I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the holy ones, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19

In a recent Outside podcast, a 60 year-old man was talking about how he has stayed active as he has aged. He mentioned that he made a cognitive switch in his workouts by focusing less on how much weight he could press or how fast his pace was.

Instead, he focused his workouts on mobility and stability. By focusing on his form, he could focus on his body’s ability to move. Also, by focusing on being steady, he could increase his body’s resiliency.

I believe this is an apt metaphor for our spiritual lives as well. It is when we stop focusing on the metrics of success, and pay more attention to the mobility and stability of our faith that we discover a resilient spirituality that can carry us through life.

Therefore, how mobile is your faith?

• Are you able to take your core beliefs with you as you go through your daily life?
• Does your faith influence the way you tip a server, drive in traffic, parent, coach…
• Does your faith call you to actually do something beneficial for other people, or are you stuck in a selfish navel gazing existence?
• Is there a huge discrepancy between your Sunday best and the rest of your week?

Also, how stable is your faith?

• Are you battered around by doubts like James describes or have you found a grounding in Jesus Christ that can weather the storms of life?
• Can you articulate a set of beliefs?
• Do your changing circumstances make you more worried, anxious, angry, shame-filled, and regret-laden or do you see a fruitfulness emerging filled with joy, love, patience and peace?

Our faith needs to be able to adapt as the situations we find ourselves in change, but it also must remained rooted. If it’s too rigid, then it will snap when the pressure of life gets too much. But if it looses it rooting system it will shrivel and die with nothing to nourish our souls.