Digging Deeper: Be Atomic
42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. 43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42 (NLT)
BE ATOMIC
A few years ago, I was able to attend a leadership conference in Chicago. It was my first trip to that beautiful city, and the experience was capped off by an afternoon at the friendly confines, where the Braves coincidentally happened to be in town. An unforgettable experience.
The conference was filled with great speakers, but only a few really resonated with me. Chief among them was James Clear, the author of one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits. After hearing Clear speak, I immediately bought the book and began reading it.
It is an easy read, and the concept is fairly simple, yet extremely applicable and practical. The idea is to create habits that help improve your performance or a particular skill incrementally—1% at a time. The concept is predicated on the notion that we can’t make wholesale changes all at once but instead have to focus on building a process that helps us make small improvements constantly. By doing this, we build on our success and make incremental gains over time, which culminate in the wholesale change we are seeking.
One of the best examples he uses is the British Olympic cycling team, which was so bad at one point that they were not allowed to use branded materials to compete, for fear in the cycling world that their poor performance would damage the brands. They adopted this incremental gains approach and, in time, became an Olympic superpower.
We can apply these principles to working out in the gym, improving our grades at school, or growing in our spiritual walk. This past Sunday, we were challenged to commit to growing spiritually.
Spiritual growth can look different in methodology for all of us. You might have the goal of reading the whole Bible in the new year, and that’s a great goal to have. Odds are, you can’t read it in a day. So, you will have to build and develop a routine to read a little at a time and ultimately reach your goal as the year progresses.
My goal for growing spiritually in 2025 centers around my two sons and my wife. I feel like we need to reset for the new year, as my boys are getting older and are ready for a deeper approach to faith.
2024 was a very busy working year for my wife and me, and that presented some new challenges to our faith journey. So, we are recalibrating what that looks like moving forward, and we don’t yet have the answer. Sometimes, not having the answer is what feels daunting.
We can’t reach the mountaintop right away, and that can demotivate us from even beginning to climb. But if we take one step at a time, we can reach our ultimate destination. The key is to keep climbing—or growing. Because whatever isn’t growing is dying.
Lee Wilson and his wife, Deanna, have been NorthStar Church members since 2010. They are parents to Everett, Henry and Roselyn. Lee is passionate about sports (Go Braves, Go Dawgs) and has the pleasure to serve on the worship team as a bassist.