How to Grow Great Faith: Interview with Pastor Mike Novotny

welcome back to another episode of

christian natural health today i am very

excited to have mike

novotny with us did i pronounce that

right you got it yeah navatny awesome so

mike is a pastor at the core a church in

downtown appleton wisconsin as well as

spiritual leader and lead speaker for

time

time of grace a media ministry that

reaches a national television audience

of 400 000 a week and engages with

people of uh more than five million

times a month across its various media

platforms he's also the recent author of

what's big start small six ways to grow

great faith he enjoys spending time with

his wife and two daughters continuing

his streak of 37 years of playing

organized soccer congratulations on that

and running long distances and reading

any non-fiction he can get his hands on

welcome mike thanks so much for joining

us yeah thanks for having me lauren

absolutely so tell us a little bit about

the book give us the elevator pitch to

start off what's big start small oh yeah

so it's a book based on a story jesus

told that kind of explains why people

feel stuck in their faith

even though they feel like they're doing

the right spiritual things right

so you know i think lots of us have this

idea well if i go to church or if i

listen to christian music or if i read

my bible every day

i'm going to have this really great

robust

you know following jesus on fire faith

and and sometimes that's true

and then a lot of us experience

sometimes like it's not like we're

skipping church or not praying but

we don't have that experience and we can

feel stuck not moving like maybe we're

moving backwards

and so the book kind of dives into a

story that jesus told that kind of

explains why that happens to us so often

so can you give us a little kind of

synopsis of that parable yeah yeah yeah

i'd love to so the book is based off of

the story jesus told called the parable

of the sower

and uh kind of the story itself is this

sky is sowing seed

and some of it falls on this hard path

and the birds come and snatch it up

nothing happens

some of it falls on this rocky soil and

it sprouts up really fast

but it doesn't have a lot of dirt to put

in good roots and so when the sun comes

up it just starts to wither

some has like

a lot of potential it falls on seemingly

good soil but there's a lot of other

things growing weeds thorns and before

it can produce a lot of fruit it kind of

gets choked out

yeah and then finally some of the seed

falls on this good soil and it produces

way more than you'd expect jesus says

like 30 or 60 or even 100 times what was

sown

and

jesus must get to the end of the story

and his disciples kind of have that

classic puzzled disciple look on their

face

because

in the bible i love this part that jesus

says okay let me break it down for you

and then he kind of describes the

situations in that story here's what the

hard path looks like in the christian

life

here's what the rocky soil is here's

what the the cluttered thorny soil and

here's what good soil looks like so it

gives us a chance to think about where

we're at spiritually

which of those four applies to us the

most

and with god's help make some good

changes in our lives yeah and i love the

fact that he actually explained all that

to us because otherwise we'd all be

jealous

yes just like them like what the heck

does that mean

so give us an idea based on what jesus

said what are some of those obstacles

that people will encounter that kept

them from growing yeah i could find so

the story that jesus tells shows up in

matthew and mark and luke so three of

the four gospels

and i can count six separate threats

to the seed of god's word producing

really great faith

so i list them as pride pain

worries

wealth

wanting

and not waiting

so my book kind of breaks that down a

chapter for each pride pain worries

wealth wanting and not waiting those are

the six threats to great faith all right

and so can you tell us from the parable

how did you get those six like can you

identify where we can see them and what

jesus said yeah jesus well he names five

of them explicitly

and the sixth one i'm just getting from

the idea of a seed

it's not like you put a seed in the

ground in your garden on monday and then

you come back on tuesday and boom

there's a tomato

so you know sometimes we get in trouble

cause the the process is working

and we're doing the right thing

spiritually

but we just forget oh yeah

god's word isn't a microwave dinner yeah

yeah totally yeah it's a seed that takes

some time and some perseverance to stick

with right and isn't it uh mark four

somewhere where he talks about that the

farmer sows the seed and it it it just

grows he knows not how

time harvest where before

as you say there's going to be time

involved before you actually see that

fruit coming to coming to bear so okay

so based on those can you help us kind

of dive in a little bit to know where

are we what kind of soil are we and if

we're the one that's being choked how do

we know it's choking us yeah yeah good

question um i i'll think all six the

more i dig into them are super relevant

but for me as i kind of think about my

life as a christian

uh i'm married i got two daughters

as i'm kind of looking like yeah why

some days am i patient

and joyful and peaceful

and then in other seasons of life that

just those feel like the wrong words for

me

and i i think man this i never thought

about this deeply until jesus story but

i i bought my selfies uh-huh yeah it's a

little pack of tomato seeds so

yeah on the front these big vine ripened

beautiful tomatoes

and then on the back

are like these fine print directions

from the expert tomato growers

and so they're they're kind of telling

you okay if you want

this on the front make sure you do this

on the back

um

pop quiz lauren

do you know what half of the directions

on the back of this seed packet are

about half of them

soil

[Laughter]

good guess

you continue the streak of interviewers

who has gotten this question wrong so

i'm

sorry yeah no one guesses this and i

wouldn't have guessed this either

the number one direction that they say

you need to know is about space

oh

interesting yeah like even though the

seeds are good if you put too many seeds

too close together

there's not enough space for any one of

them to grow and produce a tomato huh

and if you if you put the rows too close

together

it says here they need to be at least

three feet apart

and then again when they start to grow

it says you need to thin them out

so it might it might be a good thing but

if you don't pull out some of the good

things

you're never going to reach this full

fruitful maturity the best things that's

so interesting because i've just started

like planting a garden and i have a

hydroponic garden and all those kinds of

things i'm just learning a few of those

things here and there

about how do you act like what's the

point of pruning why do you bother doing

that because it actually increases

fruitfulness and it's just it's all of

these things that jesus original

listeners would have been totally

familiar with but in our day not really

so we can miss a lot of the spiritual

implications of what he's really saying

yeah yeah you're spot on and i've just

seen that like as a christian and to me

this is classic american christianity

is that we

we squeeze in a little seed of god's

word

into schedules that have no space oh

such a good point yeah you know we we

think

well if as long as i can make it to

church or as long as we can have a

family devotion

we're going to be the strong christian

kind of people and

the garden would tell us no

just because you put the seed in some

fairly good ground

it still needs space to grow yeah so if

you want time in your schedule to like

meditate on these beautiful things you

hear in a church service

or you need space to put it into

practice you know

husbands love your wives your wives

respect your husbands that's not just

like a thing to hear

it's something that actually takes

quantity time to do

and so about half of jesus's parable

really addresses that issue that

probably

for most of us what happens is we're not

dead in our faith

it's like the satan like a bird snatched

it up right it's just that there's so

much stuff going on in our schedules and

lives that we just never

you know we never quite get to that

mature spot that we could because it's

so hard to pull out

the other stuff

and give some space to our souls yeah so

would you

say or do you think that the majority of

christians are in that thorny ground

where there's rocks and thorns and other

kinds of things as opposed to the one

with the shallow soil

i do

yeah jesus actually says the shallow

cell is specifically about people who

believe for a little bit right and then

they wither and a lot of my friends it's

not like well i used to have faith and

now i don't right a lot of us would say

well you know it's not like we've lost

it

it's just

i don't know i'm just running i'm i'm

busy i don't i don't got time to show

you compassion because i got a bunch of

boxes to check and things to do and my

kid has volleyball practice and you know

right it's just so much stuff and we

somehow just slowly add to those

calendars until there's no space to be a

mature christian yeah and this is making

me think of the martha mary story um you

know did do you go into that in the book

no joke so in

in the greek of the new testament

when jesus says the worries of this life

can choke out the seed it's the exact

same word he uses with martha martha

martha you're worried

yeah about many things so you're yet

you're spun on that's exactly where

jesus takes it

interesting so um what kind of advice do

you have for somebody who says that's me

i recognize myself in that

what do they do if we have too many

things on our schedule and it seems like

they're all super important how do you

go about finding out what's good versus

what god has actually called you to do

yeah yeah great question

um

jesus when he describes the soil i think

for

obviously he's not winging it when he

when he says it's thorny soil

to me that was so insightful because in

my garden

i don't plant thorns

they're just there

like and i think wow this is a lot of

work to keep on and then they're they're

thorny right so

yeah they're not comfortable to pull out

yeah and to me that's so practical how

did i end up so busy how do we end up so

busy

oh well i didn't i didn't set out like

you know what this year i would like to

be exhausted and overbooked

right yeah

it just happens and it's actually let's

be honest it's painful to not be busy

because to not be busy you have to say

no to people you like

yeah that's totally true right and i

just want to say like yes i'll be at the

birthday party and of course i'd love to

preach at your wedding and sure we can

volunteer and sure pastor i know you

need some help right like literally

jesus is saying to be a mature christian

you have to be able to say no

to good people and good things

absolutely yeah so that you can focus

the time that you do have on the best

things and what he's actually called you

to for sure yeah so um so aside from

some of that from the busyness is there

anything else that some people might be

need to become aware of of things that

are distracting them

yeah

yeah so jesus when he describes the

thorny soil actually three of the six

threats are all in that category

so worries sometimes i'm so worried like

martha i'm so worried about looking bad

i'm over committed

and

he talks about wealth

he says the deceitfulness of wealth and

i always think of that as like

sometimes you can get a promotion or a

job or something nice like a beautiful

home right but have you stopped to think

how much time and energy that's going to

cost you

you know you get oh it'd be so great if

we had a nice a pool in the backyard for

the kids

have okay that's not bad

it's not sinful it's not wrong have you

thought about how much time it's going

to take you to cut that grass

in the next year have you thought about

the upkeep of that home the the cost of

that promotion

so i think for you know here this is the

super temptation of prosperous americans

is

you can get the boat and now you got to

maintain the boat you can have the place

the cabin

but now there's extra effort for the

cabin you can

be involved in things that people who

are

at an impoverished level can't afford

so i think like if you're making over 50

000 a year in your household

pay very close attention to jesus's

words

because wealth can deceive you into

busyness and busyness is going to choke

out your fruitfulness

yeah absolutely so um you actually made

this comment that i thought was really

interesting that many of us

coming out of the pandemic have felt

more spiritually immature or stuck

what's going on with that

oh man lots of things

you know we've been talking about the

threats

but

if

fruit eventually comes from the seed

and if because of the pandemic we are

less connected to the seed of god's word

like to me that's

it

if i don't plant any seeds this year

shocker i'm not going to have tomatoes

this fall

you know so if the disruption got me out

of my regular worship habits or bible

reading habits

and it's really hard to get back in the

swing of those things i'm not and if i

don't have like the community if i've

lost touch with friends or a small group

so i i think it is just so vital for us

to do the hard work of reestablishing

those spiritual disciplines i get why

they got shooken up but

man

fruit comes from seeds

and the seed is god's word so let's do

everything we can to make sure we have

habits where we're constantly in

connection with that seed

yeah and do you know anything about like

statistically how many people like went

away from church and didn't come back or

anything along those lines

yeah more anecdotally uh i don't have

the hard numbers but

my the senior pastor at our church was

telling me we've really been struggling

with not with people coming back to

worship but getting people to volunteer

we don't have enough ushers at church we

don't have enough people to make coffee

and like

it was just like a reset and people who

are

just awesome before just like well

they just got out of the habit yeah yeah

yeah no no malice no intention it just

it it's a new

it's a new normal and we're scrambling

to try to like

not burn out our small list of

volunteers right so yeah i think it was

just a great disruption and it's

really fitting for all of us just to say

okay where am i at

what are my spiritual disciplines look

like did i unintentionally kind of lose

something really healthy that i had

because if we don't think about that

intentionally i think we're going to

miss something pretty big

sure so and that makes sense from a

church-going and volunteering standpoint

why do you think that during the

pandemic people might have gotten out of

the habit of doing a regular bible

reading for example because you could do

that by yourself ooh

very true

ah

so what i've noticed um

i lead a small group that normally goes

from

like fall to thanksgiving and then we

take a break because of the busyness of

christmas and we come back in january

almost to a person people in my group

would say

once group took a break

my bible reading took a break

interesting

huh yeah once i once i didn't have a

community to keep me accountable okay

instead of going you know maybe three

bad days and then i got to talk to my

christian friends about it

you know the weeks just kind of slowly

lost the momentum it's kind of working

out at a gym right i'm just going to say

that it sounds exactly like having an uh

having a workout buddy yeah you know

we'll call you if you don't show up at

the gym that day totally yeah so even

though what seems like an individual

habit i think is really

often hinges unless you have super good

self-control and structure it probably

hinges on the community that you're

living in so you lose one and you often

lose the other

slide backwards yeah so what advice do

you have to somebody who's listening to

this and says okay i'm ready to start

getting a better spiritual discipline

where do they start

oh

um

yeah it's a fair question you know

people are different i'm i've learned

i'm such a box checker like if i yeah if

i if i write up my calendar

like i cannot rest until that box gets

checked even if i created it myself so

yeah i'm totally with you yeah

maybe it's uh

you know knowing yourself is half the

battle

so are you a person who's motivated by

competition and achievement and box

checking for you then it might be as

simple as

writing it down somewhere visible

tracking it having an app putting it on

your fridge

right if if that's not you and you're

just not well so what i didn't check the

box

maybe is it reaching out to a friend

saying hey i was listening to lauren's

podcast i

i really think i need to make a change

can we work on this together

so figure out how you're motivated best

take that one small step and you know so

often one turns into two and then ten so

yeah do something though with it don't

just hey that was a nice podcast moving

on right exactly habit stacking or

something along those lines typically

for most people uh creating any sort of

habit takes between 21 and 90 days

depending on the person so as soon as

you've gotten to that level now it's

self-sustaining and you're actually

getting the reward from the habit itself

but prior to that during the habit

establishment

you typically have to have some kind of

an external reward so for us it's the

dopamine hit from checking the box

some other people it might be having

that community in that affirmation or

something along those lines so just like

working out or creating any other good

habit it's a matter of figuring out like

you say how you work

and uh working with that so awesome yeah

yeah i love it what have i not asked you

that you want to make sure you leave

with our audience oh

can i share with you the it's related to

the jesus's story the best advice i've

gotten in my whole life yeah for sure

so

i i thought when i first heard it it was

the worst advice i'd ever gotten in my

whole life

wow

i was in grad school i'm studying to be

a pastor

i'm in my senior year so home stretch

getting to graduation day where we

finally get to you know be a pastor in a

church

and my home pastor that i grew up with

he he says mike here's what you need to

do

whatever church you end up at as soon as

you get there you're going to be at your

first like church council church

leadership meeting i want you to go into

the room and ask those people how many

hours a week you should work

and i told him

no that

that

yeah i can imagine

i'm not that smart i'm pretty young but

that sounds like terrible advice because

you know what what do you do on your

first day of work of like hey everyone

what's the minimum i have to work for

you ahead of me

and he said he said no

you know here's the deal like you could

work your tail off and you could push 50

60 70 hours a week but then you don't

show up to that one thing that so and so

expected you to be at

and now suddenly you're not a

hard-working faithful pastor

so

i finally get to my church in madison

wisconsin

and with fear and trembling um this is

what i said to the people in the room

i said

you know a year from now or five years

from now i

i wanna i don't wanna burn out

like i wanna be a great pastor that

serves you well not just for the short

term but for the long term

and when i come to church i don't wanna

have to fake it that i have a good

marriage

you know like i wasn't home because i

was at church all week we haven't

communicated well now we have to smile

for the church people like no i

and i want to be a good dad and i don't

want my kids to hate organized religion

seriously yeah because it stole their

father from them

and i and i want to be able to minister

out of the joy that i've had in my own

time in the bible not just like working

for sermons and bible studies

i said you know so if i want to be a

good pastor to you long term if i want

to be a good christian close to jesus a

good husband close to my wife and a good

dad close to my kids how about you

how many hours do you think you could

put in at your job on average

and still be able to fulfill all those

callings right

and man my pastor was such a genius

because

i mean there was some honest regret in

the room as i think the people thought

that they hadn't asked that question

earlier in their careers

and then they went around to a person

and they named here i think i could work

x hours or y hours or z hours we took

the average of all the answers

and lauren for the past 15 years that

has really been

my kind of mutually agreed upon standard

of faithfulness

and it's allowed me to have a sabbath

day with my kids every week

tonight is friday night so for me it's

date night so every every friday we ship

the kids off to my parents they sleep

over my wife and i get some quantity

time

just by god's grace i've had i've had

space in my garden

to like be able to mature more than i

would have without that advice yeah and

i i think it would have been too

subjective and fuzzy and i would have

felt guilty about not doing this and

that but just

having some concrete thing

that i knew i could work hard if i was

tempted to be lazy

and i knew i could stop working hard if

i was tempted to you know put too much

in that kind of stuff so that i'm so

grateful for that crazy advice that it

really changed the the direction of my

life yeah that's fantastic i mean so

much of as you alluded to before

is

not over extending yourself is learning

to say no but what you sounds like you

did is you created that boundary in

advance so everybody knew about it there

wasn't any resentment going forward and

you didn't have to feel guilty about

other people's expectations that's

fantastic i love it and so much about

work-life balance so that you can spend

the time with the lord like you're

supposed to and with other things that

matter

yes spot on yeah in the book i try to

make this really practical so i just

have some charts where i ask people like

if you're feeling stressed and

overwhelmed i bet if you just broke down

what your life actually looks like it

would jump off the page at you

like if you just looked at your screen

time and just wrote that down

right or the the amount of time you're

at work or the amount you know fill in

the blank

i bet if it was on a single sheet of

paper there's one or two items where

you'd say oh dang

that's it right there that's the main

issue sure yeah yeah so i try to make

that really practical of like everyone's

life is different we all got a thousand

things going on

but

i i always say take your guilt to the

garden

as gardeners we don't feel bad about

having space

and as christians we don't have to feel

bad about having space either it doesn't

make us bad people it actually makes us

very wise christians

absolutely so whenever i have a patient

that seems to be struggling with this

issue i will give them a handout that i

stole from stephen covey's highly uh

seven habits of highly effective people

the four quadrants and that the the top

quadrant is urgent and important then

they're not urgent but important and

that's where the bulk of your life

should be

and the urgent but not important this is

usually other people's expectations for

you or the things that you've done

yourself that don't truly matter and

then the not urgent not important like

scrolling facebook

and so when people can recognize as you

say a lot of times when you start

writing those things down you don't even

have to put them in the quadrants it

becomes really obvious

the holy spirit can then speak to you

and say all right so please this is

where you need to make some changes

i love that i think the times we're

living in make that super challenging

though

because

there's just certain things that because

of smartphones

you don't even realize when it's

happening

do you remember was it two or three

years ago when apple

added screen time is just like a default

oh yeah

and you're i mean i remember the first

time looking at that thinking no

they have the numbers wrong i do not

right uh-huh

so there's this uh there's this website

too that i found i think it's

t-i-m-e

time

and it's it's just a search bar have you

heard about this no

it's just like a search bar and a single

screen and all you do is type in a show

that you've seen

like the office okay

and it finds it and it'll ask how many

seasons of it have you seen

all of them

you just you hit you hit return and it

will just show you how many minutes how

many hours and perhaps how many days

it took you to watch the whole series

and you can stack them so you're like oh

you know i've seen grey's anatomy or

i've seen friends or i've seen parks and

rec

and when you see it all together you

think

ouch

i thought i was just like watching an

episode maybe two maybe three to unwind

that night yeah and you put it together

and you realize i literally could have

read the entire bible four times you

know so

yeah those those kind of eye opening

moments they sting a bit but they're

they're super healthy because we only

get one chance to do life and it's

really wise to know what kind of life

you're living

yep absolutely that totally makes sense

i don't know if i'm gonna visit that

side

all right so mike where can people go to

find out more about you

yeah so

timeofgrace.org

you can find the book what's big start

small and then we have tons of resources

too kind of our our bread and butter is

to try to tackle a topic with a sermon

series and a book so

if people are dealing with depression

suicide alcohol pornography

sexuality

gender

politics

we've tried to tackle everything from

the pulpit and turn it into a resource

that

people can read that parents can use

that teenagers can grab a hold of so

yeah if you have time timeofgrace.org

just scroll through the website and

hopefully you can find something that

helps you awesome i will link to that in

the show notes and thank you so much for

your time mike this has been really

great that's awesome thanks for having

me

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