If we seek more patience, we may find ourselves needing to practice it while waiting for a response. If we want to have more love for our neighbor, we can foster it by sitting next to a new face at church. With faith it is similar: when doubts come to our minds, trusting in the Lord’s promises will be required to move forward. In this way, we are exercising spiritual muscles and developing them into sources of strength in our lives.
Juan Pablo Villar, "Exercising Our Spiritual Muscles", General Conference, April 2019
Heavenly Father does not just give us what we ask for, mostly. He does step in at times but most of the time we have to work for blessings, by obeying a certain law and putting in the effort.
It's a type of a two-edged sword. Using the example in the quote, we ask Heavenly Father for patience to handle a situation, He doesn't just give it to us, but we need to exercise those patience muscles to obtain more patience. So, we need to use patience to get more patience.
Same with faith and testimony. We need to exercise those muscles in order to strengthen them.
And like any muscle exercise, we don't need to start out strong in order to get stronger. We may not be able to lift much at first but, overtime, we can. In this case, it does not take money to make money, so to speak. But it does take effort. Anything worthwhile will take effort. It's easy to do nothing, but there are no positive results from that. Only negative ones.