Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - BONUS: Keith and Patrick's New Podcast, Not Just Sunday!

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

Are you tired of being a part-time Christian? Do you want to take the next step in your walk with Jesus? Do you want to be a Not Just Sunday Christian? Today, listen to a ten-minute preview of Keith and Patrick's new podcast Not Just Sunday. Click here to listen to the rest of the episode and subscribe to Not Just Sunday. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here.

We've got something really special for you, something I've been so excited to reveal to everybody who listens to 10-minute Bible talks. And it's a 10-minute preview of our brand-new podcast, not just Sunday. As we talk with you guys via email, social media, sometimes even on the phone, we've learned that you want more than just 10-minute devotionals. You want to give your whole life to God. But sometimes we're not sure where to start. And that's why we're starting this podcast so that everyone who listens to 10-minute devotionals. minute Bible talks can take one step deeper into your journey with Jesus. If you like 10 minute Bible talks, this is your next step. You're going to love this podcast. So let's hop into the first 10

minutes of our very first episode of Not Just Sunday. Welcome to the first episode of Not Just Sunday. My name is Patrick Miller. I'm here with my co-host, Keith Simon. And I know that some of you have been listening to us for a while. We've been podcasting out for six years. Do you realize that? It started with 10 minute Bible talks, right? Like twice a week. And then it picked up and then truth over tribe. Well, then we started doing episodes on 10 minute Bible talks with the two of us. Oh, that's right.

And they ended up being an hour long and people got upset. And they said, you guys can't have these hour long episodes on a podcast called 10 minute Bible talks, which then became Truth Over Tribe, which was a great podcast for a season. But we're excited about something new, something different. And that's what this is, not just Sunday. So, Keith, what is not just Sunday? Well, let me tell you the story. about how I came to faith. And I think why not just Sunday strikes me as something I'm really excited about.

I became a Christian in college, much like you. I mean, right? Yeah, you're both 19. Yeah, both 19. And it's by this campus ministry. And it was very focused on what they would call evangelism discipleship. In other words, talking to people about Jesus and then helping them grow in their faith. But the way they helped him grow in their faith was, again, to be narrowly focused on sharing your faith.

And so I went through college, grew in my faith. My wife was doing the same thing in her sorority house. We ended up going on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. And the reason we did that, and she remembers me saying this to her, as I just know too much. Like, I couldn't settle for anything less. I have to go be like the Navy SEALs of Christianity, right? And I thought that God cared about evangelism, discipleship, reading your Bible, talking to people about Jesus. going to church and didn't really care about other things.

And so I remember saying to this guy, he's a good dude. And he was studying to be a hospital administrator. And I just guilted him and just chastised him and said, you know way too much to do this. How can you give up? How can you be second class? How can you settle for so much less? And it really scarred him. Like, it's funny to think about because I like laughing at myself and I'm such an idiot.

He ended up doing okay, you know, went on to. Become a hospital administrator, very successful. Discard him in his faith. Again, we're like college students. He's like a year younger than me, so it's not like I should have had everything figured out. I didn't. But the stuff I said to him, it made him feel like he was settling for something far less in the Christian life. And so the reason I thought that is because I just thought God cared about certain things.

And not just Sunday is saying, no, God cares about every part of your life. And you've got to follow him in your work life and in your leisure and in your family and in your hobbies and in your habits and just everything, right? And so since I was a college student, my whole theology's changed about what I care about what I think God cares about. I think he cares about every part of our life, every inch of our life. So I think there's that dimension of every square inch of life is something that God cares about. And you and I both have friends who probably in the past have thought because I'm not a pastor or a missionary or working on a church. I am a second-class citizen in the kingdom. I'm not doing a job that's worthwhile or for God's glory or the

best kind of job you could do. I remember talking to someone who said, yeah, my main job is to make money and give my 10% so that you can do the real thing, which is clearly not how the Bible describes our life. You know, God puts Adam and Eve in the garden to cultivate it, to make it spread and fill the earth, and we're all called to be gardeners. Some of us do that by being pastors, but others of us do it by, like my wife, running in interior design business. And we talk a lot about this. I'm working in the church. She's working outside the church. We're both working for the kingdom. I don't think most people have that perspective, though, right? No, I don't. And I think Not just Sunday is a way of talking about all those kinds of things.

But I guess the way we phrased it, it says that God cares about your Monday, your Tuesday, your Wednesday. He cares about every day of your life equally and every part of your life. Yeah. I think there's this other element, though, that we want to talk about in the podcast, which is God doesn't want us to be part-time Christians. Because even if... What if that used to be one of my nicknames is part-time Christian?

I used to tell my roommates in college that I wasn't a Christian until after 9 o'clock. In the morning or 90? And then I'd be too late, you know. I was not a morning person at that stage of my life. I said, you come in and you wait me up before 9 o'clock. I'm not a Christian. So you don't know what you're going to get. I'm not sure at what point I stopped being Christian.

Maybe it was two or three o'clock in the morning. There was some juncture there. But I think even if people say, okay, I understand how my vocation and calling, that's a part of what God cares about in my life. Or even my fun and my food and my vacation. Okay, God cares about that stuff. I still think a lot of us get into this part-time Christianity model where this sphere, you know, on Sunday mornings,

I do the Christian things. I say the Christian things. I live the Christian life. But then when I'm over here with this group of friends in this situation, I set Jesus to the side. He's no longer my Lord and my King. Like when you're their golf buddies, you might talk about things that you wouldn't talk about

with your other Christian friends, your church friends, your small group friends, that kind of thing. Yeah. And to state the obvious, we all do this. I mean, no one is perfect. No one is living every square dimension of their life as though it's under Jesus's reign. I think what I'm getting at is sometimes we get into a pattern of doing it and being okay with it.

It's like it's one thing to be out with the golf buddies and have that conversation after we're saying, man, Jesus, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. It's a totally different thing to be in a mindset. You think, yeah, that's fine. It's not a big deal. God doesn't care. And I think that's the bigger thing I want to see change. You know, Dallas Willer talks about how if you want to hear God in your life, he says, the key is being inside of his will. By which he means you're not being a perfect person, but you were seeking as much as you can to surrender the totality of your life to Jesus. And he says, if you're not willing to give him your everyday things, like if you can't trust him with how you drive your car, then how in the world are you going to trust him with how you treat your spouse or how you treat your coworkers. And it's a really great point. He's saying the small things really, really matter. And so I think that's another part of not just Sundays, this idea of, hey, let's not be part-time Christians. And what's it look like to change from maybe being a part-time Christian to a full-time Christian who's trying to surrender the whole of your life to God. So is this a little bit like what Brother Lawrence called practicing the presence of God? You know, like he was the dishwasher in a monastery in France.

I think Paris maybe. And it's like 1500s or something. Yeah, 1500s. And he develops this idea that I can be just as holy as the monks. I can watch dishes. He was a monk. Was he a monk, though? Or he washed dishes for the monks?

He was a monk, but his job as a monk was washing. In fact, it kind of goes to our point, though. I just reread the book, so I'm probably a little fresher. But in the book, he talks about how he struggled to pray when he was in their devotional time. Right. But when he was washing dishes, when he was doing the, ordinary, mundane work that the monastery needed, keep your dishes clean, that's when he felt like he could connect the most with God. And so he was trying to kind of spread this idea with people,

because I think people wrote him letters, right? And then he responded to him. And the idea was you can practice the presence of God in every area of your life. In fact, you should. And so it gets away from this duality, these two different kinds of people. I'm one kind of person on Sunday, another kind of person on Monday. I'm one kind of person at the golf course, another person around small group friends. I'm one way at work and work conversations. I'm in other person. and, you know, in other environments. I should practice the presence of God and realize that God is here with me all the time. Yeah.

And one of the interesting things that he writes about is, again, I think when we talk about this, people start getting this perfectionist idea. Like, I'm going to be floating on a cloud throughout my life, speaking aphorisms to people, and they'll be impressed with my wisdom and godly character. And Brother Lawrence is so honest. I mean, he says again and again, oh, this is not about living a sinless life. I mean, of course, that's a great aspiration to fight your sin. He's very clear.

he says, you can't move faster than the speed of grace. It's a line I really like, because he'd have people come and say, hey, how do I become like you? And he goes, you're trying to move way too fast. So, like, God is at work in everybody's life, and God will change you more than you expect in the long term, but probably a lot less than you hoped for in the short term. Yeah, and I think there's also this dimension of that's part of how God trains you.

In other words, if God waved his magic wand and changed you overnight, you would have the temptation to become an incredibly proud, arrogant person. You think, gosh, you know, I am the special one. I am the chosen one. Instead, God allows us to struggle with our sin so that we learn to stop trusting ourselves and relying upon ourselves and instead learn to cast ourselves on him. And I think that's what he meant when he said, you can't move faster than the speed of grace. But also like what he said, whenever you do sin, he's like, don't get stuck in it. He said, I just confess it and move on. It was this really beautiful picture of it's not going to be a perfect life. Don't get bogged down, but you are seeking

more and more to be changed. Well, I think this might be a little different than what you're saying, I think the internet has disciples us, trained us to want instant gratification. Like, I want to know something and I get frustrated if my Wi-Fi is not just like super snappy, right? And it's like, I expect to have all information.

I expect to have any question I want answered. I expect to be able to make a reservation at a restaurant. I expect all that instantly. And that's not the way God works in our life. It's slow. Like he uses the metaphors of growing a seed. You know, it takes a seed, a long time to turn into a plant, a long time to turn into a tree, a long time

to bear fruit. And I think sometimes we just have unrealistic expectations of how fast the change is going to happen in our life. Yeah. And so I think we should be careful when we say we want to start a podcast about change, where we hope that if you're listening to this, you'll experience change because people are looking for those quick fix solutions. Like, oh, great, I found the podcast. I'm going to listen to it. And six weeks from now, my life's going to be totally different. Do you listen to podcasts for change? I listen to audiobooks for change. I don't listen to a lot of podcasts.

That's a tough one just because my answer is going to be no, I don't listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen to podcasts for information sometimes. And I listen to audiobooks, though, primarily for change. What about you? I think I'm always trying to change something in my life. I'm a person who's very dissatisfied to a point of ridiculousness, right? I mean, I know that about myself, right? I mean, I know that I'm always dissatisfied about something.

I always want to change something. and sometimes I go to books to change. Like, I remember reading books on parenting because I wanted to change the way that, you know, my kids were parented. Did that work for you? Yeah, I learned a lot. Now, I'm the kind of person that changes through head to heart, and some people, I think it's almost the opposite.

There's different ways to change, right? Yeah. And so I like to get information and then I kind of change. You know, I'm hesitant because I think change is about a lot more than information. Thanks for listening to that preview. If you want to hear the whole thing, just click the link in our show notes to Not Just Sunday or search for Not Just Sunday on your podcast player. Go ahead and subscribe right away.

Don't wait because you'll forget about it. Just pop over there, take 30 seconds, subscribe to the podcast, and you'll learn more about how to take Jesus into every part of your life. Don't stop with 10-minute Bible talks. Make Not Just Sunday a part of your life.