side of the stretch. I feel edified. Fit. Ready for whatever tomorrow demands.
On a slightly different note, I feel a compulsion to say this plainly:
All your intellect, your degrees, your doctrinal knowledge, your accumulated wisdom they are not suitable substitutions for solitude with Him.
The enemy has accounted for all of them. He is equipped to leverage every one of your strengths against you. Your logic can be twisted. Your theology can be weaponized. Your wisdom can breed a pride that deafens you to His whisper.
You must disconnect from the word about Him and designate time to be still with Him.
Not reading about Him.
Not listening to others talk about Him.
Not consuming content about Him.
Being. With. Him.
It might mean hiding in a closet.
It might be a walk with no destination.
It might be the tool shed, the car, the bathroom floor.
You must make time, every day, to be still and know.
This is the core of the muscle. Everything else is just exercise equipment.
It brings me to a verse that has been echoing in this quiet space:
“Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God… So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:10, 12, ESV)
We will all stand. Each of us. Individually. Not with our church. Not with our family. Not with our favorite teacher. We will give an account of ourselves.
That personal accountability is why the personal relationship is non-negotiable. You cannot borrow someone else’s faith muscle on that day. You cannot point to your pastor’s quiet time, your parent’s devotion, your friend’s conviction. You will answer for your own. For the time you did or did not spend in the closet, on the walk, in the shed. For the prayers you cried and the ones you didn’t. For the moments you trusted the ointment instead of the Trainer.
The stretching has a purpose. The solitude has a point. It’s preparing you to stand alone before a seat no one else can approach with you.
So let the stretching come. Seek the silence. Feel the muscle burn.
And when the relief finds you…in the unknown number, the inconvenient visitor, the busy sibling, you’ll know. It wasn’t a random act. It was the answer to a prayer you sobbed in the dark, offered to the God who was listening all along.
He is building something in you that the world cannot break.
That is all, and thank you for reading.
Be sure to check out my e-Book using the below links. It’s available in written or as a podcast from any of your podcast listening sources. I’ve kept each installment in short digestible bites of less than 25 minutes. They are available via all podcast apps, YouTube and here on Substack.
From the Archives
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Shashue Monrauch