Pumping Up!

My mind is made up. I am going to shape up. I am going to lose some weight by eating the right foods and getting plenty of exercise. I have also decided that I am going to increase my strength by lifting weights.

This morning I have some weights with me. As you can see, these aren't very heavy weights. They are small and pretty light. Do you think I would increase my strength by lifting these weights if I do it every day? No, I could lift these little weights every day and I would not increase my strength one bit. The only way that I can increase my strength is to lift weights that are very difficult for me to lift. When those weights start to become easy for me to lift, I need to increase the amount of weight I am lifting. That is the only way for me to increase my strength. I have to push myself to the limits. When I do that, I will become stronger and stronger.

Some people want everything in life to be easy. They don't like it when trouble comes their way and times are hard. The Bible tells us that we should be happy when hard times come our way because by exercising our faith in God, our faith becomes stronger. When a small problem comes our way, we should trust God to handle it. Then when a little bigger problem comes along, we trust Him to handle that as well. If we keep on doing this, our faith will become stronger and stronger until we will realize that there is no problem too big for God to handle. Now that's a strong faith!

Let's make up our mind that we are going to get into good spiritual shape by exercising our faith each and every day.

Lord, we are thankful that we can trust you to handle the problems that come into our lives. Help us each day to exercise our faith so that our faith will become strong.