My best estimate is that I have run roughly 27,000 miles in my life.

To put that into perspective, that would be like leaving Charlotte to run to Lima, Peru, except first circling the entire globe before heading south. One year alone, I ran more than 2,400 miles. And during one particularly long day, I covered 64.4 miles in about fourteen hours.

Although, as one of my son’s friends recently pointed out, “Mr. Barry, can you really claim you ran a 100K race if you walked part of it?”

But here is the thing: I didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly start Forrest Gumping my way across the country. All those miles came through a methodical process that began when I trained for my first half marathon in 2001.

Runners call it building a base.

Before you worry about quality workouts like speed, intervals, or fartleks, you put ordinary miles on your legs. It’s quantity over quality. Day after day. Week after week. Most of those runs are completely unremarkable. Nothing dramatic happens on a random five-mile run on a Tuesday morning.

But slowly, almost imperceptibly, your body changes.

The same is true for us spiritually.

We often think about spiritual transformation in enormous categories. I need to become more patient. I need to know the Bible better. I need to pray more. I need to become a better spouse, parent, friend, or disciple.

The distance between who we are and who we believe God is calling us to become can feel overwhelming. So instead of doing something, we often do nothing.

But what if you stopped trying to change everything at once?

What if you simply tried to grow 1% today?

Spiritual disciplines work this way. Ten minutes reading Scripture today. Five minutes in prayer. One conversation where you listen rather than immediately respond. One act of generosity. One decision to forgive. One moment when you put your phone down and become fully present.

You don’t have to transform your entire life tomorrow. Just take the next faithful step.

And then tomorrow, come back and do it again.

None of those things will feel particularly transformational in the moment. But day by day, those ordinary acts begin building a spiritual base, slowly forming the strength and endurance you will need when the harder miles inevitably come.