The Christians Hour

Cody Custer: You're listening to The Christians Hour. I'm Cody Custer, your host, and I'm so glad you're joining us today. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where we use radio and media to share the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth until all have heard.

In today's message, Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, challenges us to pursue real spiritual change in our lives. He calls us to move away from empty promises and the distractions that pull us from what truly matters, and toward a life marked by consistency. Ben reminds us that meaningful change often begins small, by identifying one area of our lives where God is inviting growth.

He encourages us to remain patient, to not give up when things get difficult, and to plan for failure, understanding that we will fall short at times. Yet, by learning to get back up, persevere, and love the process, we discover that transformation is a journey, and when we invite God into that journey, real change can happen. Well, here's Ben.

Ben Cachiaras: I want to remind us as we get started about something that we as Christians understand that a lot of people don't, and that is that words matter. Words have power. Think about it even, like God creates in the beginning. How? By speaking with a word. He makes a declaration. Genesis chapter one: "Let there be light." And there was light. God declared it and it happened. Listen, words with actions create new worlds. True for you and me.

And it's actually all through Scripture that God makes a series of promises and covenants with his people, which are really declarations where God says, "I declare this is who I am. This is what I'll do. I'll be faithful to you." And our entire faith hinges on God making those declarations and living up to them. And then it's also a two-way street because following God involves us making some of our own declarations to Him and to the world around us.

So for example, in the midst of a very confusing time in the Old Testament when everyone was going after this god and that god and living however they wanted to live—in other words, a time a lot like ours—a guy named Joshua remembered God's declaration of faithfulness, and he made a decision and boldly stood up in the middle of all that and said, "Listen, you all can do whatever you want to do. You can worship whatever you want to worship and live however you want to live. But listen, as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord." Now that's a bold declaration, and it kind of sets you a little bit apart. And that's what a declaration does.

Or another time when Jesus was with his disciples and went way up north to a place called Caesarea Philippi. And that was another crazy place with all kinds of different philosophies and religions, and people—nobody knew anything or cared anything about that little rabbi Jesus guy. But he looks right at a guy named Peter and he says, "Who do you say that I am?"

Because there comes a moment for every one of us when it doesn't matter what everybody else says. There comes a moment where you've got to figure out what you are going to declare on that question because the only thing that matters is who do you say that he is. And in that moment, Peter made a declaration of his own. He said, "I believe you're the Christ, you're the son of the living God." And Jesus says, "Okay, now I can work with that. On that bedrock foundation, I can build an unstoppable movement." And you and I are still called to be part of it.

And so what we're going to talk about today with our first declaration can change a moment to momentum, can change that moment of clarity to a person of character over time. It's a huge thing that can actually bring the change that we all think about but actually rarely follow through on. Want to know what it is? Consistency.

Now as soon as I say that, if you're like me, a bunch of us are like, "Oh, crud. Oh my gosh," because this might be an area where you feel like you struggle a little bit, right? Let me just ask you, what's something that you think you already know that you need to do more consistently that would benefit you spiritually? What is something you need to do more consistently that could really make a difference in your spiritual connection with God?

So let's jump in and identify four ways we can grow in consistency. Number one: Start small. Did you hear me? Start small. Jesus said the one who is faithful in little things will one day be faithful in much. God's way is always, seems like, to start small. Have you ever noticed that? Because small things done repeatedly over time are the things that matter most in life.

Just about all meaningful change happens one small step at a time. I used to walk with my grandma when she was really old. I was like, "Come on, grandma." She wouldn't even put one foot in front of the other, just like little by little, but you give her enough time, she'd get there. We imagine change happens instantly overnight with one big leap, as if that's how change happens. "I'm done. That was easy." But that's not how we get from here to there in real life.

I mean, you can make a stupid video that goes viral and you have a million followers overnight, but it'll evaporate as quickly and who cares? We're talking about real life here. Everything else in school, in your business, in your relationships, in your marriage, in your physical health—it happens one small step at a time.

We say, "Man, my marriage really needs to change," and we want one conversation, one trip to the counselor, one vacation to fix it. But it's not. It's the daily changes. Just stop opening your mouth when you want to say something snarky. Just say thank you tomorrow. Just hug a little more. You know, the little things. Start small.

All of our kids were home the last few days. It's been awesome. We don't get them home very often from California, Tennessee, but they were all home. And it reminded me a lot as they talked about what was important to them. As parents, and if you've got littles, listen. We sometimes think it's the big trip, that massive vacation that really makes the memories and the great stuff. And it's like, as a parent, what transforms your kids is the small acts of consistency. Stop worrying about taking them to Disneyland once a year and get them to church every week. That will make a bigger impact, I promise.

As Annie Dillard says, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Your life is just a collection of those moments, those small things. It's not the few grand events. The ordinary repeated ones. This is why a guy named Nietzsche said it, but it perfectly describes the life to follow Jesus: it is a long obedience in the same direction. I love that. Small things matter.

You know how I know that? I've been to a lot of funerals. I've read a lot of obituaries and heard a lot of eulogies. And when people stand up and talk about your life at a funeral, they might mention a couple of big accomplishments, but mostly it doesn't matter whether you made a lot of money or were dirt poor. It doesn't matter if you're the CEO or at the bottom of the rung. It doesn't matter if you finished your degree or had a string of degrees or dropped out. What matters is what made up your life. And what made up your life is what you chose to do and be on a consistent basis. The daily small stuff is what makes you and what everyone talks about.

And no consistency matters more in shaping your life than spiritual consistency. The more your life is a long obedience in the same direction, the more likely you'll have the kind of eulogy you'll be glad to hear. I'll never forget the number of times I burst into my dad's room to find him on his knees in prayer, or with his Bible open, or at the dinner table every night.

I knew without question we weren't going to dig into that food like farm animals before we paused, took a breath, and someone was going to lead us in prayer. It's the way we did it. And often it was Dad. We'd remember God. We'd be thankful. We'd just pause and get away from the crazy. It was just a small moment and just a small prayer, not a huge thing at all. But that collection of years of that practice, I can tell you, affected the people around that table to who we are today.

And I cannot begin to explain how powerful it's been in shaping my life. So don't worry about being a spiritual giant or having spiritual growth that you show overnight. Just start small and do something consistently, because I promise it'll shape your life and there's probably someone else who's hoping that it'll shape theirs too. Small things done consistently trump the big things done occasionally. What are we going to do? We're going to start small. You with me?

Number two: couple of other ways to grow in our spiritual consistency. Don't give up because you don't see change fast enough. Don't give up. We need to remember how real change and growth happens. It's not like an explosion. It's more like a plant where you just put the seed in and water it and wait. And you don't even know for sure, but something's probably happening, maybe not, I don't know. It's underground.

And my daughter Ellie, she started going back to the gym. And some of you are going back to the gym. Great. Show up at the gym three times a week for a whole month, and then go back and look in the mirror. You know what you're going to see? No change. That's discouraging. It's why a lot of people stop there. But if you show up at the gym three times a week not just for a month but maybe three months, or four, or five, or six, or a year, you look in the mirror you're like, "Dang." Right? It happens.

Read your Bible every day for a week. Good for you. Can't promise a change there. But read your Bible every day for a month or two or three or four or a year, and you will recognize one day as you look in the mirror, "Holy cow, something has seeped into me. I'm thinking differently. I've got something going on that's different about me." That's how change happens.

As James Dyson said, "I'm often asked if I'm an overnight success, and I say, 'Sure, yeah, but it took me 20 years to get there.'" So we build in these repeated little practices into our lives, like prayer, Scripture intake, serving, forgiving people, giving. Paul says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the right time we'll reap our harvest." So don't give up. Change is going to come.

Don't get lost in the valley of disappointment. Hang in there. Make a habit out of what you're going to do. Stick with it and be patient, because transformation happens when you do consistently what others do only occasionally. So what are we going to do? We're going to start small and then we're going to be patient and don't give up, okay?

Third: Plan for failure. You want to grow spiritually? Plan for the setbacks. Being consistent is not the same as being perfect. So if your aim is perfection, when you mess up you'll give up. You'll say, "Oh well," because I missed the goal, which was perfection. Listen, the only thing all of us are 100% consistent on is that we're inconsistent and that we will fail. So when we fail, we just have to have a plan.

And you didn't really fail until you just let your failure derail you. Everyone's going to fail. Just don't let it derail you because that's exactly what your spiritual enemy, Satan, wants to do. To tell you, "Oh, you messed up one day or you weren't consistent, so now because you're not consistent, you're a failure. You ought to be ashamed." He wants to discourage you and get you to quit. Listen, there's only one perfect person ever to have lived, and you're not it.

So our goal isn't perfection. It's what? It's consistency. So plan for failure. Now that sounds a little counterintuitive, but it's not. Listen, planning to fail doesn't mean you want to fail. It means that you know that when you do, you're going to get back on track. It means when you have a mess or a miss, you don't give up. You get back on your horse. That's what it means.

And when you plan on that at the beginning, "When I fail, I'm going to get back on my horse," then you can see consistency over time. If you want to read your Bible and you say, "I'm going to read my Bible every day," and then you miss a day, well, you don't quit. You just try not to miss two in a row. See?

"I'm going to pray with my kids every night." Great. Well, then we missed a night. We missed two nights. "Oh, shoot, what are you going to do?" Well, how about tonight? Let's get back on the track. Consistency's not the same thing as perfection. I love to have Scripture texted to me because that way I know, because I tend to get to my phone fairly early in the day, I have Scriptures and little devotionals and different things texted to me every day so I can see Scripture. Do you know how many years I've gone in a row by reading my Bible every day?

I've never gone one year. I've probably never gone more than 45 days before somehow a day goes by and I'm like, "What happened? I don't think I even read the Bible today," even though I had all this stuff. I'm telling you that not so you think I'm a lousy pastor, but because you know this is normal. And Satan's going to try to shame you and tell you you messed up and you're inconsistent. He wants to do it. Your enemy wants to destroy your consistency.

Listen, this is why one of the best weapons against us is distraction. That will interrupt your consistency because he knows that if you have small acts of obedience over time, your mind and your heart will be captured more and more for the Lord. So he's like, "Squirrel! Hobby, money, friends, drama, house stuff, kids stuff, health stuff. Squirrel!" Distraction is a huge weapon against us. I saw a time-lapse graphic showing how we have spent our time in the last hundred years. And it was sobering.

It started out with family and church and community at the top with the largest percentages of our time. And then as we moved through the '40s, '50s, and '60s, things began to change. Friends went higher than family. And work started shooting up and eventually took the top place. Church and family kept dropping. Co-workers, time at a restaurant or bar kept going up. Family, church, neighbors down.

And then in the '90s, along came the internet, and from out of nowhere it shot up to the number one place. And online and screen held first place, continued, as the percentage of time we spent there just increased to where now we're at like 60% of our time on a screen. We're consistent with that. Spending time on our phones and internet and screens, which means we spend less time with family, less time with your spouse, less time with meaningful conversations and with your kids, and less time outside experiencing God's nature, less intentional time with God himself.

The very things God intended to be essential to a human life we've made optional and don't really have time for because we're distracted with these less substantive things and it's affecting us. We're paying a price for it. And it's hard to get away from our screens because we're addicted. And one of the prices we're paying is our spiritual life.

It's one thing to say, "I don't believe in Jesus. I don't believe in any of that God stuff." Okay. It's another to say, "I believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God," but actually have your life so eaten up with screens and other stuff and unhealthy ways that you can't actually live it out. Corrie ten Boom used to say, "If the devil can't make you sin, he'll make you busy." A lot of us are just busy, busy, busy, busy, but I can tell you, "He was really busy" is not what you want said at your funeral.

So do you have a plan for reducing screen time or binge time or Netflix time or video game time or any other time-wasters that are sucking your days and your moments and your hours away from you so you can minimize those distractions so you can be consistent? Because if you don't have a plan, you're just wishing and it's not going to happen. The same Paul who messed up and said, "I end up doing all these things I don't even want to do," he's also the one who said right after that, Romans chapter 8, he said, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." So don't get down on yourself, but listen, come up with some spiritual practices. Consistency, not the same as perfection. When you get down, get back up.

One last thing. You ready for the last one? We've got to learn to fall in love with the process of change and growth and life, not just always focusing on the outcome. Like a lot of times we're just like, "Just get us out to the outcome." I'm very end-goal oriented, so I get that. But life is really about not waiting till you die and then on the last day you do an inventory and see, "Did I have a good life or bad?" No, it's every day between now and then. That's what life is about.

James Clear in his book *Atomic Habits*, great read, he says something that I think fits the life of a Christian disciple. He says, "New goals? Yep. New goals don't deliver new results." Setting a goal doesn't change anything. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is the process, not just the outcome. So for this reason, all your energy should go into building better habits, not just chasing the results. This took me a long time to figure out. You figure this out, you'll be really, really ahead of the game.

And I'm very goal-oriented. I love vision. I love targets. I love to set them out there. We love our goals. And we might say this year, "I'm going to lose 10 pounds. I'm going to pay off that debt. I'm going to save $30,000 for retirement. I'm going to read the Bible in a year. I'm going to buy a house," whatever. "I'm going to grow spiritually." Those are all great goals. But those are the end results, the outcomes.

And you don't get there by simply thinking about it. You get there by focusing on doing the things that will get you there. As obvious as that sounds, we don't do it. You know, it's like if you want to lose 10 pounds, that's your goal, you don't just get on the scale every day and say, "Did it happen yet? Did it happen yet? Did it happen yet?" every day, "No. Did I lose it?" No, what do you do? You come up with specific things that will help you, like, "I'm going to go for a walk for a mile every day and I'm going to stop eating ice cream after 8:00 p.m."

Now you're not saying, "Did I do it?" You're just saying, "Did I go for my walk and did I eat ice cream past eight?" That we can measure, and that's what we're going to focus on is the process and learn to enjoy that. Now we've got something. It's the same in our spiritual life. If your goal is to be this deep, rich person who has joy and peace and satisfaction and you walk with God, you're a person of prayer, for example, who knows God—you don't just say, "Well, am I a person of prayer today?"

No, you say, "How am I going to do that?" Well, "When I go to work, before I get out of the car, I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray over every meal. I'm going to pray at night. I'm going to pray with my kids." You set something and you ask yourself, "Did I pray today?" That's how you become a prayerful person. As easy as that sounds, a lot of us don't get it.

So the question to ask yourself is: what are the things I need to do to get me where I want to go? And for centuries, guys, Christians have focused on simple, biblical, practical practices and disciplines that we do every day. And that's the best way we can grow ourselves. So things like Scripture reading, prayer, engaging weekly with church worship, small group involvement, serving, giving, forgiving, hospitality—put those daily practices consistently into place and you will stop focusing on the goal and just enjoy the process.

And also, when we only focus on the goal, we kind of like postpone any joy till we either succeed or fail. And often we fail. So let's say, "I'm going to lose 10 pounds," but you only lost eight. Well, that's not a failure. It's like, man, you ate better, you're healthier, you lost eight pounds. That's joy in the journey. "I'm going to read through the Bible in a year," but I only read the New Testament. That's a win, okay? You enjoy the journey.

"I'm going to go to church every single weekend," but then you don't. "Oh, I failed." No, you enjoyed the journey and every week you were here leaning in, God was with you and in that process something good happens. Enjoy the process, not just the destination. Success is not when you achieve a goal in the future. Success is when you honor God today. So how are you going to honor God today?

So let me just ask you: what's the one thing you need to do to be more spiritually consistent? For a lot of us, it's not going to be any brand new things that you're going to dream up that no one else has ever thought of. For some of you, it needs to be this: Scripture intake. Just every day I'm going to try to get some Scripture intake. Great. Or maybe you're going to just pray. Talk to God every day. Thank God every day for something. Count a blessing and thank God. Do it every single day. You'll see a change. What is it for you?

People who are mature, godly, joyful Christians are people who do these things. Transformation happens when you consistently do what others do only occasionally. I know they seem small, but the small things—start small, be patient, don't try to be perfect, and enjoy the process.

Cody Custer: As you take time to evaluate your life and consider one area where you might grow in spiritual consistency, can I invite you to look closely at the life of Jesus? It won't take long to see that his life was marked by faithful, intentional consistency. Jesus was consistent in prayer, intentionally setting aside time to be alone with the Father. He was consistently loving others, showing compassion, caring deeply for those around him, and serving the people he encountered in both big and small ways. And Jesus was consistently teaching, sharing the truth about the kingdom of God, both formally and informally.

Could you consider one of those areas where God may be inviting you to grow in consistency? I encourage you today to open your Bible and spend time reflecting on those aspects of Jesus's life, asking the Lord to shape your heart and habits after His.

Our thanks to Ben Cachiaras for his powerful message and also to Acappella Ministries for their worship music. And thank you for tuning in today. If you'd like to listen to today's program again, you can find The Christians Hour on multiple streaming platforms, including Google Play, Apple Podcasts, and Oneplace. You can also visit our website, thechristianshour.org, where all of our programs are free and available to stream or download anytime.

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