In episode 232 of the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, host Greg Ryan presents a faith‑centered habit‑building tool he calls the “Kingdom of God spreadsheet.” He frames the spreadsheet with biblical passages—Matthew 6:33 (seeking God’s kingdom first) and the parables of the seed in Mark 4—to illustrate how small, consistent growth mirrors God’s kingdom work. The spreadsheet tracks three categories of body‑weight exercises (upper body, lower body, core). Users input a starting number (e.g., 10 squats) and the tool automatically increases the daily count by 1 % while inserting a Sabbath rest every seventh day. Over a year, this modest 1 % increase yields dramatic results (e.g., 223 squats, 111 push‑ups, 334 crunches), whereas a 2 % increase would produce unmanageable numbers (over 4,800 squats). Ryan ties the method to James Clear’s Atomic Habits, emphasizing that tiny daily tweaks compound into substantial change. He shares personal testimony of how the spreadsheet transformed his life, notes that only a few people have persisted with it, and attributes the difficulty to the need for sustained effort—paralleling Jesus’ teaching about the rich man and the kingdom. Ryan invites listeners to download the spreadsheet via his website (email sign‑up required), promises future community interaction, and closes with a prayer for listeners to engage with God’s word and the tool. The episode blends scriptural exposition, practical habit‑formation advice, and a call to action for spiritual and physical growth.
Welcome to episode 232, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Welcome to episode 232. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm continuing to talk about the law of incrementalism, and one of the coolest things that I have created ever in my podcast history, which is approximately 11 and a half months, is a spreadsheet showing the kingdom of God. And I do need to go on the record as saying that I did not create this spreadsheet for the podcast. But I have created the spreadsheet. And so since I've talked about the kingdom of God multiple times on this podcast, I thought it was appropriate to add to the lesson here. And it's going to be extremely difficult for me to get you to picture what this spreadsheet is all about, but I just want you to think about a number. And I've, I've got multiple different pages on this spreadsheet. We're going to go with a physical activity spreadsheet to give you an idea of what this is all about. There is an upper body, a lower body, and a core column. In each one of these columns, you have the ability to choose a specific number to start. And here's where the cool part— the law of incrementalism— and I want to go back to Matthew 6:33 because we have to have some scripture to go with this wonderful dinner that we're eating, this bread of life. And it is, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Well, all of these things, one of them is going to be health. And your health, your physical health, your body, and what's inside of it and out of it is so important that God created this whole world to help you get through it. This Kingdom of God spreadsheet with just the physical— I'm going to attach this to the episode here, and you're probably going to have to go to the website, and you're probably going to have to put in your email address so that I can communicate with you, because I'm— what I'm finding is it's extremely difficult to talk to people via the podcast. In fact, this is a lot like a one-way conversation. It's kind of intimate because you and I are talking. We're actually— you're listening, you may be talking, but see, I can't hear you. You can hear me, but I can't hear you. And what I want to do with the email is I want to be able to have a conversation And that's where we're going to go next level with this stuff, is I am going to start marketing my podcast. After a year, I feel like that I can go ahead and kind of push this out to the world. I feel like that I've kind of got a little bit of hang of this, and I am going to try to attract people that love God and want to get into the Word of God and kind of see what the Word of God has to say. When I see something in the Bible, then I try to figure out What's a good way to be able to communicate what I'm reading and what's going on in my pea brain? I'm gonna go to Mark 4:26. And he said, the kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head, But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. Then we're gonna go to 30. Then he said, what shall we liken the kingdom of God, or with what parable shall we picture it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when it is sown on the ground, it is smaller than all the seeds on the earth, but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade. Now you've got the scripture, and now I want to help you picture what Kingdom of God Spreadsheet does. It is— shows you God's way of doing it. The Kingdom of God is God's way of doing things in this example. And in Mark 4, we see Jesus talking about The Power of the Seed. And I just want to take that seed example, and there's a lot of different analogies that we can use the seed with, but I want to use the seed in this example as your starting point. In this Kingdom of God spreadsheet, the physical activity, what I want to do is I want to take this seed of, and I'm going to use lower body. Now again, I'm going to try to describe what's going on on this spreadsheet. For you. You're going to have to go to the website. I know this is a little tease, I can't help it, but you've got to go on the website and download this spreadsheet for yourself. I think you're going to love it. I'm telling you, I love this thing and it has changed my life. I, I created this 2 years ago and I can't get over it. And one of the things, God's way of doing things, God's ways is seeing the end from the beginning. And you're going to see with this spreadsheet that you can plug in a number, and I put in 10 as the lower body exercises. I— let's just gonna call this bodyweight squats, where you go down and you stand up. That's 1. I mean, you don't have to go all the way down, it doesn't matter how you do a squat, but you just do 10 squats a day, and this calculator on day 1, you've got 10 squats to do, and then it'll just go down each day. It tweaks the number of squats by 1%. The kingdom of God, that seed, time, and harvest. And I want to go back to Mark 4:27, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. Now this gives you an idea of what just very small growth looks like on a spreadsheet., and it's— and I just want to give you an example. If you do 10 squats and every day you go up 1%, you do a 1% increase, which is minimal. For the first 5 days, you're going to simply do 10 squats. You're going to wake up, you're going to do 10 squats, and you're going to call it done. And people are going to go, well, that sounds stupid. Here's the cool part. On day 6, the spreadsheet tells you Hey Bubba, you've got to do 11 squats today. And the cool part about this is if you've done all 5 days, you've done 10 squats, when you get to day 6 and the spreadsheet tells you to do 11, it's such a small increase that you don't really even notice it. And so just by tricking yourself to do a little bit each day, this thing is going to go crazy. And I'm telling you, the coolest part about this is that you don't have to increase much. You don't even have to figure out what the increase is. Once you plug in that beginning number and, quote, plant the seed— once you plant the seed in the ground, this spreadsheet works the kingdom of God work on it, and it tells you what you do each day. And I have plugged in— because when I first did this, I've just got to tell you, the whole thing is set up as best— and I'm putting air quotes up— as biblically as I possibly can because on the 7th day in this spreadsheet, there's a day of rest. Because with the Sabbath, that is one of God's top 10, and there needs to be a day of rest. Your body needs rest. So every 7th day on this spreadsheet, you're going to have a blank line where there's no calculations going on, and it is picked up on day 8 and so on. So you'll see it when you download it. I love this thing, and I think you're gonna love it. But I want to go to what made my mouth drop open and everything is seeing the end from the beginning. And at day 365, I want to let you know, on day 365, are you ready for this number? You are doing 223 squats on day 365. In one year, increasing by 1% per day and taking every seventh day off, you are going to be doing 223 squats a day. And if that doesn't make your eyebrow go up, I don't know. And this was one of those unintended consequences because I wanted to just do a small increase because I've read a couple books, and you may have heard this, I don't know if if you're listening, if you read a lot, but I do a lot of reading, and Atomic Habits, I think James Clear is the author, I'm not sure, but it's a great book, but it's talking about small, minor little tweaks to your habits daily makes a huge difference. I took that, you hear about a 1%, and everybody thinks 1% is not much, but I'm telling you, over the course of a year, 1% can get out of hand. If you tweak it 2%, there's no way you're going to be able to do it. While I'm sitting here talking to you, since we ain't doing nothing at 2%, just to give you an idea of the difference between 1% and 2%, and I don't remember what the— it was, seems like it was 223 or something on 1%. If you increase 2% per day You are doing 4,822 squats by day 365. I just want you to let that sink in, and I just want to let you know that if you take something and you make minor tweaks to it every single day, and you get something that you can control, that you can plant this seed, that you can put into your life, I'm telling you, in my experience, in life experience, I'm telling you this will change your life. I'm telling you this is probably the coolest thing, and I probably say that about a lot of things, but this is one of the coolest things that I've created because it is so practical. But just for instance, I put in 5 push-ups at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year, on day 365, you are doing 111 push-ups if you increase 1% a day, every day, for 365 days. And again, we go back. I'm not going to keep— I guess I am going to keep repeating myself about the Sabbath. And then I did crunches. I mean, because on this spreadsheet you've got daily number of core exercises. So I put 15 crunches, and at day 365 you're doing 334 crunches. I know it's difficult to picture numbers when someone talks to you about it and you can't see it, but if you work out, or if you do anything, or if you're trying to get more physically active, this, I'm telling you, is a great place to start. And this right here, The Kingdom of God spreadsheet will change your life. And I just wanna encourage you, this is one of the best things I've ever created to help you. It has helped me. Anybody that has put this to use, it is not much activity for the first 3 months. I just wanna give you a little background. Everybody that I gave this to, there was only one person, and I say everybody, I think there was 10 or 15 people I gave this to, there was only one person besides myself that kept doing it. This is the toughest thing, and I believe that's why Jesus says it's easier for the camel to go through an eye of a needle than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, because it takes effort and it takes time. And most rich people just want to throw some money at the issue. They don't want to spend time. They know that their time is more valuable than money, and they won't spend their time on something as minimal or as small as this, but I'm telling you, over the course of a year, it gets big in a hurry. The daily effort is what most people quit on, and if you don't quit on this, I'm telling you, this will change your body. All right, well, that's enough. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your Holy Spirit, and I thank you for these spreadsheets, Lord, that we have available. And I thank you for technology, Lord, that we can use to show us and help us bring your word to life. God, I pray that the person listening to this episode will get into your word and maybe download this spreadsheet. And I pray that if they do and they commit to doing this, I know that it will change their life. Lord, I thank you. I love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
