A Small Shift in How We Eat | Small Shifts, Big Faith Week 1| Lent Study 2026

0:12 Welcome. We're glad that you are here joining us for this Lenten study. We're calling it Small Shifts, Big Faith, Lenten Practices to Transform Your Life. And my name is Joshua. I serve as our lead director of adult discipleship here, one of our pastors on staff. Yeah, and I'm Bo. I serve on our adult discipleship team at our downtown location. Well, we're glad that I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. We're glad to be here together. and whether you're listening in as you drive somewhere, maybe it's to work or maybe you're at home, we're glad that you're joining us. You might be studying with a small group. You might be studying with a Sunday school class or maybe you're just there. You're studying on your own as an individual. We've designed this study for you and so together we're going to jump in to this Lent study that over four weeks is designed to help us think about simple, purposeful Lenten practices. So think, you know, spiritual practices, think Christian practices that can shape and transform our lives if we practice them each and every day. And there's an important distinction to make here, though. We're not talking about like big earth-shattering things that you and I need to do, really what we're talking about are small shifts, small shifts in our everyday practices, our everyday life, small shifts that help us over time make a transformative difference in our lives. They make a big impact in our faith, in our home, in our work, wherever we are. And so as you study and learn, maybe even practice, I'll encourage you to download the study guide that goes along with this. You can find that on our website and use it to reflect, to deepen your faith and to practice these Lenten practices as we go along. But why small shifts? Why should we focus on small shifts to make our faith bigger? Can we actually do that? What does that mean?

2:15 Yeah, I think so often we need to make small shifts to have a big impact. We're not talking about, we talk about big faith. We're talking about a faith that will endure seasons of life, the ups and downs, the valleys, it will withstand, it'll take us through. Yeah. One of the illustrations I think about when we start talking about small shifts is baseball. So right now, we're at the beginning of spring training. Spring training has been going on just a little bit. And this is one of my favorite times of the year. Same. Same for you. Yeah, I love baseball. Baseball is great. Now, if you're not a fan of baseball, just humor us for a moment. but we're both fans of baseball. And there's something funny about baseball where you don't make big changes all at once. You make small shifts, whether it's in the infield or to your batting approach.

3:10 There's actually a short clip that we wanted you to check out that kind of, I don't know, illustrates this idea. Take a look. Dude, I don't know what makes you suck so bad at pitching, but whatever it is, it works. You better figure out when soccer trials are. Have you ever thought that you might actually be left-handed? You need some style. You need some pizzazz. I feel like I'm watching a pitching machine out here. No pressure. If you don't strike this kid out, I'm going to fill your pockets full of meatballs and throw you in a piranha pond. If you don't know baseball, you may not think that's funny, but it's pretty funny if you're a fan of the game. You may not know this, but I actually coached baseball for 10 years. I coached varsity baseball in Iowa, and I love the game. I actually played a little bit in college, And it is so true that when you are helping an athlete figure out how to improve their game, most of the time what I found was that it is small changes. It's choke up on the bat a little bit more, scoot up in the box a little bit, or widen your stance just a hair.

4:10 And a lot of times that's what makes the most difference. Just small things, but they have a huge impact. When I played baseball back in the day, just picture me as a little guy swinging the bat. It was so much fun. there was one year that I batted like .077. That's a really terrible batting percentage. I think I had one hit the entire season. And so I concluded the season. I didn't think I'd ever play baseball again because it was just terrible. And I got glasses before the next season. And you know what happened? The next season? The first hit, I hit a home run. It was amazing. I was so excited about that. But it was like that one small difference that made a huge impact for me. Now, eventually I figured I didn't have a future in baseball, so I started running. But, you know, that's a whole nother story. You know, there's a popular idea out there.

5:03 We're drawing from this idea that if you improved by just 1%, or if you made a 1% shift in your life, you know, at the end of the year, you'd look back and there'd be a really big difference that would be made. Just 1% makes a huge difference. But here's the catch. you know when we think about our personal lives when we think about our spiritual lives you may not notice those differences you may not notice the impact that a small shift makes in your life you won't notice it two days down the road or even 10 days down the road or even 20 or 30 days down the road you may not notice the difference but when you add it up over time and then you begin to look back, you see that there's a big impact, a big impact that's made. And this is true of our spiritual lives too. It happens maybe in our personal lives as we form habits and practices. And then when we think about how we practice our faith and our spiritual life, it makes a big difference too. Yeah. I'm not a gardener by any means. I kind of wish I was. In fact, we might do one this spring, but I think people that garden maybe understand this idea a little bit. You know, you think mid to late winter and you put a seed in the ground, it doesn't just pop up right away. Right. And you may water it for a while.

6:18 You may tend to it for a while, the soil, but you don't necessarily see what's going on. Right. It takes a while. And then a few months down the road, all of a sudden something sprouts up and it's like, okay, like, and I think the same thing with our, with our spiritual lives. I think we have to put in the work and you may not see the results right away, but later on after making those small adjustments over time, then something will sprout. And that's our hope. So Lent is really one of the best times to think about how we practice our spiritual life. What are the practices we attend to that help us grow deeper in our faith? And for Christians, Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter, usually excluding Sundays, which are considered feast days. But over those 40 days, Christians for centuries have used this season to reflect on their life, learn and grow in their faith, to look inward and to consider the transformative qualities of these practices. It's about repentance and renewal. And there's really a biblical pattern to Lent. We see this repeated throughout the scriptures. I think of a couple stories. For example, in the Old Testament, Moses. Moses prayed to God on Mount Sinai, and he was there on the mountain talking with God, conversing with God for 40 days and 40 nights. I think about in the New Testament, Jesus does something similar. He goes out to the wilderness, and for 40 days and for 40 nights, Jesus is out there talking with God. I imagine there were so many things going through his mind as he connected with God, but also thought about the people of Israel and the people he was sent to save and redeem and restore. He spent those 40 days fasting and praying. And in scripture, then these 40 days become not just symbolic, but really important. They're a significant period of time for God's people in which, you know, it's a time to connect with God. It's those 40 days where you have just enough time to fully understand like your brokenness or your hurt or the error, the mistakes,

8:23 the circumstances that you find yourself in to experience brokenness and repair and then reflect upon life and faith and practice Christian practices that draw us near to God. So what we're doing is making a small shift in this season, in this season of Lent, to focus on Jesus and his life, his message, his death, his resurrection. And we're being intentional about how we connect more deeply in relationship with Christ. So each week, what we're doing is we're going to propose one small shift that we all can make. One small practice that might make a difference in our spiritual life and even transform our lives. And today we're talking about the shift in how we eat. A shift in how we eat. I don't know, Bo, is eating spiritual for you? Yes, because of a serious issue that I have of the amount that I love breakfast burritos and barbecue. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it is definitely a spiritual.

9:23 You've written about burritos in Kansas City. You can find it on our Reddit list out there somewhere. I have to tell you, I mean, we're kind of talking with some humor. Um, Uncrustables. I love Uncrustables. I have, I eat them often. You've seen me eat them, right? Um, eating can be spiritual, right? It can be, it can be spiritual. So we want to talk about the spiritual practice of eating. And there are two parts to, you know, how we eat, the shift in how we eat. So we're going to talk about feasting first. Feasting is a spiritual practice. There are a lot of feasts in the Bible. Jesus actually, he presents a vision of heaven and uses an image of a wedding banquet to talk about what heaven must be like. Or in the Old Testament, one of the most important feasts that comes from the Old Testament is the Passover, which reminds the Jewish people, the Israelites before them, that God had saved them from slavery and set them free. And like, it's this important feast that also influenced Jesus in his life. And Jesus institutes the Last Supper before his death on the cross. He shares one final meal with the disciples. And it was around the Passover meal, and Jesus does something in that meal with those disciples to give it new meaning and significance. And in the Last Supper, Eucharist, Holy Communion, sometimes we call it, becomes this really important feast, a defining story for Christians. And so the Gospels each tell the story. And I love Paul's telling of it. The Apostle Paul, he's writing to the church in Corinth, and he writes this about it, about this tradition. He says, I received a tradition from the Lord, which I also handed on to you. He's talking to the church here. And he goes on, on the night on which he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread. After giving thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this to remember me. And he did the same thing with the cup. After they had eaten, saying, this cup is the new covenant of my blood.

11:29 Every time you drink it, do this to remember me. And every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you broadcast the death of the Lord until he comes. And really what we see at this meal is something so important. Jesus gathered his disciples. There was this community around him and around each other, and he gives thanks to God. He breaks this bread. He takes the cup, and then he does something powerful. He says, remember me. Every time you eat, remember me. And in John's gospel, John frames it this way, that Jesus points to himself and he says, as he's holding the bread, I am the bread of life. Every time we look at bread, we might remember Jesus as the bread of life. And it shapes our hearts. It shapes our souls. Feasting, eating this meal is a spiritual practice. It's a spiritual practice.

12:23 Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing I love so much about Methodism is that they have an open table. And we really believe that it is a means of grace. There is something amazing happening around the communion table. And, you know, I was raised in an environment in the Southern Baptist world where the communion table was closed. Not anyone could come and take communion. There was certain parameters that you had to meet. But that's the beautiful thing that we believe as Methodists is that anyone can come to the table and you might experience something powerful when you do. Yeah. I have a powerful story from my memory. the very first church that I served, it was of all places on the island of Kauai and this wonderful community. And we had a guest who joined us in worship every once in a while, people from the mainland would come and worship with us. And one Sunday morning, you know, there was this couple in the congregation and I'd never seen them before. And over the course of the worship service, I see them come forward to receive communion and I got to serve them. And the guy, you know, I didn't know this at the time, but the guy, he receives it.

13:25 I could see he was really emotional as he took the bread and he dipped it into the cup. And then he ate the bread and he was overcome with this emotion. And so, of course, afterwards, I wanted to connect with him and his wife. And I was just like, tell me what was going on in that moment as you received the sacrament. And they shared with me that this was the first time he had ever received communion. And it was because of that experience of walking into the church and for the first time hearing that, that God loved him, that he was welcome to the table, and that it was because of God's grace that met him there, reminding him that he was loved. And it was this powerful experience. When we eat, that's the kind of practice that we're invited into. When we eat of the bread and share in the cup, the small shift to understand is that when we eat of the bread and we take the cup. My God gives his love freely given to us. Jesus says, I'm the one you're looking for and you're welcome here. It's a big part of our faith. So communion is one part of this. It's how we receive God's grace, but there's also an active way in which we think about a shift in how we eat. And actually it's kind of how we don't eat. It's kind of the opposite, right?

14:42 It's the opposite of eating. It's a shift in thinking about how we don't eat. And the spiritual practice is called feasting. Sorry, not feasting. We just talked about feasting. You can tell where my mind is at. Fasting, right? Fasting. And it's probably one of the least popular spiritual practices. I love what John Wesley wrote. He wrote this, you know, something like 275 years ago or so, somewhere around that time. He said, some have exacted religious fasting beyond all scripture and reason, and others have utterly disregarded it. I think that means that some love it and some really dislike it. And the Bible teaches us a few things about fasting. You know, it's usually about abstaining from food. You would still drink water, but you abstain from all food, and it's meant to gain deeper spiritual insight, depth, and connection to God. It's not a hunger strike. It's very different from that. It's not about health dieting. But instead, in the Bible, we see fasts as a way to connect more deeply with God. So you see stories in the Bible, like Jesus in the wilderness. We've mentioned that story. He was fasting in the wilderness. Or Daniel. It's noted that Daniel spent time fasting as he prayed to God. Esther in the Old Testament as well, she asked all of the Jewish people to fast while she went to the king to convince the king not to destroy the Jews.

16:11 And then you think about Moses and Elijah, even Paul incorporated a fast of some kind. So fasting, like there's good precedent, but it's one of the more challenging things. Yeah, and as Christians, I think a question we ask all the time is, must I fast? Do I have to fast as a Christian? Do I have to do this, right? And it's a good question. And what's interesting is Jesus addresses this in the Beatitudes. He uses language when you pray or when you fast. So it's almost like there's an assumption that it's going to happen. We should be fasting. But later on, the Pharisees approach Jesus and they say, hey, well, why aren't your disciples fasting? And Jesus makes the comment. He says, they don't need to fast. I'm here. And so there is this kind of dynamic where, well, yeah, I mean, if we're not connected with Christ, then maybe we should fast. Yeah.

17:03 I have a friend who, this was some time ago, he was a bit of a mentor to me, and we spent a lot of time together, and he would fast every single Friday. Wow. And I was always compelled by that discipline that he had, that dedication that he had. And it also kind of compelled me in a way where I thought, maybe, like, should I fast? Should I be fasting in my spiritual life? And I kind of came to a decision at that point in my life where fasting wasn't quite for me. You know, I became a runner, so food was really important. But like, I don't know, have you ever wrestled with that question of like, should I fast as a Christian? Yeah, yeah, totally. And I've kind of implemented a little bit. Whenever I was preaching every week, I would fast that day, you know, just try to really find that connection with God. But I've also made it a habit to fast the first couple days of every year to really focus on what God might be leading me to do in the coming year. So it's not a regular part of my practice now, but it has been.

18:02 Yeah. I love how you talk about that as like, it's something that we can integrate into our spiritual lives from time to time. And maybe for some, for you, maybe this is a practice you have explored, you've practiced in your own faith life, and it's been meaningful to you. But there's something about fasting that I don't think is, you know, it isn't a requirement. It isn't a demand that, and even if we do it, it doesn't mean everything in our life works out or like we gain some super deep and rich spiritual insight. But the commitment to fasting, the dedication to fasting, it's a part, one part of our spiritual life that can connect us more closely with God. I love what Richard Foster says. He says this, he says, fasting is feasting. It's feasting because God can work within us. Fasting has a way of kind of unearthing the things that control us, that have a hold on us. Fasting has a way of like getting us a little bit uncomfortable.

19:01 And we recognize in fasting that like what there are certain things that have a hold over us or power over us. And so fasting reminds us that we're not sustained by those things, but rather we're sustained by God, by God's word, by God's leading and guidance in our lives. And so in that way, like that makes sense, as Richard Foster would say, like fasting is feasting. So we have this, we have this shift that we're invited into to thinking about how we eat, a shift in how we eat, whether it's coming to the communion table and experiencing God's grace, all of who God is and who God has called us to be, and immersing ourselves in God's love, while at the same time thinking about how we might fast as a spiritual discipline and what that might do for our lives. So, Bo, give us like the summary, the take-home summary, if we were to just like integrate feasting or fasting into our lives.

19:56 Yeah, and I think you just have to be sensitive to where the Spirit of God might be leading you. You might be in a season right now where you need to feast on the love of God. You know, the world's hard right now. There's some hard things happening, and maybe you're in a season where you can feast on the love of God. And maybe the Spirit might be leading you to fast from some things. It could even be a half day fast from food, if that's something that you feel led to do. Or it could be something like chocolate or sweets or screens, I think, may be a big one. If there are things in your life that may be captivating you in a way that replacing your relationship with Christ, I think that might be something where the Spirit might lead you to some practical ways that you can do that. The symbol we want to leave you with is really the communion table. and to think about the bread and the cup and how God's grace meets us in this feast and then sends us out to care for others, to love others, and to think about how we fast in our own lives that lead us closer to God.

20:54 And as we practice this, we're gonna close here this first episode with a prayer that really invites us into feasting and fasting. And so let me close in prayer. Holy One, in Christ, you gave up everything to enter into solidarity with your people. Today, may I rest, resist the temptation to constantly consume all that is around me. Help me resist the tendency to get lost in social media, the hyper-focus on the way I look or appear to others, the temptation to compare myself to those around me, the urge to lash out or speak harshly to those around me. And as I actively abstain from what is easy in our world, may my focus be on following Jesus more fully. God of mountains and valleys, deserts and dry places, I am grateful for the ways I have seen you today. And the people who remind me of your goodness, the simple beauty of nature that reminds me of your presence, for the life-giving moments in my day when I felt close to you, and for the ways life is opening up and developing me.

21:57 As I resist the urge to busy my heart and mind constantly with all that is around me, May my attention be more fixed on the ways you work in my life.