I’ll be honest, newspaper articles make me a little nervous. You never know what they’ll focus on, but I feel like the Post reporter, Michelle Boorstein, did such a great job of capturing pieces of our DNA. Grateful for great journalism.  Even more than the article, the pictures scare me the most but I love this one.  Thanks to Katerine, the post photographer who patiently captured these photos.  This one captures a moment of worship which really reflects our heartbeat as a church.  We want to lift up the name of Jesus in the Nation’s Capital.

I’m really approaching the 7:14 experiment as just that: a holy experiment.  What if we approached our spirituality like a scientist who does experiments?  Granted, there is a mystical element to it.  But what if we tested the promises of God? I’m not talking about “testing God.”  I’m talking about a testing that derives from trust. You test because you trust.  During these forty days we’re putting 7:14 to the test.  What would happen if we genuinely humbled ourselves and hit our knees everyday?  I intend to find out.

Now let me be honest. Day one was discouraging.  I flew down to Baton Rouge to speak and I felt tired, I felt distracted, I felt very little anointing. I can’t really explain it.  But on the plane ride back it was like the Holy Spirit said, “Did you think this would be that easy?”  We want to sow and reap instantaneously.  We want to plant the seed and harvest it on the same day.  No. If it was easy we wouldn’t even appreciate it.  We’d probably mishandle the anointing, mishandle the blessing.  This isn’t about what God does on day one, day ten, or even day forty. It’s about establishing a humility habit. We’re going to stop, drop, and pray. We’re going to hit our knees everyday!  Our MO isn’t ASAP–as soon as possible. Our MO is ALAT–as long as it takes.

Humbling ourselves is the process of dying to self, dying to sin. And dying to self is anything but easy. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. And it’s painful.  But if you press in, press on, press through you’ll look back and marvel at who you are and who you were.  Your old selfish and sinful self will become a stranger.  You’ll look back and say, “Who was I?”  You won’t even feel like the same person.

I feel like I’m having contractions in prayer. Not sure how else to describe it.  It’s like the Holy Spirit is birthing something new in me.  I’m not even sure what to name it.  But I know that whatever it is it will bring new life.  He’s plowing new soil in my heart.  He’s planting new seeds.  And there will be a harvest of newness.  Will it require some pruning? Absolutely!  But old things have to die if you want new things to come to life.   Old habits give way to new habits. Old thoughts give way to new thoughts.  Old routines give way to new routines.  Old songs give way to new songs.  Old mercies give way to new mercies. It’s a new day. It’s a new normal.

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven.  I will forgive their sin and heal their land.

What if all of us hit on knees everyday at 7:14 AM?  Honestly, the time isn’t the issue.  I just think 7:14 is a nice trigger.  It can be 7:13 or 7:15.  It can be 6:37 or 8:22. AM or PM.  So it’s not about the time per se.  It’s about establishing a humble habit of kneeling before the Lord on a daily basis.  You can hit your knees when you get out of bed or when you get into bed. And it’s not about bowing the knee. It’s about bowing the heart.  There is nothing magical about kneeling, but there is something biblical about it.  I’ve found that my heart posture often mirrors my physical posture.

Are you in? Would you be willing to kneel everyday for forty days? For two or ten or thirty or sixty minutes?  If you want to be part of the 7:14 experiment, text the word LENT to 775.237.4364. We’ll send out a short text message at 7:14 AM everyday during Lent.  Just a daily reminder, a daily inspiration.  We’ll kick off on Ash Wednesday, February 22.  We’ll end on Easter Sunday.  Spread the word…

Let’s not seek blessings or miracles or opportunities. Let’s seek God.  And if we seek God, blessings and miracles and opportunities will seek us! If we get on our knees then God will extend His right hand on our behalf.

“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all of these things will be added to as well.”   Matthew 6:33

1. Prayer is the difference between YOU FIGHTING FOR GOD and GOD FIGHTING FOR YOU.

2. Prayer turns appointments in DIVINE APPOINTMENTS.

3. Pray like it DEPENDS ON GOD and work like it DEPENDS ON YOU.

4. If you don’t establish a PRAYER HABIT you’ll never break the SIN HABIT.

5. Prayer is the difference between THE BEST YOU CAN DO and THE BEST GOD CAN DO.

6. The more you HAVE TO DO the more you HAVE TO PRAY.

7. You are only ONE PRAYER away from a totally different life.

8. The MORE YOU PRAY the MORE YOU DREAM and the more you dream the more you HAVE to pray.

9. WHO YOU BECOME is determined by HOW YOU PRAY.

10. 100% of the prayers you DON’T pray WON’T get answered.

11. God honors BOLD PRAYERS because BOLD PRAYERS honor God.

12. The greatest tragedy in life are the prayers that go UNANSWERED because they go UNASKED.

First things first: who are you offending? Some leaders are so afraid of offending people that they offend God instead. Let me tell you who you should offend: thou shalt offend pharisees! That is who Jesus offended.  And he did so regularly and intentionally.  He could have healed on any day of the week right? I think he chose the sabbath to confront the pharisees who couldn’t see the miracle through the theological trees!

So go ahead and offend Pharisees.  But while you’re at it, make sure you aren’t one of them!  How do you know?  Well, read the Gospels and see the distinctives of Pharisaicalism.  Self-righteousness is chief among them.  Pharisees are low on humility and high on criticism.  That critical spirit results in a focus on the letter of the law with very little room for grace.  Pharisees use, or I should say misuse, the Bible as a weapon.  And they have an uncanny habit of focusing on what’s wrong instead of celebrating what’s right. They bring division instead of unity.  The sow discord instead of peace.  They aren’t advancing the kingdom of God.  They actually undermining it by backbiting and infighting. And instead of building up they tear down.  That’s the tip of the iceberg, but I think a pretty good caricature.

Can I just come out and say it? If we quit fighting with each other and converted all of our sideways energy into forward motion, I think we’d win the world to Christ. But we’ve got to love each other first. After all, they shall know us by our love!

Now let me flip the coin.

Thou shalt offend Pharisees, but don’t be offended by them!

Proverbs 19:11 says: “It is to the glory of a man to overlook an offense.”  Circle that promise.  The more offenses you overlook, the more glory! If you get offended by an offense, you quit playing offense and start playing defense. And when you get defensive, you stop leading and start reacting!

I made a decision a long time ago that I don’t play defense. I have an advocate. His name is Jesus.  And that’s who I’m accountable to.  And of course, all of us need human accountability but it’ll be to the people we’re in relationship with.  We need to submit to the righteous rebuke of a brother and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. No one is above or beyond rebuke or exhortation.  But you also need to consider the source.  Is it coming from a genuine spirit of love?  Or is there a critical spirit or mean spirit?  Is the rebuke a love offering or tough love?  Or does it derive from wrong motives? Do you know the person and do they know you?  Now, no matter who is doing the rebuking or how they are doing, if the rebuke is accurate then you need to repent.  But if it’s not, don’t swallow the poison.  You need to shake the dust off your feet.  And whatever you do, don’t become defensive!  Play offense!

You need the emotional tenacity of Nehemiah who said to a couple backbiters named Sanballat and Tobiah: “I am doing a great work so I can’t come down.”  Don’t let anyone or anything bring you down! Let it steel your resolve! Don’t get sidetracked by sideways energy!

Press on with the mission.

Press into the presence of God.

Play offense!

That is the reality of leadership!

Based on research done by Everett Rogers on the “diffusion of innovation” there is a bell curve of personalities ranging from innovators to early adopters to laggards.  Some people will jump on the bandwagon no matter what. Others will offer resistance no matter what. It’s called the adopter categorization.

I’m not sure if this will be encouraging or discouraging, but here goes. I don’t care if you’re Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God–you’ll still have 16% laggards. Even if your vision is from God, you’ll still encounter devil’s advocates.  Don’t expect unanimity, but strive for unity.  Not everybody will be on board, especially if it’s a board.  But if your vision is from God, there will be a groundswell of support from the innovators, early adopters, and eventually, the late adopters! You might even pick up a laggard or two!

Press on!

II Corinthians 2:16 is one of my common refrains these days.  I’ll be honest, leading National Community Church isn’t getting easier. It’s getting harder. But that’s a good thing!   Honestly, I feel less and less equal to the task God has called me to.  And I wasn’t even qualified to start with.  I had one summer internship and one failed church plant on my resume before National Community Church.  I’ve always felt like I’m in over my head.  But that’s when God has you right where He wants you.  Why?  Because it forces you to live in raw dependency upon God and raw dependency is the raw material out of which God does His greatest miracles. If you feel like you are equal to the task then your task isn’t big enough!

Lately, I feel my workload is the equivalent of two feet of snow and I have to dig out by shoveling it the old fashioned way.  And then it’s two feet of snow the next day and I’ve got to do it all over again.  The only thing that is sustaining me is prayer.  I feel like I’m learning this lesson: the more I have to do, the more I have to pray. It’s as simple as that.

The truth is this: none of us is equal to the task.  Even the person who penned these words wasn’t.  Paul was in over his head all the time!  But those situations don’t allow us to rely on ourselves.  And that’s the point.  Paul hits the nail on the head in II Corinthians 1:9: “This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God.”

Relying on the Lord more than ever!

I’m always praying that God would get my books in the right hands at the right time.  I heard today from a pastor in Tampa who was reading The Circle Maker and when he got to the paragraph where I wrote about praying circles around our children he stopped reading and started praying.  At that very moment, his son was in a car accident. He swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle and his car flipped over several times and landed upside down. He and two passengers walked out with one scrape! That’s it.  That’s no coincidence. That’s providence.  God didn’t just put the book in the right hands at the right time. It was the right paragraph.  That was the Holy Spirit prompting him to pray!

I love stories like this. I need stories like this.

Sharing testimonies is a lost art form.  Have we forgotten our doubled-edged sword? Revelation 12:11 says: And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

Testimonies are the way we give God glory.  But there is a side benefit: hearing a testimony is like borrowing faith from someone else.  If God did it for them He can do it for me!  If we fail to share testimonies, we don’t know how God is moving.  In fact, we’re tempted to think God isn’t moving at all. I promise you, He is.  Aslan is on the move!  And if we all shared our testimonies, it would lift us off our feet.  We would realize that the quantity and quality of miracles happening today is way beyond what we read about in the Bible.  Greater things!

We need to be testimony collectors, testimony tellers, testimony connoisseurs.

One thing he said got in my spirit and I can’t get it out: pick a fight.  That’s his motto or mantra and that’s what you’re doing if you’re going after human traffickers! Isn’t that what Jesus did when he threw down in the temple and drove out the money changers?  He knew how and when to pick a fight.  For what it’s worth, it was typically with self-righteous religious types!

I was thinking about this motto, pick a fight, and it dawned on me: prayer is picking a fight with the enemy.  It’s the way we engage, the way we advance.  Prayer is the way we draw battle lines.  Prayer puts us on the front lines. It’s the way we go from defense to offense. And when we get on our knees, the Lord starts fighting our battles for us!

There are some battlefields I’m not called to die on.  And you have to discern which fight is your fight and which fight isn’t.  But at some point, you need to pick a fight. And the moment you drop to your knees you will be transported to the frontlines of spiritual warfare.  And that’s where the battle is won or lost.

Check out session 1 of the curriculum here.

We’ll launch 30+ Circle Maker groups this week at National Community Church.  And that comes on the heels of The Circle Maker sermon series and 21-Day Prayer Challenge.  We’re going all out and all in.

Jesus talked about the power of spiritual synergy when he said: “If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.” Obviously, it needs to meet the two-fold litmus test for any and every prayer. It has to be in the will of God and for the glory of God. But if it meets that two-fold test, then all it takes is two!  When two people agree in prayer, they have formed a prayer circle.

What would happen if two or twenty or two hundred people formed prayer circles?  I’ll tell you what would happen: we’d storm the gates of hell and they would not prevail against us!  I’m amazed at the miracles God has done at National Community Church in the last few years.  His blessings have blown us away!  But I feel like God has done that despite our lack of corporate prayer.  I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we genuinely, humbly, fervently started praying like it depends on God?  I intend to find out.

It’s the beginning of a prayer movement at NCC.  The Circle Maker has given people a common vocabulary and a common challenge to take their prayer lives to the next level. It’s a new day. It’s a new normal.