Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Can I Leave a Lasting Impact on the World?: You Only Need Ten Minutes

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Most people want to make a lasting impact on the world, but is that realistic? Is it possible? God has a vision and purpose for your life, and while it may not be worldwide, that doesn't mean it's not world changing. In this episode Keith and Patrick discuss how Bible reading an integral component in aligning yourself with God's vision. Starting this life changing habit only takes ten minutes. To get you started (or restarted, or just continuing) we are challenging you to take the Ten Minute Bible Challenge! Here's what you do: Spend your first ten minutes tomorrow reading Psalm 23. Share your experience online. Challenge two friends to take the challenge! Tag @TenMinuteBibleTalks so we can share the story. Also - be sure to follow us on https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/ (Facebook)! We want to connect with you, and you can help shape the podcast! Here's the URL: https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/ (https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Minute-Bible-Talks-103966368000540/) If you want our interview with John Drage, go here: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-the-living-can-learn-from-the-dying-seeing-through-the-eyes-of-a-dying-man-john-drage/ (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-the-living-can-learn-from-the-dying-seeing-through-the-eyes-of-a-dying-man-john-drage/) If you want our episode on building healthy habits, go here: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-break-and-make-life-changing-habits/ (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-break-and-make-life-changing-habits/) 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.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Last week, I was talking with Polly Connor about social media, and we announced that we were launching our new 10-minute Bible Talks Facebook page. We're just getting started with that, and I wanted to encourage you if you've got some time to click the link in our profile and go and like us. It's a great way to stay updated on content that we are doing here on the podcast, but also outside of it. It's also a great place to connect with us. I've been chatting with people on there.

It's been fun to meet with some of our listeners. I was just talking with a guy who lives out in the Philippines. I had no idea. Someone out in the Philippines was listening to this, but it was a cool conversation. One thing we want to do on the Facebook page and on this podcast is we want to give people who are listening challenges. What we call quick wins, that if you do this really quick win, it could eventually lead to a big life transformation.

And our first challenge that we're going to do, we're calling the 10-minute Bible challenge. We're going to explain it at the end. end of this episode because I don't think it's really helpful to throw out a challenge and not tell you why it matters. But you could also just pop onto the Facebook page and we've got lots of stuff there all about the 10-minute Bible challenge. We hope you'll take it and that you'll challenge your friends to do it. So with that said, Hey on Patrick, is this a good time to tell people that I'm not on Facebook and that this new thing we're doing is so exciting. It has pulled me into Facebook world. And I'm scared to death of

it. And I guess I'm going to do it, but I am petrified of what it means for my life. Are you actually going to do it? Because yesterday, I told you you would have to create a Facebook account and you go, well, hold on. We're going to have to have another conversation about this. Well, I thought we were doing this off a 10-minute Bible talk Facebook page. And then when you told me, no, that's not how it really works. Now, here's the deal, people. I'm just telling you all this because I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not. And I'm telling you this because I really do think that we're going to create some cool community on our Facebook page. I think it's going to have a lot of helpful resources for you. And this two-minute Bible challenge is one of those. Now, I wouldn't be doing a Facebook page

because my family will tell you anyone who knows me will tell you that I am petrified of the whole experience. So I wouldn't be doing all that if I didn't think this was going to be a great resource, lead to some great relationships. So I'm looking forward to it. And I hope. I hope you'll join in. I'm excited too. So on today's episode, we want to talk about leading a life that builds something greater than yourself. And most people I know, that's something that I think if you ask them, say, yeah, I want to build something greater than myself. I want to build something that lasts. I want my life to have a long-term purpose and meaning. And we're going to talk about how we do that. But before we do, we need to talk about what are the challenges to doing that.

I was reading a survey recently of millennials. By the way, I'm a millennial and I'm a proud millennial. I'm not. Neither a millennial or proud of millennials. Exactly. Well, I'm a millennial and I'm happy to be one. And this is going to sound like millennial bashing, which is one of my biggest pet peeves. But still, I found this so fascinating.

I had to share it. There was a survey done of people like me born between 1980 and 2000. And it found that 41% of people in that category spend more on coffee every month than they do investing in retirement. But you millennials love your coffee. So artisan coffee. I like a good pour over. I would also like to retire, believe it or not. Good luck. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to afford it. Okay. So obviously we have a challenge, not just millennials, all people have a challenge with setting long-term goals, building something that's going to last. It's easier to do something that's a quick fix than

it is to invest your money in something that's going to last. I mean, come on, Keith, you and Christine. Yeah, this isn't a millennial problem. You're not millennial bashing. I mean, you're just using the latest evidence that human beings, I guess throughout history, throughout time, throughout my life for sure, have a hard time of delaying gratification. When Christine and I had first got married, we were super young, we were super broke, we were on staff with a Christian ministry called Campus Crusade for Christ, or at least that's what it was called back then. And we saved 0.0 for anything in our life. Anything. Retirement would have been so far outside of my mind, but we ate ice cream.

But we ate a lot of really good ice cream. And so our ice cream is your coffee. We've never been coffee drinkers, but we love our ice cream. And I remember eating ice cream and running up massive debt on my credit card, all for immediate gratification. What was your favorite brand? Well, there was a place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we lived, and we really didn't know anybody, and we just moved up there. So all I remember is they had something called a smushin. It was ice cream with all kinds of candy in it. We gained weight. We went into debt. We did every unhundred. healthy thing. And we knew it at the time. It's just that we couldn't let go of the immediate gratification, the hit that it gave us. Yeah, he couldn't help smushin. So the idea of saving for retirement, I mean, that was just so foreign to me. So why do we get so fixated on the present, on quick, easy rewards, and forget about the future? Well, I think a lot of it just has to do with the fact that we want that dopamine rush. We want that quick fix and that we live in a culture

that promotes that, but even our biology promotes it so that when we get that dopamine rush, we immediately want another rush, another rush, another hit. And anything long term, the payoff for it is just too far away. I mean, think about a kid who's got a couple options. They can play Xbox. They can go out and play with their friends, or they can study for math. Well, the payoff for studying for the math is way ahead. It's way ahead when they take a test or when they get their grade card or when they want to get into college or want to get a job. And that seems so far away from the actual choice of having to decide, what am I going to do with this hour?

The payoff for Xbox or the payoff to hang out with friends is immediate. Any brain scientists that you talk to will, I think, agree with what Keith is saying, that our brain is designed to buy into these quick feedback loops. And I think it only makes it worse that we live in a culture of immediacy. We live in a culture where, I mean, almost everything is a click away. If you want to know something, you don't have to go to the library and research it. You just press a button and it's right there on Google. If you want to order something, at least pre-COVID, you could press a button and you don't have to go find it in a store. It'll be on your doorstep one or two days later. And so we are training ourselves as a culture. I mean, even television, I remember back in college having watch parties for Lost where we'd get all of our friends together and we'd watch the show whenever it came out on the particular day. And I don't think that happens anymore because now we're, we live in a streaming world where when it's out, you want it immediately, you can watch it

whenever you want to watch it. You don't have to wait for a rerun later on the television. We had to watch it right when it was on TV. And so again, I mean, just culturally, we've trained ourselves to get these quick fixes, to not have the long view in mind. And in some sense, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, most of the examples you just gave, who cares if you wait to watch a whole season at some point in the future or just watch it as it comes out. But unfortunately, that pattern brought into other parts of life can have a really negative impact. I think we all know that problems come with living this way. I think about it with parenting. The kind of parenting that I do when I'm living for the moment rather than living for the

future is typically not great parenting. I mean, speaking personally, let's say I'm trying to do something around the house. Maybe I'm trying to get some work done or a project. It's really easy for me to just tell Iris, hey, you know what, go watch a TV show, go spend a few hours. And hours in front of the television, and you're not going to bother me. Now, in the short term, that's not a giant deal. There's probably no harm done to my child by watching some television. But if I continue to parent that way over and over and over again, I'm going to train my daughter to be a certain kind of person, rather than maybe when she's bothering me sitting down saying, hey, daddy's working on a project right now, and I'm going to play with you in 30 minutes, but right now I need you to be patient.

I need you to go play by yourself, which would go teach her some character, would teach her some virtue. She'd go into the room and she'd have to figure out how do I play by myself? How do I practice patience and wait for my parent to be ready? And now I think, Patrick, you've brought up a second issue that is very related and definitely relates to our own walk with God and reading their Bible. And the second issue is that we think that things that come in small doses don't have a long-term impact. And so you're right. Any one time Iris goes to watch a television show instead of maybe playing on her own doesn't make any difference. But a pattern of that, makes a huge difference. Think about that even in your eating. When Christine and I were devouring

smushions up in Ann Arbor, any one of those is not that big of a deal. It's that we set a pattern of doing it. When you go to exercise, any one trip to the gym or whatever it is you do for exercise doesn't help you that much. But over time, it makes a huge difference. But for some reason, not only do we have trouble with delayed gratification, but we have trouble recognizing that small choices lead to a big impact. Typically, what is easiest in the moment, again, like Keith is saying, on its own isn't a problem, but if we do it over and over and over again, it's going to produce a character, a lifestyle, a body. And that could be good or bad, right? Good or bad. I mean, the parenting, again, it's a great example. It's harder to sit down and talk with my daughter

and coach her through patience and learning to play by herself. That's why I don't do it. I want the quick and easy answer. But a pattern of teaching my daughter to be patient is going to produce a teenager, a adult, I hope one day, who is patient and responsible and not selfish and not needing to be entertained all of the time because she from a young age had a pattern in her life of having to be patient, having to wait, having to play on her own and not be entertained for a bit. Or here's a different example that I think everybody can identify with, and that is the allurement of your phone instead of the Bible. The phone has such a power over us, at least me, I think of us, but for sure me, that the Bible doesn't have. There's this quick hit of dopamine

rush that comes to the joy of finding out some juicy gossip or who text me or emailed me or the bright colors, the noises. We've talked about that in previous episodes. And the Bible doesn't come with really any of that, at least not if I pick up my standard hard copy Bible. There's nothing there that is attractive to my desire for a quick and immediate hit. But what the Bible offers is so much greater. But again, because my heart and mind can't process that, and I live for the immediate, I'm much more likely to go to my phone than my Bible if I have an extra 30 seconds, five minutes, hour.

I think one of the most important things that anybody can do to fight against picking the quick fix, the easy answer, the immediate result, and instead choose the long term, have the long view, save for the retirement instead of buying the coffee this once. I think one of the best ways to do that, and we'll talk about some other strategies in here, is to paint a picture, to think about where am I going to be? Where do I want to be in 20, 30, 40 years down the line? I'm trying to do this with my daughter. She's four years old, but I'm trying to think, not just what kind of person do I want Iris to be one day, but I'm trying to think about my grandchildren. I'm trying to say, but what kind of parent do I want Iris to be? What do I want to

be true of my grandchildren? What do I need to do right now as a parent to lead her and train her and help her to grow so that our family, two, three generations down the line, is going to still be walking with Jesus. So I think what you're saying is that in order to overcome that desire for immediate gratification, we have to paint a picture of what our life is going to be like if we develop good habits or bad habits. I think that's exactly right. And if we develop bad habits of just going for the immediate gratification when it comes

with our kids, we're probably going to raise impatient, obnoxious little monsters. But if we will invest in some good habits with them, spending time with them, reading to them, teaching them to be independent, whatever, you get the point. We're probably going to raise well-adjusted adults. And we don't need to go into all that. You get the point. You've got to paint a picture so that you are drawn to that greater goal. There's a payoff that you can imagine in your head. And the better you imagine it, the more alluring it's going to be to your heart and mind. And this isn't just true of parenting. We've got a lot of listeners who aren't parents like, okay, well, how does this affect me? Well, if you're a worker, you're working in an organization

right now, even if you're on the bottom rung of the totem pole, I think there's a value in imagining and dreaming what could this company, this organization, be? How could I be a part of making this an organization that is able to provide for the livelihoods of a lot of families 20 years down the line? that's able to achieve its mission and build wherever it's trying to build. If you get that picture in your head of where you want your company and organization to go, it will help you fight against those little moments when you're working, where you say, yeah, instead of working, I'm going to be on my phone, checking ESPN, I'm going to be doing Instagram or Facebook or whatever it is that's distracting you from your work,

or just makes you feel like your work is worthless. You're doing it with a half heart because you don't really care where the company's going. You're just there for a paycheck. Well, painting a picture of what the future is like is going to change. I think would change your habits in your day-to-day work. And the crazy thing is, when you work that way towards a big picture, something that you're hoping to accomplish, a place that you're hoping to go, I think what you'll experience is deeper satisfaction with your work. That's why you spend time mentoring someone. Maybe it's through Big Brothers, Big Sisters,

boys and girls club. You invest in them instead of doing something that would be more immediately gratifying to you because you have a picture that you can help influence this person's life. and maybe not just their life, but maybe their family, and not just their family, but maybe their community. And you never know how God is going to use a small investment of time that will have bigger payoff. But if you don't have your mind fixed on the bigger payoff down the road, it's going to be hard to get yourself to choose to volunteer in some sort of mentoring program than sit and watch something on television. So what do you think is God's long-term vision for your work? What do you think is God's long-term vision for

your relationships, your family, your kids. What do you think is God's long-term vision for your walk with him? One of my favorite stories, and let me just pause here, whether or not you realize it, we are actually the benefactors. If you're following Jesus, you're the benefactor of someone who took the long view in the past, someone who said, I'm not just going to be about myself, I'm not only going to worry about myself, I'm going to participate in building God's kingdom such that people 100, 200 years later are going to know who he is. A great example of this from my own story is I was really influenced by a ministry called Young Life in high school, and I was involved with it in college.

And the story of how Young Life started, to this day, I think it's one of the coolest stories. It started with a bunch of old ladies. They were in a church, and they were across the street the church was from the local high school. And they all felt convicted as they would go to church on Sundays, and there would be no high schoolers inside of the church. Now, they didn't know what to do, so they just committed themselves every day to coming in the morning together and people. praying for those high schoolers and praying that somehow God would reach them. And through a series

of strange coincidences, they end up getting connected with a guy named Jim Rayburn. And Jim Rayburn, he starts praying with them. And all of a sudden, he realizes, I think I might be the answer to this prayer. And he starts going over to that high school. And he starts spending time with high schoolers, getting to know them, mentoring them, and telling them about Jesus. And that's how young life is born. This was in the earlier 1900s. And now, if you look around the world, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who were following Jesus because those old ladies in that church took the long view. They said, what does God want from us? Where is God taking his kingdom? Well, we think he wants to change the lives of high schoolers. We might not be the people to actively do it,

but we're going to pray and God use that prayer and answer that prayer to bring about my salvation. I wouldn't know Jesus, I think, without those ladies praying. So again, you could ask yourself that exact same question in your life and your walk with Jesus. What's the long-term goal? What does Jesus want to use you to do in the future. One of the hard things is that we love immediate payback. I'm willing to do just about anything if there's an immediate reward, but a long-term reward, not so much. And so Patrick just challenged me before we got on here to do away with monsters for a week. And I said, Patrick, it's not a problem, but I don't have any payoff for it. And he was trying to sell me that it was a payoff was to prove to him I can do it. And I'm like, yeah, no dice. I'm not five. That's not going to work. I mean,

I'm not your kid. No, but if there was a payoff for it, I'd be happy to do it. So wait, are you challenging our audience to offer you a payout to stop drinking monsters? Hey, I'd be happy to give it up, but Patrick doesn't think I can, but I promise you for the right payoff I can. But I had a guy in ministry when I was, I think, maybe just out of college. And he said something that I think applies to a lot of areas of life. He said, you can always do less in one year than you think, and more in five years than you would have ever hoped. And I stuck in my head because I get.

discouraged pretty quickly if I don't see change or results. But I try to keep in my mind that short term, the results may not seem very big, but if you think long term, your choices will pay off, they'll have bigger results than you probably ever imagined. And that's going to come to bear a little bit when we start talking about reading our Bible. We've got to have that long-term perspective. I want to challenge anybody listening to this to ask yourself the question, do I have a vision? Do I have a sense of where God is calling me and my walk with? him to go, the things that he wants to accomplish through me. And we're not saying that they have to be extraordinary and magnificent things. It would be an amazing accomplishment if God worked through

you to bring about several generations of family members who were following Jesus. It would be an extraordinary accomplishment if God worked through you to mentor a bunch of high schoolers or colleges, whatever it is for you. The question is, do you have a sense of what that vision is in your life? Do you have a picture that God's painted for you of where you want to go? One of the most striking examples of this comes from John Draghi, who Keith interviewed on our podcast, gosh, a few months ago. And if you didn't listen to that, I just have to say, you've got to listen to that podcast. It's probably the best podcast that we've ever done because John had brain cancer and he was sharing about what he was learning from that. And John actually passed away several weeks ago.

And at his funeral, it was really moving. People were sharing stories about him. But one of the things that someone said was that John, one of his goals, the vision that he had for his life was that he wanted through him for God to reach one million people. Now, I don't know if that happened. I'm pretty sure, though, that if you extend the people that he's impacted over a hundred years, those one million people really probably would be reached. And while to some people that might sound bombastic and crazy, I hear and I say, that's a guy who had a sense of a vision, a long-term goal, and he was able to set aside quick, easy fix, short-term gains to go towards that long-term gain for his whole life. And again, my challenge, anybody listening to this is to have that

attitude to say, hey, I want to be able to set aside those quick, easy short-term answers, and instead build towards something that's bigger than myself, something that's going to last, that God has set before me. That's for the sake of his kingdom. John was a good dude, and you're right. He did make sacrifices in order to make that happen. He and his whole family made important sacrifices of their time, financial sacrifices, but he was passionate about people coming to faith in Christ. So maybe you want to go to the end of your life and just think of your funeral and think about the people who speak there.

What kind of person do you want to be? Because Patrick asked earlier about whether you had a vision for your life, and maybe if you're like me, you're like, gosh, no, I'd like one, but where do you get that? But this might be an easier way to do it. Patrick gave you the private school version. Here's the public school version. The public school version is just imagine your funeral and imagine different kinds of people who get up and talk. Imagine someone from your family. If you're married or have kids, imagine them. Or imagine someone you work with or go to school with. Just every aspect of your life.

And when they stand up and talk, what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of things do you want them to say about you? What kind of difference do you want to have made? Do you want them to stand up there and say, boy, that person, I mean, she really knew Netflix really well. Do you want them to get up there and say, man, he really knew sports? What do you want them to say? I mean, those would be fine things for them to say that they love movies or they love sports, but surely that's not all that you want.

Of course not. You want to leave some sort of legacy. I think if you think about your funeral, you will zero in on the thing that God might be calling you to do in your life. And it may seem big or it may seem small, but I think it needs to be significant. I think it needs to be for God's sake and for the sake of his kingdom, whether you're working in a church or not working in a church. I don't want to get to the end of my life and people say, well, Patrick watched every season of Stranger Things, and that was a major accomplishment for him. I hope they'll have more to say about me than that. And I think anybody listening to

this would agree with that. So the question then becomes, how does that you know, do we build something greater than ourselves? How does anybody build something greater than themselves? Some people do it by donating money. I mean, that's one thing you notice is people get older. They start thinking that they want something to transcend their life. And in some sense, family is that for people, but people with financial resources, what they end up doing is they end up creating endowments or contributing to universities and having their name on a building. Now, I'm not criticizing that or critique in any way. I'm just saying that it is a window into the human desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves that transcends our life that lasts longer than our 60, 70, 80 years

here lasts. Now, for those of us who don't have money to put our names on things, for Keith and I, and for most people, how do we do it? How do we achieve that goal? How do we build something greater than ourselves. Well, I think of two big things. I think the first thing is that we need to connect to someone greater than ourselves, and we need to join a project greater than ourselves. So obviously, when I say, if you want to build something greater than yourself, you need to be connected with someone greater than yourself. Because here's a deal, even if you put your name on every building on the local college campus, eventually that college campus might shut down. Those buildings might be torn down. It's not going to last. There's only one person that lasts forever, has been there for

forever and will last forever, and your relationship with that person is the most eternal thing about you. So if you want to build something that lasts, it has to be done in connection with a person who lasts forever. There's only one of those. God, Jesus, that's the only way. That's a starting point. Build a relationship with the person that lasts. But the second thing I would say is you need to join a project that's going to last. Like I just said with the buildings, it doesn't matter. Even if you get your name on buildings at Harvard, 200 years from now, Harvard might not exist. You need to be a part of a project that is bigger than that. And I think this is part of the reason why Jesus, when he came to earth, his primary message was not a message of personal salvation.

I certainly think that Jesus offered salvation to individual people, but that wasn't the thing that he talked about the most. The thing that he talked about the most was the coming of God's kingdom. And he said that if you follow him, you are accepting the invitation to help him in this kingdom-building project. And so again, the one who lasts, Jesus is the one who has a project that lasts, the kingdom of God, the thing that will outlast all things. All right, so let's translate all this big talk, this theoretical, visionary talk about a life that lasts, and try to get it down to daily habits. And I think that we need daily habits that help connect us to Jesus, like Patrick said. He is the one who lasts. He is the eternal king. And we need to have daily habits that connect us

to his kingdom, what he was up to when he was here and what he's still up to today. And I think all that starts to focus on reading our Bible. Now, it's always easy to reduce the Christian life to just one thing. And we're not trying to say that good Christians read their Bible and people who read their Bibles are good Christians. We're not trying to say that this is the be all end all of the Christian life. Of course it's not. But it is one of the most important things that we can do to invest in our relationship with God, to invest in our understanding of God's plan in the world, to connect to something bigger than ourselves, or to say it better, to connect to the one who is bigger than us. And apart from reading our Bible, I don't know how will ever grow in our faith.

You never hear someone who is mature in their faith say that they don't read their Bible. They've never read their Bible. All the people who are mature in their faith that you look up to, you respect that have had an impact in your life, had some sort of connection to the scriptures. And probably it was a daily connection, or at least a frequent connection. I want you to think about that person. I think we all have that person in our life who you say, wow, they really know how to follow Jesus. It might be a grandparent, a parent, a friend, a pastor, a coworker.

I don't know who it is, but there's probably someone or someone's in your life like that. And if you stop and you think, what made them so wise? What's given them that peace that you long for? Why do they seem connected with Jesus? My guess is if you talk to them, they would say exactly what Keith is saying. I read my Bible. That's where I hear from God. That's where I hear his words.

And I'm praying. I'm connecting to them. And that shapes my whole life so that as I'm going about my day, I've got a real sense of purpose. I know what I'm building. But then we go back to our problem of wanting to, immediate payoffs, immediate gratification, and the problem of the inability to see that small choices have a big impact, because there's no immediate payoff to reading your Bible. If you read it one day, you all of a sudden aren't transformed into this new person.

And so that's why we've been talking about the choices that we have to make to have a bigger picture of what we want to be, what we want to be involved in, that captures our heart. that we will develop the daily habits that produce that kind of character, that produce that kind of life. I think it would help us out a lot if we started viewing Bible reading a lot more the way that we view working out. I am not a very fit person. Oh, come on, Patrick. If you're going to walk us through how Bible reading compares to workouts, we're sunk. I mean, go ahead. I'm all ears. Pay attention, people. I have in history, just not current history, been known to exercise regularly. Hopefully you read your Bible more than your exercise. That's for sure true.

But one thing I know as someone who is not currently very fit right now is that if I go to the gym and go for a run on a treadmill or get on the elliptical or whatever it is, if I expect that by that one act, I'm going to become suddenly fit. Like I'm going to walk out. I'm going to look like a Greek God. Clearly, something's gone wrong. That's just someone who's irrational. And see, it's the same way with reading our Bible. If you say, hey, I want to be someone who, knows who God is, feels close to God, is wise like Jesus. You don't read your Bible once and then expect, hey, I'm going to walk out and feel all those things. In fact, when I leave the gym after not working out for a long time, it's usually the opposite. I'm like, oh, man, that was really hard. I'm achy,

and this is painful. And now I've got to go home and kind of make up for the time that I wasn't at home with the kids. It's like all these costs. I'm like, I'm never going to do this again. I'm not coming back to the gym. It's over. All the costs are immediate. There's hardly any immediate payoff when it comes to working out or when it comes to reading your Bible. You have to give up the time to do it, and you have to kind of train your mind to do it, and the first time it might not be very enjoyable. But you know those before and after pictures that you'll see someone look like this, and then they worked out or ate better or whatever, and their bodies transformed? Well, you can have those kind of before and after pictures of your heart, of your character. He or she was once super prideful.

Now they have grown in humility. They were angry, and now they've grown in patience. They were arrogant, and now they are self-sacrificing. Those are the kinds of before and after pictures you can see, and how do you get there? Well, it's not by lifting weights. It's by just developing a little habit of being in the Bible on a consistent basis. Great buildings, great things aren't built in one moment. They're built one brick at a time. And in fact, the greatest buildings take generations, to build. And so if you want to be a part of something like that, it starts with, I got to lay one brick at a time. I've got to create a daily habit. One reason that Keith and I started this podcast was we really believe what we're saying. And so we put our money where our mouth was. You say, okay, we're going to create a podcast that's going to give people several times a week, some time in the word where they can connect with Jesus and apply it to their lives because we think that that really will transform who you are. And as a team, we're really committed to trying to help anybody who's to this, build a daily habit, not just of listening to a podcast that guides you through things,

but also being in the Bible yourself, spending time in the words yourself. And that's part of why we came up with this idea called the 10-minute Bible challenge. So here's what the challenge is. It's incredibly simple. I'll just walk through it. Step number one, we would challenge you to charge your phone in a different room. Most people I know charge it on their nightstand. Just take that phone out, charge it in your living room. I don't care where you put it, just not in your bedroom. And that's because we need to set ourselves up for success. And we've developed a habit, at least I have, developed a habit of I just reach for the phone. And I will repeat that same habit if the phone is there. But if the phone is not there, it breaks up my routine and signals to my brain, brain, you're going to do something different today. You're going to read your Bible, not reach for your phone. In fact, a great way to get yourself to read your Bible is to take your Bible and put it where you normally charge. your phone. So when you reach over for the phone and said you're grabbing your Bible, and that's the next step. Pick up your Bible and set and set of very

simple goal, just to read your Bible for 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes. I'm not saying it has to be a great 10 minutes. I'm not saying that your mind is going to be perfectly focused for 10 minutes. I'm not saying that you're even going to get a ton out of it for that first 10 minutes. Remember, my first 10 minutes at the gym is mostly misery and just hoping that no one notices that I'm there. That's okay. This first 10 minutes may be great. It may not be great. And I know we're probably pushing this workout comparison too far. But I just think it's so apt and it's so helpful because sometimes when people decide that they're going to start working out, they go and they overdo it. And they just think, I'm going to go work out for an hour. I'm going to run 10 miles. And that doesn't work. You're going to fail. You're not going to be able to finish what you set out to do. You're going to be too sore.

So here's the thing. The goal is to start small. The goal is to have a simple 10 minutes. You might think, I'm not going to do 10 minutes. If this is so good for me, I'm going to do an hour. No, no, no, just do 10 minutes. Jerry Seinfeld has this thing where he writes a comedy every single day, and then he puts an X on the calendar. And he says the goal is to have an X every single day, meaning he spent some time that day writing part of a new comedic routine. He's not trying to write a whole routine. He's not even trying to write a whole joke. All he wants to do is be consistent. It's better to do less than you hoped for than it is to do nothing at all. Your hope is to have no zero days. So you get the point. The point isn't to try to do 60 minutes. You might not even get 10 minutes.

The point is to do something every day. So once you grab that Bible, you're going to read for 10 minutes. We would encourage you to read Psalm 23 or Luke 15. You pick and just read it for 10 minutes. And once you're done, go ahead and go online and share your experiences with your friends. I read this passage, this is what it meant to me, and challenged two friends to do this too. Our hope is that this is going to be, because here's the truth. I mean, I'm a pastor, and even the people I meet with who are leaders in the church, many of them really struggle to find time in the Bible. And I think that if people took a small challenge like this seriously, it might be the first step for a lot of people in actually reading their Bible on a regular basis. And that's the heart of challenging two other people to do it so that you can say, hey, this was good for me. and I want my whole community to be doing this.

A couple more quick thoughts. And we talked about this on a different episode when we talked about habit building. But one of the things you might want to do is try to connect your Bible reading to some habit you've already established in your life. For example, if you're a coffee drinker, I'm not, but a lot of you are.

If you're a coffee drinker, set your Bible next to your coffee pot so that when you have your first cup of coffee already established habit, you start reading your Bible. And that way you can develop the Bible reading habit. It's like the coffee habit acts as training wheels for the Bible reading habit. Or you're going to go get in the car. Take Psalm 23 and put that in a note card in your car and spend

time reading or thinking about it while you drive to work. Again, small steps. Don't try to do it all in one time. Just take a small step and share it with other friends. That way you can kind of celebrate wins with each other. People have snap streaks. I don't know if that's still a deal, but it wasn't at a time where you and a friend would snap each other back and forth, and they would count how many days you did it in a row. And that created this desire for a win. Well, what if you did that and kind of did it for your Bible reading instead? And just made a little calendar like Jerry Seinfeld does. And you just wanted to put an X on every day that you read your Bible. And the goal is not to read it all day, not even to read it for an hour, not even necessarily you have to do a whole 10 minutes, but to have no zero days.

Every day you're reading something in the Bible, starting with Luke 15 or Psalm 23, put an X on it, and then you get to celebrate that. And that'd be pretty cool to celebrate yourself, but also with your friends. So quick reprise, 10-minute Bible challenge. You're going to take your phone, charge it in a different room. Put your Bible on your nightstand or like Keith said, maybe by your coffee maker, and spend your first 10 minutes reading the Bible. Go online, share about your experiences, challenge two other friends to do this, and tag us, 10-minute Bible talks on Facebook so that we can share your story with others. I think it would be really cool if this challenge led lots of people to get into the Bible for the first time, or maybe

get back into the Bible after a long time away, or maybe you're someone who does read your Bible every day, and this is a fun way for you to challenge some people that you love to start doing the same thing as well. I'm getting on Facebook for this, so doggone it. You need to do it, and then post on our Facebook page 10-minute Bible Talks. It'll make me getting on Facebook. actually worth it to me. So we'll make sure to put the challenge in the show notes, all of the details, as well as a link to our Facebook page that you can follow us there. Just remember this.

No cathedral was built at once. They are built one block at a time. You have the opportunity through the Bible to be connected to the one person in the universe who lasts forever, and you have an opportunity to be connected to the one project in the universe that will last forever. You don't get to do it all at once. There's no easy button. you don't go to the gym one day and you're fit all of a sudden. This is something that you can do over your

lifetime and will not just transform you, but the people around you. Patrick and I are doing this with you. We're picking up our Bible and we're going to read Psalm 23, Luke 15, so we're in this together. Private school Patrick, public school, Keith, you can do it. Which one's a private school passage, Keith? You read it in Hebrew and Greek, Latin, Eucharitic, Syriac. I just read it in good old English. NIV. NIV. Best version is the one you read. Amen to that.

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