There are people who show up only on game day, and there are people who train.
Allen Iverson became immortal for one line—“Practice? We talkin’ about practice?”
Guess how many titles he won?

Michael Jordan, on the other hand, was ruthless about practice. Teammates hated him for it because he made them better. Kobe copied the same pattern. Excellence comes from repetition.

The spiritual life works the same way.
If you never put your faith into practice, your Bible becomes a decorative bookend—nice to look at, useless.

Daily practice—small, ordinary, boring discipline—is what will build muscle memory for when calamity hits. Think about it: people often run back to church only after catastrophe. Whether national or personal. But in those moments, life comes at you like a fire hydrant. It is hard to pray when you’ve never discovered your own prayer voice. It is even harder to hear the still, small voice of the Lord through the roar.

This is why practice matters.

In The Power of Moments, the Heath brothers write: “When people have a chance to pre-live a difficult moment—to rehearse it—they are far more likely to act with courage when the real moment comes.”

The world calls it psychological priming.

Scripture calls it training in godliness. Paul says, “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7). Training implies practice. Reps.

The other week I walked us through three things to do while suffering: walk, weep, and wait.
But for many who weren’t in the middle of a storm, the temptation is to file that away for “someday.”

Let me be blunt: someday is coming.
Pain and suffering are not elective courses—they are required credits for every human life.

One of my pastoral responsibilities is to prepare people to die well. Not only those who are close to the end, but the people with 20 or 30 years left. You will die. I will die. My kids will die. As your pastor the stark reality is that either one day I will preach your funeral, or you will get to attend mine.

So if you are not suffering, now is the time to practice what was preached.

Practice Walking

Walking is slow, steady, rhythmic. It’s not sprinting. It is what you can sustain for a long time.
Ask yourself:

• What is a sustainable pace of Scripture and prayer?
• Don’t wait for that January-burst of intensity—what can you actually walk out for years?
• What non-negotiable time can you build into your day?
• Should you listen to it, read it, find a daily devotional, a weekly devotional blog you can subscribe to (see below)?

Walking with God is learned like walking itself: one slow step at a time.

Practice Weeping

Most people avoid grief until it consumes you like a tidal wave.
Find space to cry—really cry. Pull up the emotions you’ve numbed.
Lament the things you’ve lost. Name the disappointments you have stuffed.
The Psalms are unapologetic about tears; they are not a failure of faith but an act of faith.

If Jesus wept, why should you be ashamed to?

Practice Waiting

Waiting is a spiritual discipline, not a waste of time.

So practice it:

• Drive to Davidson at 4:08 p.m.—you’ll get a masterclass.
• Let that email sit in your inbox: When the urge hits to answer an email—don’t. Wait until tomorrow.
• Or choose one block of time this week to do absolutely nothing.
  No checklists. No phone. No texts. No TV. No noise.

If you can learn patience before you need it, that will make patience possible when you need it.

Practice before the storms arrive because faith is not built in crisis, but it is revealed in crisis.
So don’t be a game-day believer. Practice what has been preached to you: Walk. Weep. Wait.