Believers must make an effort to strengthen our faith and be more like Christ.   ~~~   Are you familiar with leg day? If you work out you most certainly are! If you are not familiar, here’s a little leg day 101. Leg day is any day that focuses on the lower body muscles, such as glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. The goal of leg day is to target all of the major muscle groups in your lower body, strengthening the areas you need for daily movement. Without strong legs, climbing up stairs, running after your toddler, and lifting or carrying heavy boxes all become a little more difficult. My youngest daughter plays middle school volleyball. They had leg day. She came home limping. They were strength training and working out their legs so they can move quickly and have strength and stamina on the court. She needed to recover a bit and she was super glad that the next day they focused on upper body! Her soreness was expected. She hadn’t worked out much all summer and her coach knew those girls needed some working out to get in shape. I heard that if you can walk after leg day, you’re doing something wrong! I guess her limp proved she was doing it right. I started thinking about my walk with the Lord. Does my faith walk need a work out? Should we be walking with a spiritual limp as a result of training, repetitions and really wrestling it down and working it out? We don’t usually think about it that way do we? Just keeping it real, my preferred faith work out is my quiet time with God, digging through scripture in my big comfy chair, coffee in hand, with a blanket and my beagle dog laying on my lap. I can tell you right now I’m not working up much of a spiritual sweat. But… what if we did. What if we seized the day, every day, with a no pain no gain attitude for growing in maturity, self control, discipleship and strength in the Lord? What would THAT look like? Well you might be surprised to know that we are in fact supposed to be ‘working OUT our salvation’. Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. What Paul is NOT saying here is that we must work FOR our salvation. Salvation is a gift of grace through faith in Jesus alone. Here though, Paul is highlighting the importance of staying fit for Christ through our consistent faithfulness to the Lord and through our obedience. Dr David Jeremiah puts it this way, “The Christian’s role is to work OUT what God has worked IN by cultivating the characteristics of a godly life.” I love that! What naturally takes place is as we work OUT what God has worked IN us, we will then be a light in the darkness through the life we live and the works we do for Him that He created us to do. Paul tells a young Timothy, ‘train yourself to be godly’. Our goal as believers is to be like Jesus. This doesn’t happen overnight and the process only begins when you give your life to him. Just like in physical training or even leg day, there is intentional movement in the areas that are weak. There is daily discipline to follow a healthy diet of good choices and deny the bad. If you’re looking for a place to start when it comes to working out your faith, here are some places to start. Read, study and memorize scripture. Pray and spend time talking to God daily. Intentionally give of your time and resources on a consistent basis. Gather with believers by committing to a church and invest in discipleship growth in both large and small gatherings. Deny yourself through fasting food, social media, movies or something you need to take a break from. Seek simplicity, practice silence or maybe plan a day to celebrate the goodness of God in a season. Are you limping yet? See what I mean? I think we can all use a good spiritual work out and as we move and work OUT our salvation, we will see more of God working OUT of and through our lives. That’s the truth. Hey no pain no gain and the goal set for us all, as we work it out, is ultimately to look more like Jesus. I’m Lori Cline.