The Exercise of Faith
Illustration

If you do not use your right arm, it will eventually lose all its power to move. Its muscles must be exercised to stay alive. If you have faith, you must exercise this also. If you don't, it dies.

A widely known professor in a New England university started out as a practicing Christian, a man of faith. Over the years, however, this all changed. He became known as an agnostic, or an atheist even. He said, concerning that change, that he never consciously abandoned faith. He said, "It was as though I had just put it away in a drawer, and later when I looked for it, it wasn't there." Of course it wasn't; the man had let faith die for want of exercise.

If you have faith, keep it out and keep it active. Faith does not survive packed in an old trunk or kept in cold storage. Some fine musical instruments must be played to survive; leave them idle and they will no longer make music for you. Use the faith you've got, and it will grow stronger; fail to use it, and it will weaken and perish. Exercise your faith!

There are many ways of doing this: helping others, loving them; forgiving others, living nobly; firmly holding high ideals and going straight. But your faith is best exercised when you ask it to do the thing it alone has the power to do, when you ask it to lift up your soul for the touch of God. This you do when you truly worship him.

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