Habits of Hope: Cultivating a Deeper Life with God

21.Habit Stacking for Christians: Build Faith and Hope One Step at a Time

• Ginger Harrington • Season 1 • Episode 21

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What if even the smallest moments of your day could transform your faith and hope? In this insightful episode, Ginger and Larissa dive into the power of tiny, intentional habits to create spiritual growth and lasting hope. From habit stacking to celebrating small wins, they explore how being faithful in the little things can make a big difference. Inspired by Matthew 25:21, this episode offers practical tips, relatable stories, and encouraging truths to help you live with intention and deepen your walk with God.

Habit of Hope: Build new habits by pairing them with something you already do every day.


🔑 Key Takeaways:

  • The power of starting small and building momentum through daily habits.
  • Why habit stacking makes it easier to integrate spiritual practices into your life.
  • How celebrating small wins can boost motivation and help habits stick.
  • The importance of faithfulness in little things, as modeled in Matthew 25:21.
  • How hopeful habits like gratitude, prayer, and scripture lead to transformation.

đź“Ś Quotables:

  • “Faithfulness in the small things leads to spiritual growth.” – Ginger
  • “Tiny habits are the foundation, not the goal—they grow into bigger actions over time.” – Ginger
  • “Celebrate every step, no matter how small—progress is a gift worth rejoicing over.” – Larissa
  • “Daily faithfulness is an act of trust and worship.” – Ginger
  • “Stack your habits, build your faith.” – Larissa

🎙️ Why You’ll Love This Episode:
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by big changes or unsure how to grow spiritually, this episode is for you. Ginger and Larissa share practical strategies to help you take small, manageable steps toward deepening your faith. From personal stories to scriptural truths, you’ll walk away inspired to start simple, stay consistent, and celebrate every step forward.

📲 Resources & Links:

  • Explore BJ Fogg’s book Tiny Habits for more inspiration on starting small. (affiliate link)
  • Scripture Reference: Matthew 25:21 – “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little; I will set you over much.”
  • Read the full article at

Habits of Hope Podcast is for informational and inspirational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional advice—spiritual, medical, legal, or otherwise.

Ginger Harrington (00:04.696)
What if even the smallest moments of your day, like pouring coffee, brushing your teeth, or even sitting in your car, could be opportunities to build faith and hope? Throughout this month on the podcast, we've seen how small habits have the power to bring hope and transformation in your life, whether it's balancing your life, anchoring your heart and truth, or even overcoming something like sugar cravings.

Today, we're continuing that conversation with a fresh focus, how stacking tiny habits can lead to deeper faith and transformation. You're listening to the Habits of Hope podcast. I'm Ginger Harrington, your host. And today we are so glad to have our good friend, Larissa Taquair, back in the house. Well, welcome, Larissa. Hey, Ginger, and our sweet friends who are listening in. So good to be back.

I'm very excited about today's habit of hope. Build new habits by pairing them with something you already do every day. And as always, we have an amazing scripture to tie all this together. Ginger, do you want to read our verse today? Yeah, today's scripture verse is Matthew 25, 21. "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over little. I will set you over much. Enter the joy of your master."

 This verse, I love it because it reminds us that God values faithfulness. Oftentimes we get so focused on big accomplishments that we sometimes don't think about the importance of just the daily faithful actions that we do, both in the physical and in the spiritual. When we are consistent with small steps, God can use them to grow our faith and bring us joy. 

Stacking small habits onto what we already do is a great way of showing faithfulness in the little moments of life. It's a practical way to live out this verse. 
I'm very excited about this topic because consistency in my life has made all the difference. And I have learned that when you are consistent in one area, it actually builds that muscle and helps us establish the habit

Ginger Harrington (02:24.854)
of consistency in other areas. I know. For me personally, sometimes consistency is really hard and it doesn't just happen by accident. No. I was just talking about this on my broadcast. We don't accidentally consistently do something. We don't just trip and fall on the treadmill and start walking or trip over a blueberry and start eating it. No, we have to be intentional and it's not easy for sure. Right.

And this is one of the things that I love about building practices and habits in our life is they do become a little bit more automatic and we don't have to work quite so hard to be consistent because it's become a natural part of our rhythm. As we talk about practicality, it's just so sweet of the Lord, you know, for one, the encouragement, well done, good and faithful servant. And knowing that being faithful with little,

builds and shows God our faithfulness and grows us and then he's likely to give us more. And then I just love that, enter into the joy of your master, just that sweet reminder that God is joy and has joy for us and we can do the same. The scriptural context of this verse in terms of the parable, it's to illustrate a spiritual point and

being faithful with our spiritual life, being faithful with the gifts and the talents and the provisions and abilities that God has given us is really important, and God values that. And I think sometimes it's easy to discount things that God has given us, maybe gifts that we didn't really think about, or it comes easy to us so we don't realize it's a gift, but actually it's something that's hard for a lot of people.

being faithful is a way that we honor God with what he's given us, whether it's our physical health, a spiritual gifting, or a responsibility. I want to hear Jesus say to me, well done, good and faithful servant. And there's so many days in my life when I've been frustrated or discouraged, particularly in the early days of parenting with

Ginger Harrington (04:47.19)
littles and toddlers in the house. mean, they can work your last nerve like nobody's business. And so often this concept would come to me of just be faithful in the little things, be faithful in maintaining my composure, be faithful and being kind, be faithful in having the self control not to yell my head off and things like that. So that faithfulness really is key.

You can take this concept that we're talking about today and apply it to any area of life. And I love me that, right? I love me so practical. Yeah, that's a twofer. It covers several areas of our lives. Yeah, that's good.

Right. And I think most of our conversation is going to be kind of angled toward the spiritual. But I just want to make that point right here at the beginning that you can take this and make this a habit of health. You can make it a habit of exercise. You could make it a habit of productivity and organization. Hello. My desktop is an absolute train wreck. Most of the time I could benefit from stacking a habit to clear off my desk at the end of the day when I turn my computer off.

This concept of adding a habit to something that you're already doing really gives us a leg up in forming a new practice, a new routine, or a new habit for those of you who maybe don't really love the word habit. You can also think of it being a routine or a practice that is something that you want to be consistent in your life. A lot of what we're talking about today

comes from the work of BJ Fogg in a book called Tiny Habits. We'll put the link to that book in the show notes. First of all, talk about why tiny is big. Why do tiny habits matter? Because it's easy to think, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter if I don't do this or if I do do this. But actually, it does matter. So let's talk about that. Tiny habits are those small,

Ginger Harrington (06:55.014)
simple actions that we can add to our day that feel effortless. One of the examples BJ Phan gives in the book is to put in a habit of doing 25 pushups a day into your routine is a lot, but start with a tiny habit. Start with one pushup and then add on. It gives us an on-ramp for practices that if we take the whole thing

in terms of a huge sweeping change in our life can feel daunting or overwhelming. And it's breaking it down into simpler steps and smaller steps. You know, it makes me think of when my kids were little and I was holding their hands and walking with them, my steps were so much bigger than theirs. I had to like slow down and make my steps match theirs.

when we were walking together. And it's kind of a little bit like that, I think, of taking smaller steps versus trying to take the huge steps and get there all at once. tiny habits can actually be a lot of fun as well. And it's all about starting small and building from there. And just like I think you mentioned a few minutes ago, the goal is to build some momentum, some positive experience, and then build on that.

You know, it doesn't do us a whole lot of good to have a habit of doing one push-up a day for the rest of our life. But if that habit of doing one push-up a day makes it possible for us to start doing three and then five, if we keep at it, we're gonna get to that point where we can do 25. I saw that happen in my life when Bill and I were both getting healthy again when we were living in Hawaii. I went from

eating healthy and working out and walking to running to 5K. I didn't become a marathon runner, but we had this time where we were running and training together. I would have never got that idea had I not started with eating healthier, walking and doing some smaller things before that. I didn't go straight from couch to 5K. No pun intended.

Ginger Harrington (09:08.742)
Right. And I remember that transition. You guys have moved from Okinawa to Hawaii. And for those of you who are joining the podcast and didn't hear our first episode where Larissa and I gave our stories, we're both military spouses married to Marines. Bill is no longer here on earth with us, but we were stationed together in Okinawa, Japan for four years. And that's where we got to be really good friends.

I remember going to visit you in Hawaii and I could not believe the transformation. You're here from short to long and you were in really great shape and you guys had both lost a lot of weight. And I remember asking you like, whoa, how did you do this? And you, you know, you just said, well, first of all, we just started eating healthier. Then you felt so good that you wanted to add more and do more. And that's such a great example of why

these small things are important. Amen. You know, and another way that I think is important is it doesn't require us to change everything all at once. We grow and change when we start working on a small thing. And I love it that we can do this in the practical, but we can also do this in the spiritual when it comes to mindsets and attitudes and spiritual practices. And even just that concept of

communicating with the Lord through the day or walking by faith or depending on the Lord's strength versus relying on our own strength. So Larissa, any thoughts here? Yeah, I'm so grateful to have discovered the benefits of small actions as I shared earlier, but also in the sense of small actions over buying into the lie that we only have to take big action to make habits stick because the all or nothing for me,

does not work and so big actions can be so intimidating and when I'm intimidated, I rarely get started and that's where enthusiasm can get squelched if we're like all in, all sugar out or have to walk five miles. Start with half a mile and get something established like I did, right? Eat a little healthy, walk a little bit and then for some reason you wake up six months later you're like, I should run a 5K, you know?

Ginger Harrington (11:32.102)
but it wasn't as intimidating. won't say it wasn't, but it is not as intimidating as the all or nothing. Anything else from you, Ginger? I think also like our brains really love shortcuts. And when we get used to a small habit, it becomes more natural. And so when we tie a new habit to something that we're already doing,

our brain begins to connect the two of them. You're already doing the first one and it becomes easier to one, remember to do the second one and two to follow through. Yeah, I love habit stacking. love this concept and I know we both have done it. When we add a new habit onto something that we're already doing that is stacking one habit on another or attaching them.

And so I think one of the things that can be helpful for getting it started is looking for routines in our life, simple practices that can become anchors or triggers to cue us, to remind us to do the new thing. So that can be things like waking up, brushing your teeth, getting in the car, pouring a cup of coffee when you step out of the shower, or just things that you tend to do in your day.

Is there something that you can connect with that that would remind you that, that's a great time for me to pray, express gratitude, review a memory verse? What's one or two things that you can attach a new practice, a new habit to it, and really make it simple and easy to do? One way I'm doing this is praying while I'm walking on the treadmill. So instead of watching TV or YouTube video or whatever,

Um, I pray and I started doing this last year at the beginning of 2024 and I got through six weeks of walking daily and praying. And then I got sick and I stopped walking, but I'm determined and I'm sharing this to hopefully encourage, not discourage anyone, but I'm determined to implement this habit long enough for then it to actually stick. I'm 12 days into it now. And even the walking on the treadmill, I'm approaching differently.

Ginger Harrington (13:57.12)
I'm only doing it about 10 to 15 minutes after each meal instead of like a whole hour. While I was preparing for this, makes me think about brushing my teeth. And that's something I'm assuming all of us do at least twice a day. Some people do it three times. Yeah, that's always the goal here. But I had also heard one of the things that can help with memory and with brain health is brushing your teeth with the non-dominant hand. And let me tell you,

That is really hard to do, but I've been doing it for months and months now where it is automatic now. And then on top of that, so do I get points for triple stacking? Because on top of that, I'm stretching. So I figured out how to stretch, brush my teeth, and brush my teeth with my non-dominant hand. So I'm feeling kind of sassy with myself. I love that.

Triple stacking, yes. Another name for that, I guess, would be multitasking. One of the ones that I do is when I wake up in the morning getting out of bed, I try to make that a trigger or a cue for just a quick prayer of saying, good morning, Lord, and inviting the Lord into my day, asking Him to set my mind on just

have a good mindset for the day. And then I get my feet on the floor and I, you know, walk to the other room and do all the things. And it's, I'm still in the process of getting that one down. But it's, it's coming. Yeah, I love that because that puts the Lord first, right? And that will be, that'll become your default, for sure. I also like the thought of attaching hopeful habits, right? Because we're talking about

a lot of the physical and we also want to attach that to hopeful habits and some thoughts and examples of those would be adding a simple action that reminds you of God's presence and faithfulness, which is what you were just talking about. And basically me walking on the treadmill is the same because I'm focusing on, I get on the treadmill and I instantly start praying, which is obviously, you know, calling on the Lord and getting into His presence.

Ginger Harrington (16:19.734)
some thoughts on that, Ginger, as far as attaching a hopeful habit. Yeah, you know, thinking about those spiritual or emotional or mental things that really are going to keep us focused on the Lord and focused on good things, helpful things, hopeful things. And so that's kind of, know, sometimes it is addressing something that maybe is not.

a good habit, something we want to stop doing. So, kind of, I've got two examples on this one. One of the ones that Philippians 4, 6 and 7 says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your request be made known to God. Rather than being anxious, praying and being thankful, and then God gives us his peace. When I'm feeling anxious, I'm not

always feeling very hopeful. so remembering that verse, sometimes I say that verse to myself, which means I had to memorize it at some point done. then I try to let that be the cue for me to pray. Okay, what am I bothered about? Let's pray about it. And then I try to find something, even if it's not anything related, I try to find something to thank the Lord

for and then I say Lord by faith I receive your peace. And so that is a hopeful habit of applying Philippians 4, 6 and 7 when I do feel anxious. And then another idea here is sometimes on social media, I'm sure we've all experienced you're seeing people's highlight reels and their accomplishments and their wins and

It's not a 360 view of the whole person and the whole experience of life, but it's easy to look at someone else's wins and where they are and feel like you're not enough or feel like it's not going to happen for you. And being in the writing and publishing world, I have a lot of friends who are authors and some of them very successful authors, sometimes easy to see their accomplishments and feeling,

Ginger Harrington (18:41.802)
Right and that comparison trap and so one of the things that the Lord has been doing with me when I fall into that Comparison trap or even just start to go there a small habit that I have put there is instead of comparing I pray for that

friend and bless them and thank God for them and ask God to bless their ministry because God's using all of us and I really am happy for them. Those are two hopeful habits that turn us from the negative and put our focus on the things of the Spirit and honoring God and being faithful. So I love that. And that's such a great segue into our next step about

adding tiny habits to your life is celebrate the wins. And we have talked about this and several of our episodes this month. We love that celebration piece. Yes, we do. It's so easy to focus on what you didn't do well, what didn't go right, what didn't get done. That just keeps us in that negative space of not enough. Oftentimes it leads to feelings of

discouragement or shame or comparison, things that are not hopeful, not of the spirit. When we're able to celebrate and acknowledge, recognize, hey, this is a win, this is progress. And doing something that is a celebratory action, be it small, you know, we're not saying, hey, go out and do something huge, just that little pat on the back, something that is that acknowledgement of this is a win.

Maybe it's at thinking back through the day, Lord, what went well today? What went right? And just thanking him for that. You know, of course, I love this celebrating the small wins because especially if you're working towards a large goal or a goal that's going to take a while, you can kind of lose momentum and enthusiasm. But if you celebrate the small stuff along the way, it kind of keeps you going. I like to just do a little happy dance. It gets you moving, sometimes a little blood pumping.

Ginger Harrington (20:48.716)
get to be silly, right? Because I don't do that often enough. So I typically will do this to myself when I've accomplished a little something or when I choose to focus on truth over the lie. So, you know, can struggle like you with the whole social media thing and seeing stuff going on and just doing that happy dance. there's something there's science behind that kind of moving. And I'll literally dance around and I'll tell myself, you know, there was this thing going around on social media.

And I can't remember if it was a little kid, but she kept saying, sis, you're doing a good job. Sis, you're doing a good job. You have to learn to encourage yourself. But yeah, a happy dance is what is my little celebration. Right. Yeah. So there's some variety of ways that you can do this. When we feel good, when we celebrate our wins, when we recognize what's going well, how faithfulness really is moving forward in our life, it feels good.

Yes, it releases dopamine. We get a dopamine hit and it's easier to change something when you feel good about it than when you feel discouraged about it. And I think that that is really powerful. That's a great point. Yeah. So I loved that one. Just a few other thoughts. You know, this can be something so simple as just saying, thank you, God. Thank you that that went well. Lord, thank you that

I did this today or thank you Lord that I didn't go there today, whatever the thing might be. This is something that's really connected to joy. And it can become a mindset. It can become a habit in and of itself. I'm not talking about I'm psyching myself up, thinking I'm all that. I'm not going there. It's really just that.

tendency that we have to discount the value of faithfulness and the importance of those small practices that are faithful that do help us move forward in honoring the Lord with our lives. And so it's more about that than being prideful or going out and spending money or giving yourself a hot fudge Sunday treat. You know, these are small things to celebrate those small wins.

Ginger Harrington (23:13.206)
And it just keeps us moving forward. So Larissa, you want to take us into our next point? One really great thought and tip would be adjusting as needed, because as we're talking about this, not everything will work exactly like we want it to. Maybe we've not attached it to the right habit. And I love that reminder that we're not stuck, that we can adjust when I'm talking to people about creating the habit of cultivating gratitude daily.

We're all different. I cultivate gratitude at night. It's typically when I post it and also when I write it. But that doesn't work for everybody. Not everybody is a night owl like I am. If writing it out at night, in this case of creating a habit of gratitude, then do that in the morning. In one way, I've also done this is attaching it to my quiet time. Before I start reading, I pray and then before I start reading the Bible and writing out thoughts of the Lord gives me

I just write one or two small things that I'm grateful for. So that's a great way to adjust. If you start something and it's not working, you're allowed to tweak it because there's no, there's not just one way to do it. Right, Ginger? Yes. The goal isn't to stay small, right? The goal isn't to do one push up every day for the rest of your life. The goal is to grow in strength. So adjusting when you're ready to move forward with a little bit bigger step.

or the next step, that's something that really can help us a lot. That adjusting is really important, particularly if something's not working. Yeah, yeah, we don't need to continue to do something that's not working, but then it's also not the all or nothing, right? Don't give up, just make some tweaks. Another thing that sometimes we need to adjust is our mindset. well, that's good. goodness. All right, take us there, girl.

I'm trying to eat healthy. I'm trying to have a low carb lifestyle. And I could get into this mindset of it's all or nothing and good girl, bad girl type of thing. So sometimes I'd need to reframe my mindset because I've let my mind become too rigid in terms of if I do this, well, I'm good. And if I don't, I'm not good. And being able to do this from a place of freedom.

Ginger Harrington (25:42.094)
and celebration of what is going well and realize that it's about the bigger things, but we get to the bigger things through being faithful with the small things and being able to do that with grace and freedom and reliance on the Holy Spirit. yeah, a lot times we do need to adjust that mindset. And our last thought here is that our emotions are so involved with our habits.

when you feel good about something, you want to do it. And when you have had success, you feel stronger and more able, you've got momentum to try something else. And this, think, is one of those underlying things in that scripture when it talks about you've been faithful with little, that as we are faithful with little things, we grow, we show our faithfulness, we show that we're good stewards, that we're trustworthy, we feel good about that, as well as

the Lord enjoying that so those emotions are important and the more meaningful a habit feels the more likely it is to stick. I think going back to the comparison thing that when I start to feel bad about myself because I'm comparing myself to someone else using that as a trigger to pray a blessing for them and to thank God for them that has been something that takes a negative emotion and helps turn it

towards the positive. And it makes me want to keep doing it because I feel like that's just such a better response. It leads to a much better place of hope and it keeps me out of my flesh patterns. So, yeah, that's really, really good. And something I was thinking of is be willing to not be good at first. That's one reason we don't start new things.

We don't want to do something because we don't want to fail. And it's okay to not be good at something at first. Most of us aren't good at something at first and we've gotten better. Small habits are not the goal, they're the foundation. And I love, I love that they grow naturally into bigger actions over time. So think about your own routines and pick one new habit to stack this week. It doesn't have to be big, just be faithful. So I love that. And any thoughts on that?

Ginger Harrington (28:09.112)
have a long-term perspective of one thing at a time leads to one day at a time, which leads to one month at a time, one year at a time, one decade at a time. Good things come out of small faithful actions. Faithfulness in the little things actually does lead to spiritual growth and more hope in our lives. So this week, friends, I've actually had fun thinking about all the little

little tweaks that I could make to add some more positive, healthy, hopeful habits into my life. There's so many things that I can attach to something that I'm doing. And then we can create some of those reminders. My friend Claudia sets her alarm every day to remind herself at 3pm. That's her time to pray for her kids. So we can create those anchors that we attach the habit to. that's good. I've done the same thing

have set timers, especially in this season. It's just, we cannot remember everything. Friends, when you try a new habit or try this in your life, we'd love to hear about it. This podcast will also live at gingerherrington.com on a blog post that'll have the podcast and the video attached to it. So that's a great place to contact us and leave a comment. We want to hear how it's going for you and how this encouraged you. I love that.

because I know we have some listeners who are also ones who like to read and sometimes it's good to listen and then go and read and that will help anchor this thought as well. Your faithfulness in small things matters to God, which I love that reminder and it's great motivation and every little habit of hope you build is an act of trust and worship and I had not thought about it that way. So I really love that, that it's an act of trust in the Lord.

and a way to worship our God. So friends, be encouraged. God delights in your efforts, even the tiniest one. Think back to our verse in Matthew 25. We see an invitation to enter into the joy of the master, showing that faithfulness in the small things leads us to joy and fulfillment, because it connects us more deeply with the Lord. And there's a blessing there when we're faithful in the little things.

Ginger Harrington (30:33.058)
We experience that joy of knowing that we're honoring God. So I just, that's just a final thought that I wanted to leave our listeners with. And friends, I'm to just say a quick prayer for you as we close out this episode. Lord, thank you for the small opportunities that you give us each day to grow in faith and hope. Show us things that we can add to our life. Remind us to put our thoughts on you and

Just give us an idea that you would like for us to work on this week. Help us to be faithful in the little things, trusting that you're working through them for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks so much for joining us today. Have fun with Habit Stacking, and we will talk to you guys next week.