Muscle Memory

“Practice! Practice! Practice!” These are words athletes hear their entire time in sports. Why? One, practice makes perfect. Another reason is that continuous practice creates muscle memory.

Muscle memory is the ability to reproduce movement without a conscious thought. We do this more often than we know in sports and everyday life. We turn on the light in a dark room without thinking about it. We lace up our shoes without a second thought and even run when the whistle blows. Coaches send their teams through specific practices to help their minds build up muscle memory so that when game time comes, they can perform immediately and do what they’ve been coached to do!

We need to build up our spiritual muscle memory so that when tempting situations come, hard times arise, or difficult choices are to be made, we immediately do what God wants us to do without even second guessing. God has given us His Word to coach us in what He wants us to do. When we read scripture, we see His game plans for us. We see the Xs and Os of life. When we read His Word, pray and practice what God teaches us, we build spiritual muscle memory.

If we do this, we’ll have scripture ready in our minds and hearts and know what to do when difficult moments come. If we are not in the Word, not praying and not practicing what God has coached us to do when difficulties come, we won’t know the play and we will slip.

Practice may make perfect, but we all know we aren’t perfect. God never called us to be perfect. When we slip and mess up, He forgives us when we come to Him and He teaches us the right way so that next time we are in that situation, we can react His way, not our own.