Home

We are now twelve days into this new year–how is your resolution doing? I texted ChaCha this morning and asked, “how long does the average new years resolution last?” and was told that most fizzle out before February even begins. I guess most of us aren’t resolute enough! With that in mind, this year I built a resolution for the fresh life staff and those who come to skull church where you can only make it a few months out of the year and still succeed. The goal is to read through the New Testament in ninety days.

By April 1st we will have read about Jesus’ earthly life from four different perspectives, the radical, missional, church-planting adventure contained in the book of Acts, all of Paul’s emails in addition to the other letters and of course the graphic, bloody account of the return of Jesus Christ that the New Testament closes out with. It breaks down to about 3 chapters a day, which is not really a difficult amount of material at all. I have done lots of different reading plans with varying speeds and I have really been enjoying this pace. While reading slowly enough to actually be thinking about what you are reading it still only takes about ten to fifteen minutes each day. That number is truly miniscule when you remember that the average American watches 4 hours and 49 minutes of tv a day.

It has been awesome going through it personally as well as hearing from the staff and those who have been leaving comments about their experience with the 90 day NT challenge on the skull church facebook page. I am thrilled at the thought of so many people consuming this concentrated dose of Truth. I guarantee you that God will do awesome things in people’s live’s and hearts as they consistently hide His Word in their hearts–it NEVER returns void! I also know that for those who didn’t previously spend time reading the Bible daily, they won’t be able to go back to only being spoon-fed Scripture at church. I am praying that the 90 day challenge will just whet their appetite for more.

Another refreshing thing about coming to the end of a year is the opportunity to take inventory and celebrate all that God did in the previous year before you face the blank canvas of the new one. We put together a year-end recap of some great things we saw God do in 2009, our third full year of ministry at fresh life. CLICK HERE to check it out. Looking at it, what’s really hard to believe is that it all happened in one year.

My personal resolution for this new decade is to be like Caleb from the Old Testament books of Numbers and Joshua. He was one of the spies who checked out the land of Canaan before the children of Israel entered in. Alongside Joshua, he brought back a good report and was rewarded for it by being the only one over twenty years of age that lived to enter forty years later. God said that Caleb had a “different spirit in him” and six different times it is said that he followed the Lord fully. That is my desire for this new year and decade–to follow the Lord fully. God has done tremendous things in the past but I am not content, I want to see Him do more. There are new mountains to take, new adventures to face and I intend to fully follow the Lord, to live for His glory and to use every breath I have to make Jesus famous.

Posted in fresh life, holiday, ministry