Muscle Memory

If we want to be great in God’s kingdom, we must learn to be comfortable outside our comfort zones. As we take risks for God, our emotions and thinking will work with us to take more significant risks. It’s called muscle memory.

Muscle memory refers to the ability of our muscles to perform specific movements or actions automatically without conscious effort or thought. It results from repeated practice or training, which helps create neural pathways that allow our muscles to perform the desired action more efficiently and effectively.

When we repeatedly perform a particular movement or action, our brain and nervous system develop neural pathways that become more efficient over time. This process is called neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to adapt and change in response to new experiences.

With enough repetition, these neural pathways become so well established that we can perform the movement or action automatically without thinking about it consciously.

ChatGPT in “What is Muscle Memory”

The Growing Side of Peter

Peter recklessly left his safe fishing job to follow Jesus.
Peter climbed out of the boat in the middle of the sea and walked on the water.
Peter quickly made a plan to build three tabernacles in the transfiguration event.
Peter became the first missionary to the Gentiles, against all his life teachings and examples (Acts 10).
Peter became a miracle worker and a spokesman for the apostles.

Peter also…

…made a worldly plan for Jesus’ rise to power (Matt. 16:22-23).
…fell asleep when Jesus asked him to pray.
…tried to become a sword fighter for Jesus (John 18:1-10).
…denied Jesus 3 times.

Peter did not start as a spiritual giant. But he was willing to take risks and develop his spiritual muscle memory.

David

David killed lions and bears while tending his father’s sheep.
David learned to play the harp while tending sheep.
David used this muscle memory to take on a giant.
David continued to take huge risks as he waited for God to promote him.
On his best days, David refused power-over solutions on his rise to leadership (1 Sam. 19-27).
David wrote many Psalms during his wilderness years.

Rick Bergen

When I was ten, my dad came home with a big red bicycle. It was an old, heavy, adult bicycle. I could barely touch the ground with my tip toes when I straddled the center bar. My dad started me out on the top of our gently sloping gravel driveway, gave me a little push, and let me go. At the bottom of the driveway was a shed. The brakes on that bike were on the pedals. When you pushed the pedals backward, they braked. I had no muscle memory. This was all new to me. I ran straight into the side of the shed. That hurt. I didn’t want to ride the bike anymore, but Dad insisted. Soon I was pedaling around. I had a mustang within a couple of years, and I dominated it. We would build jumps at the bottom of a ravine to see who could stay airborne the longest, knowing we would crash into the other side of the ravine. That was fun.

Years later, in the Yukon, I asked my friends how they got jobs operating big machinery. They said they watched for opportunities, and if someone needed an equipment operator, they said they could do it. “Fake it till you make it.” I took six months of tech school in Whitehorse, where I learned some basics about safety and machine care, but many times I was way out of my comfort zone. Then we looked for those opportunities. We love being the first ones out after a blizzard to re-open the Dempster Highway, and we were always the last ones in, even doing a sweep, a trip to the end of our section and back if we were uncertain if anyone was stranded before we closed the highway. Often we could only see the hood of the pickup and the reflectors on the side of the road. Everything else was pure blizzard white, and those were the really good days. Of course, the food and the money were good too. That helped.

I traded all that to attend Bible School in Texas for two years. I flew down the first time. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d heard it was hot. When I got off the plane and into the airport, I thought the temperature was warm but reasonable. I’d brought my sleeping bag, and it was night, so I slept in the airport while waiting for the daytime and my ride to the Bible School. I was hit with a wave of hot, humid Texas air when I stepped outside the airport. It was like an oven. It dawned on me that inside the airport were air conditioners. That is when I knew I was in for some unexpected and unknown situations. I have often felt like an outsider, like I didn’t belong. Over time I realized many people feel like outsiders, and it is part of the human experience. When we are in the business of community transformation, feeling like we really belong and feeling like outsiders are comingled.

All these experiences and a million other experiences blend to help me become who I am today. My parents made me take piano lessons in grade school for six years. I wouldn’t say I liked it. Still, the muscle memory of those years served me well in Bible School and again at the start of the Mirante Church when it was just a youth group. One of my favorite missionary sayings is “There are a lot of things they never taught me in Bible School.” The thing is, we don’t need to know how to do stuff. We need to know how to be comfortable following Jesus, to “fake it till we make it.”

Muscle-Memory Downside?

Spiritual muscle memory may have a downside, and it’s called trauma. When we get exceptionally hurt or shocked by situations or people we trusted, we build a kind of negative muscle memory. Immanuel Prayer is helpful for healing traumatic memories. Think about the Israelites in the desert and how easily they were triggered back into their slavery mentality, that their master would maliciously mistreat and harm them. It was difficult for God to work with those people. We need healing and courage to reconstruct our neural, emotional, and spiritual highways and to get back on track with trust and risk-taking.

Jesus’ Shocking Prediction

Jesus said God loves Kingdom risk-takers and is strongly displeased with those who play it safe (Matt. 25:14-30).

“‘And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’ “But his master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked, lazy slave… ‘Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’ For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.”

(Matt. 25:25-29).

There is no thought of someone risking too much or even unwisely.
In this story, all the risk-takers are entrusted with more.