Small Change, Big Results – Ep. 9

In This Episode:

This episode discusses why we should use small changes and how they can lead to big results.

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Episode Transcript:

Opening

On today’s episode, how you can use small changes to get big results.

You’re listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, a podcast to inspire and equip you to partner with God in your daily work. Visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to learn more and download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You.

Episode

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had times in your life where you’ve had this big motivation to have this big change and you’re going to get these big results. Maybe, for example, you decided that you wanted to start exercising or you want to read a book a week. So you commit to it and you start doing really well out of the gate and then you miss a day or you don’t feel particularly motivated and somehow it starts to back off achieving that and then all of a sudden it’s been a week or two and where did that go? And you forget about it and move on.

I want to suggest that instead of thinking about these big changes, it’s better to think about a small change. What little tweak can you make?

Small Changes in Golf

If you’re a golfer, you will understand this a little better, but it’s simple. If you look at a golf swing and where the ball goes, whether it goes straight down the fairway or it goes way off to the side, it’s just a little difference. It could be in the grip of the club, it could be in the club head position, but just a tiny little angle difference or the ball position by less than an inch can make the ball go different places, hundreds of yards down the fairway. Off to the right, left or wherever it is. It doesn’t take a lot of change.

The Key to Small Change

It’s the same when it comes to other stuff in our life that we want to have big results from. We need to make small tweaks, small changes. So one of the keys to being able to do this consistently is to have the change that you’re trying to make be Small enough so that you won’t have mental resistance to it.

It won’t be something you’ll want to avoid or it won’t be something that you need to be especially motivated for. It won’t be reliant on you having the willpower in the moment. It’s something small enough to where you’ll just do it with no resistance

The goal is consistency and making it a habit. For example, if you you want to read more, you can just read one page a night before you go to sleep. That’s only a couple of minutes for one page at night. Or if you want to drink water, just start by drinking water when you get up in the morning and before you go to bed.

The idea is to just start small.

A Challenge in Two Areas

There are two areas in particular that I want to challenge you in with your faith at work. A challenge to make small changes. One area is reading the Bible and the other is prayer.

If you already read the Bible every day, that’s great and perhaps you can just think about what you can do to enhance that. And if you already pray every day or at least do pray consistently think about what you can do to enhance that also.

Reading the Bible

If you’re not particularly consistent with these, I want to challenge you to find a small change you can make to get in the word of God every day. Whether it’s reading just one chapter, or a Proverb, or to read the Bible until you get to a verse that stands out to you and God speaks to you. You can even use an audio Bible.

Whatever it is, what can you commit to that you can be mindful of and not have so much resistance to? It’s just something that you can easily step into daily? The idea is that you would grow from there, but you have to get started and get consistency. You can leverage small change to do that.

Prayer – Conversation with God

The other area that I want to really challenge you in is prayer. If you’re not praying, can you pray for one minute? Prayer is conversation with God. Get get alone with Him and just pray with Him. Have conversation with him and invite Him into your work. Ask for His favor. Ask for Him to be with you and go with you throughout your day. Ask for Him to speak to you throughout the day. Just spend one minute at least and start there.

Make the Change and Build Habits

The goal is to build these habits. These will be central to your faith at work and to integrating God into your work. Central in partnering with Him in the workplace.

Is God bringing anything to your mind right now where you can seek to make a small change? Make that change this week and watch for the big results that God will bring.

Closing

Thanks for listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d love for you to subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Be sure to visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You and remember, God wants to partner with you in your work every day.

What You Believe is What You Get – Ep. 8

In this Episode:

This episode discusses the physiological connection between what we believe and what we experience.

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Episode Transcript:

Opening

On today’s episode, the importance of what you believe.

You’re listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, a podcast to inspire and equip you to partner with God in your daily work. Visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to learn more and download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You.

Episode

Do you actually believe that God cares about your work? That your work matters? That your work has purpose and that God really wants to partner with you in your work?

Why is this so important? The Bible gives us directions on what we should believe. Of course we want to walk according to that. walk by the spirit and not by the flesh. The Bible has a lot to say about this topic, but today I want to give some physiological support.

Your Brain Can Help You

There’s a part of the brain called the RAS, the Reticular Activating System. This is back by the brain stem and it’s the part of a brain that has two functions. The first is that it wakes you up and the second is that it filters information from your unconscious mind into your conscious thinking. It does that based on your intention, based on what you’re doing, what you believe, and what you’re thinking about.

It’s basically filtering evidence for whatever you believe about yourself or whatever you believe about a situation. For example, if you believe that God doesn’t care about your work and your work doesn’t matter, your own brain is going to filter information and evidence from your subconscious thinking into your mind to give you evidence that you’re right. It’s wrong but if you’re thinking that way and believing that way, then that’s what you’re going to get. That’s what you’re going to be thinking about that’s coming into your mind.

On the other hand, if you think that your work matters to God and that He cares deeply about the minute little details of everything that’s going on and that nothing is arbitrary, your brain is going to help you with that. It’s going support you and filter through evidence that shows you that that’s true.

After we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, believing correctly about our work and believing that God wants to partner with us in our work really is the entry point into connecting your faith to your daily work. To actually living out the design and the purpose and the calling that God has for you on your life, especially as related to your work.

It’s not just about this positive thinking as only thing. This is feeding our mind on in our beliefs on what is right, what is good, and what is righteous. What is the Bible is telling us to do? To set our mind on things above. Then we let our brain, the way God designed it, to work for us and help us in that. The way God designed us to work. That’s incredible.

Always Be Looking

Another thing that you can do to ensure that you’re living out this connection of your faith and your work is to always be looking for things that support that God is in your work.

God is all around you in your work. His hand is everywhere. He has a plan for you. He has a plan for others in your work around you. He knows what’s going on in their lives. He knows what’s going on in your life. He knows the difficulties with the projects and the people you’re working with.

Always be looking and you will be shocked at what He can show you and what you will see that He’s doing. The answers and the solutions and the next steps that He has for you.

So as you go throughout your day-to-day and this week, make sure that you see yourself as someone who partners with God and always be looking for God’s hand around you in your daily work.

Closing

Thanks for listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d love for you to subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Be sure to visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You and remember, God wants to partner with you in your work every day.

Faith in God’s Resources, Not Our Own – Ep. 7

In This Episode:

This episode discusses how we need to walk by faith in God’s resources, not our own.

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Episode Transcript:

Opening

On today’s episode, how we need to walk by faith and God’s resources and not our own.

You’re listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, a podcast to inspire and equip you to partner with God in your daily work. Visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to learn more and download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You.

Episode

You don’t have to study the Bible for long to come across the idea that God wants us to give the best in everything we’re doing and He wants us to plan. He wants us to have a strategy. He wants us to work hard in what we’re doing. But you will also find that we are not called to have faith in those things. We’re not called to have faith in our efforts only. We’re not called to have faith in our experience or whatever resources we can muster up.

We are called to have faith in the Lord in what He can do, but we still have our part to do.

Gideon’s Army of 300

To demonstrate this truth, I want to turn to the book of Judges, chapter seven, where Gideon goes up against the Midianites. God called him to lead a tiny army against 135,000 Midianites. He started with 32,000 men and God said that was too many. He told Gideon to give a test and to send the ones home that are afraid.

Then 10,000 left and went home. Next, God gave another test and there were only 300 men that remained. Gideon was not very excited about the situation and it took some convincing on God’s part, but Gideon eventually walked forward in faith and confidence that he was going to be able to defeat the army with God on his side. He trusted God and walked in faith with that.

Relying on God’s Resources

We see that he wasn’t relying only on his resources, what he had and what he could use that he brought to the table. He had to walk by faith in what the Lord could do. He had no choice.

How often do we have a situation, a circumstance, a relationship, or a project that just seems overwhelming and we don’t know how we’re going to do it. But we feel a conviction to move forward with it and that God has us where he wants us to be.

You can be confident in moving forward and walking in obedience to what God has given you to do. God has a plan and we need to walk by faith in him and his resources. We need to plan, we need to analyze, but we don’t want to do it so much that we “plan” the Holy Spirit out of the picture. We still need to leave room and we need to let God lead. We need to let the Holy Spirit lead us in Christ and to what He has for us to do. We still need to give our absolute best. We still need to plan. We still need to have a strategy. We still need to think about how we can best approach things, but we need to walk by faith in what God’s going to do alongside of us.

Confidence in the Lord

We can have our confidence in our trust in the Lord and what He wants to do. Trust in Him coming alongside us to co-work with Him to get done what He has put in front of us to get done.

Whatever comes to us in our work, whatever comes to us in our life, God has provision for us to get through it. To come through it with what He has planned just like He did with Gideon. He made sure that he was relying on God and His resources and not Gideon’s own resources and just the men there.

Just like Gideon, we need to walk forward by faith in what God can do.

Closing

Thanks for listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d love for you to subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Be sure to visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You and remember, God wants to partner with you in your work every day.

Confidence in Your Work – Ep. 6

In This Episode:

Our confidence must be in God and His promises. This episode reviews 4 important lessons we must learn from Caleb and Joshua in the Bible.

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Episode Transcript:

Opening

Where do you find your confidence in your work? That’s the topic of today’s episode.

You’re listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, a podcast to inspire and equip you to partner with God in your daily work. Visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to learn more and download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You.

Episode

There are many things that we can find our confidence in. It could be our work experience could be our skillset, it could be just things we know or the relationships we have. Whatever it is, there only one ultimate thing that is the best to have our confidence in.

Caleb, Joshua and Moses

To learn where our confidence should be, we can look at a story from the book of Numbers with Caleb, Joshua and Moses. There are four lessons that I want us to take away from this quick story.

This story is when Lord talked to Moses and told him to send spies into the land of Canaan, which He going to give to the people of Israel. This is the Promised Land that’s been talked about for many years, since the time they came out of Egypt. So Moses got the 12 spies, one from each of the tribes, and sent them into the land. Caleb and Joshua are among these spies.

So the 12 go into the land and they check it out for 40 days. They came back and they start giving their report. They brought the whole congregation of Israel together. They started giving a negative report and Caleb interrupted them. He said, “we can do it, let’s go up and take the land and occupy it.” And the other spies interrupted him and started to talk negatively about the land. They talked about how they saw giants in the land that made them look like grasshoppers. They claimed the giants would kill them and they shouldn’t go. All the people of Israel started to agree with them and saying that they shouldn’t go and that they should go back to Egypt. They even questioned why Moses “brought them out there to die.” They all became very doubtful.

Ten of the 12 spies were agreeing with the negative report and the people started to agree with them and rebel. Caleb and Joshua said that the land was exceedingly good land. They said that God delighted in them that He will bring them into the land and would give it to them. They said the Lord was with them.

They said do not fear the people in this land (Numbers 14:9) and the people rebelled against it. They didn’t want to do it.

Four Lessons

There’s four lessons here.

The first is God was their confidence. Caleb and Joshua were saying that the Lord was with them and to not fear the people in the land.

The second is the circumstances didn’t change their confidence at all. The circumstances did not look good. It was a fair assessment of the circumstances, but it ignored what God had said.

Which brings us to the third point. They trusted what God said in the beginning in Numbers 13:1, God said He was going to give the land to the Israelites and that was that. Caleb and Joshua trusted that. They went and did an assessment of the land, brought back the report and that’s what it was. But they trusted God with what God had said. He said He would be with them.

The fourth lesson is that they were bold to speak their conviction, even though they had taken an unpopular position. They were not scared. In fact, it was not only the 10 spies that were against them, it was the whole congregation of Israel that had risen up and was rebelling. But that didn’t change their willingness to share the unpopular position and to say the truth of what God had given them in their heart to say.

What About Us?

So turning to us, what’s our confidence? Is our confidence just in some external thing or experience, whatever it may be. Or is our confidence in God? In His abilities through Christ, what He can do with us. Are we going to look at our circumstances too much? Of course we need to analyze them and know what’s going on, but are we going to trust in those plans or trust in the Lord. We need to keep our trust in the Lord and what He said and not be afraid to take an unpopular position. We need to be bold and walk out the conviction that God puts in our hearts.

Closing

Thanks for listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d love for you to subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Be sure to visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You. And remember, God wants to partner with you in your work every day.

Podcast Trailer – 30s

Your Faith At Work Podcast:

It can be hard to connect your faith to your daily work. Each week, Ryan S. Howard provides insights into how you can fulfill God’s purpose and calling through the work you are already doing every day. As you listen to this podcast, you will be encouraged, inspired and equipped to live out everything God has planned for you in your work. If you want to partner with God in your daily work, this is a podcast for you.

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