muscle memory.

there is a "routine" to Christianity. we are to pray before we eat and before we go to bed. we are to attend church every Sunday. we are not to curse others. and we are to read the Bible regularly. pretty easy, right? but there is a risk to just doing the same thing, over and over again.

at all the baseball camps i ever went to, i was taught about muscle memory. the idea was if we did it enough and became accustomed to the motions, we wouldn't even have to think about it. "keep you head in", "explode into the ball", "step into the swing". it worked. doing it over and over again made it mindless, which for baseball, was a good thing. when we were playing the game, we didn't want to have to think about why were doing these things, we just knew that we had to do them. we did them by nature. because of routine.

think about the reasons you pray, read the Bible, and go to church. should we be doing these things because we have to, or because we want to? God's Grace and Love is so amazing and we are so undeserving that we should be dying to shout it from the rooftops. but we fall into the routine. week in, week out: pray. Bible. church. pray. Bible. church.

don't get me wrong, prayer, time in the Word, and church are just as important as they have always been. but when we fall into a routine, we forget why we're doing these things. just like in baseball. we knew we had to do them. but after a while, it didn't matter why we had to do them.

therein lies the difference. we cannot forget why we're worshipping God. because the minute we forget, we begin to do it for all the wrong reasons.

Peace and Love,

Andrew