How to Grow Stronger
By: Pastor Aaron Syvertsen
“Don’t just have muscles, use them.”
Who says this? A personal trainer trying to motivate their client? A parent urging their teenage son to get off the couch and help move a piece of furniture? It’s possible. But this exact quote was spoken by a pastor to his congregation in the year 1600.[1] What good are having muscles, if you never put them to use? While this Puritan preacher might’ve also been a 17th century fitness guru as a side hustle (probably not), he deployed these words for the purpose of exhorting his church to not just have faith but use their faith.
We talk a lot in the church about what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, as we should, but do we talk enough about what it looks like to use our faith? The Bible talks more about living by faith than it does about having faith, and while we rightfully put much energy into evangelism (sharing our faith and calling people to believe in Jesus Christ), I fear we spend less time pouring our energy into discipleship (living out and growing in our faith).
So the next question is, how can we grow stronger in the faith? The reality is everyone who becomes a Christian begins with a weak, childlike faith, and that is not a slight on anyone. We should not hold a new Christian having weak faith against them, regardless of age, any more than we would hold a newborn responsible for not being able to walk right away. A newborn has all the muscles they need when they are born, but they are weak and need to gain in strength. In the same way, while a new believer has real faith and is truly alive in Christ the moment they believe, their faith is weak and needs to grow in strength.
For long time believers, allow me take this parallel a step further: just because someone was physically strong at one point, they may become weak due to a variety of factors: a major injury, a lack of motivation to exercise, a disease, a change in daily routine, or simply becoming distracted by other interests, and their body grows weak. In the same way, a strong believer may become weak for a lot of reasons: a spiritual trial, distraction from worldly pursuits, or lack of motivation in the disciplines of the faith.
So, whether you are a new Christian or an “old” Christian that is prone to wander in the faith, how can we grow stronger? Enter Charles Spurgeon.
The 19th century “Prince of Preachers” gave a sermon on July 17, 1858 from 2 Thessalonians 1:3, “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.”
In this sermon, Spurgeon provided five ways to strengthen faith:
1) By Feeding It
Spurgeon said that “faith is a feeding grace”, and nothing grows unless it is fed. Plants don’t grow without regularly being fed sun and water, and believers don’t grow without regularly feasting upon God’s Word. “Get a promise, beloved, every day and take it with you wherever you go; mark it; learn it, and inwardly digest it.”
In 2022, we have the benefit of easy accessibility when it comes to the Bible that didn’t exist in 1859. Just as we have a plan to eat each day, even if each day’s diet doesn’t look the exact same, so we ought to have a plan to digest Biblical truth each day. Know yourself, your schedule and your energy levels to determine when and where and how that will look, and then love yourself enough to plan ahead. Ensure that not a day goes by where you don’t engage with God’s Word. Read the promises, digest the promises, and deploy those promises throughout the day when the enemy seeks to weaken, distract, and afflict your faith. You cannot use promises you don’t know, and you can’t know the promises of God without regularly reading them.
2) Associate with Godly People
“It is astonishing how young believers will get their faith refreshed by talking with old and advanced Christians.” If you talk to any mature believer about the struggles you experience in the Christian life, the distress you are under, the weakness you feel, they will never be surprised. Rather, they will lovingly tell you they know the feeling and remind you of the sustaining grace of God that will see you through.
Your distress may not disappear, but your resolve to keep going and trusting will appear, and the Spirit of God will prove himself faithful once again. Aside from those conversations, I have benefitted even more so by simply watching an older, more mature believer in the everyday happenings and situations of life. “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ”, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (1 Cor 1:11), and you cannot imitate those whom you are not associated with. Get around godly people in the everyday spaces and routines of life and watch how God uses that to strengthen your own resolve to trust and believe in the God who often reveals himself through his people in the most normal of situations.
3) Get Free from Self
If we rely on the perception or praise of others to determine if we are strong in the faith, we will either be puffed up with pride or beaten down in despair, and likely rotating between those two day by day. When one is consumed with self, the praise of others is their currency, they feel rich when it is in abundance, and they feel poor when it is lacking. Yet when we receive the gift of faith, we no longer need the praise of man, for we have been chosen and approved by God through Christ.
Paul writes to the church in Galatia, “If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal 1:10).
Paul writes elsewhere that we ought to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith (2 Cor 3:15), but the lens through which we test ourselves is by discerning the presence and love for Christ in our hearts, not by examining the praise of others. As the 19th century Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne wrote, “For one look at self, take ten looks at Christ.”
4) Go Through Great Trouble
Spurgeon said, “We don’t grow strong in faith on sunshiny days. It is only in strong weather that a man gets faith. Faith is not an attainment that droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven; it generally comes in the whirlwind and the storm.”
We never ask for trouble or to go through a major storm in life, but we also trust that God strengthens his people most in the greatest trials they face. My brother (and crossfit coach) often says that you don’t get stronger in the beginning of a workout while our muscles are fresh, but it’s towards the end of the workout when we’re already beaten down that we persevere, and in doing so expand our muscle capacity.
By the power of the Spirit within us, we can be good stewards of our suffering and see our dependence on the Lord increase. This will not only grow us, but it will grow others faith as well as they watch us suffer well.
5) Communion with Christ
Finally, Spurgeon lands the plane with a call to be near Jesus. “If you commune with Christ, you can not be unbelieving. When his left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me, I cannot doubt. Have you not found, when you have been near to Christ, your faith has grown strong, and when you have been far away, then your faith has become weak?”
The question of how can we grow stronger in the faith is not so much dictated by our circumstances in life which are often out of our control, as much as it is dictated by our proximity to Jesus each and every day, which is within our control. We wake up and choose to be near to him, and in that nearness, we will remain steadfast in feeding our faith, surrounding ourselves with godly people, getting free from self, and persevering through great trouble.
What Charles Spurgeon proclaimed to his church 163 years ago remains true today, because our God is unchanging, his Word is without age, and the gift of faith remains for his people today and every day until Glory. Don’t just have muscles, use them.
[1] Samuel Ward, Sermons, 23