I just wanted to let you know that we are so close to our goal of raising $1000 for the One Prayer Church Planting Initiative!

Several of you mentioned that you’d like to give, but forgot your checkbooks today. Remember, you can give to RCC online at anytime using our Paypal Link found on our website.

We’re going to wait until Tues before we send in our contribution to One Prayer…So if you want to give and weren’t able to today, there is still time. Click HERE to pay with a credit/debit card or your Paypal account. We’ll assume that any contributions given through Paypal in the next 2 days are meant for the One Prayer initiative. As always, your contributions are tax deductible.

Thank you RCC for your generosity! I am so amazed at how God has used our young church to impact this city, and now the nations! This is just the beginning!

Let’s keep making Him famous!

Last fall we did a series called Man vs Wild and we borrowed a lot from the book, “In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day”, by Mark Batterson. This is an excerpt, which he calls “A Lion Chaser’s Manifesto”:

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshiping what’s right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don’t try to be who you’re not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away. Chase the lion.

Print it out. Read it every day. Quit playing it safe. Live the life God designed you to live.

Well this is the 4th and final week of our One Prayer series. We’ve had some great video teaching the last few weeks and we have one last video this week that is going to be phenomenal.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times over the last month or so, part of the One Prayer initiative is to plant as many churches and transform as many communities as possible in Sudan, China, India, and Cambodia. This last year 660 churches were planted and they aren’t finished yet. This was all accomplished through the giving of churches participating in One Prayer.

How often do we get to be a vital part of changing lives all around the world? This is a chance to impact lives for eternity.

We’re going to take up 2 offerings this Sunday. First we’ll take up our usual offering. Then, we’ll take up an offering above and beyond our normal giving and we’ll plan on sending that in to One Prayer. Andrea and I have made a decision to make a substantial contribution to this effort, and I would like to challenge all of you to pray about also giving generously to this great cause.

Please take a moment to visit the One Prayer website and see everything that has been accomplished, and everything that is planned for the coming year. I think you’ll agree it’s money well spent!

Fasting sucks. It’s totally inconvenient. It hurts. It completely robs me of my physical strength. But it is an extremely powerful spiritual tool. As powerful as prayer itself. Maybe more powerful.

Jesus said in Matthew 6 “When you fast…”. Not if you fast, but when you fast. Jesus expected that his followers would fast. He understood the importance of the fast. He fasted for 40 days in the wilderness. That is some serious fasting.

Why fast?:

1. Breakthrough
2. Guidance
3. Hearing from God
4. Strength
5. Fruitfulness in our life/ministry

I supposed there are other reasons, but Isaiah 58:10-11  says that when we fast that

“…your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

How does it work? Fasting works to deny our flesh. When we deny our flesh we are more in tune to our spirit. Because God is spirit, he speaks to us through our spirit. When we are more in tune with our spirit, we are more in tune with God. We hear his voice more clearly. God is always talking, but we’re rarely listening. Fasting causes us to listen.

There is also a supernatural power in fasting. It is like prayer. We don’t know exactly how prayer works, but we know that it works and that it is powerful. Fasting is the same way. We often use the terms “prayer” and “fasting” in the same sentence, but there is power just in the fast itself. When we need breakthrough in our lives, fasting may be the answer. When Jesus’ disciples couldn’t cast out a demon, Jesus told them it was because they hadn’t fasted.

Again, I don’t know exactly how fasting works, but I do know it works. About 7 years ago I was working as a wildlife biologist for a timber company in Idaho. I had started thinking about going back to school to get my PhD. However, this was a very major life decision and one I didn’t take lightly. I had this desire to go back to school, but I couldn’t see how it would work, or how it fit into my goal of ultimately planting a church some day. So, I decided that I would fast for 3 days. I expected to hear from God sometime through that fast. James 1:5 says that if anyone lacks wisdom that we should ask God, and expect to hear from him without doubting. That is what I did. The first 2 days were without incident. I fasted and prayed, but didn’t get anything specifically. On the 3rd day I was at work and it just so happened to be my annual review that day. So I was meeting with my supervisor and all was going well. At the end of the meeting, he asked my without any prompting at all, “Have you ever thought about going back to school and getting your PhD? I’m sure the company would support you and even pay for it.”

God spoke. I heard him. I went back to school. It was amazing.

What is it that you need in your life right now? More power to overcome? A breakthrough in your finances? To draw closer to God? To hear his voice? Fasting holds the key to all of these things.

Start with a 1 day fast, then work your way up to a 3 day fast. Anyone can do these fasts. Drink lots of water to stay hydrated. It’s amazing how much hydration food actually provides. Work your way up to longer fasts if God leads you that way.

There is actually a fast called a Daniel fast. Daniel ate only vegetables and drank only water. You can read this in the Book of Daniel. This is also a good way to work up to a total fast.

We all have a bunch of very good reasons why we can’t fast. I’ve actually heard every one of them. Most of those excuses came out of my own mouth. But actually, we are all capable of fasting, we usually just aren’t willing.

Give it a try. See if God won’t honor your fast and speak to you. See if he won’t bring breakthrough in your life. I think you’ll be surprised.

• Happy Father’s Day! We “honored” fathers today by showing a music video titled “Cletus Take the Reel”, a spoof on “Jesus Take the Wheel”. Hilarious. Look it up on YouTube.
• Attendance is staying strong. We’ll keep praying for those empty chairs.
• We continued with One Prayer and heard from Craig Groeschel again on, “God is…Father”. Great Father’s Day message.
• I think one of the most difficult attributes of God for many of us to grasp is that of father. It’s because we’ve all had imperfect earthly fathers, and we tend to think of God the Father through the lens of our earthly fathers.
• We’ve got it backwards though. We need to use our Heavenly Father as the ultimate father role model, rather than our earthly fathers. God is Father.
• We’re going to conclude One Prayer this week with a special guest speaker. We’re also going to take up an offering as our contribution to the One Prayer church planting initiative. We’re going to help plant 1000 churches this year! Go God!

• Worship rocked today! Ryan King came over from Lewiston and led worship. The team did awesome.
• There seemed to be a flow today. Really sensed the Spirit moving.
• Attendance was up quite a bit. Looks like the “Empty Chair Prayer” is working! See my earlier post on this if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
• If I’ve learned one thing through planting this church, it’s that you can’t just apply some recipe to church planting and hope that it will work. You’ve got to hear God in every instance. In the case of praying for empty seats, I really believe that God told us to do that. So we’ll keep doing it.
• Steven Furtick was right on with “God is Great, God is Good”. A number of people responded to the call at the end.
• Offering was up today. God is good!
• People’s lives were changed today. God is great!
• Ended with my new motto/challenge to the people: “Go and make God famous in Missoula this week!”

As I was setting up early Sunday morning my mom called. She usually doesn’t call on Sunday mornings because she knows I’m busy setting up. But she called and said she felt God telling her that we were supposed to pray over all of the empty chairs in the building, and to do it every Sunday. Now when mom talks, I listen. So, I proceeded to pray over all of the chairs. I prayed that God would fill the chairs with 3 specific people groups:

1. People who did not know God;
2. People who knew God but no longer attended church for whatever reason;
3. People who were mature in their faith and who wanted to roll their sleeves up and help out.

I also asked our set up crew to pray over the chairs.

Well, we actually had 10 visitors on Sunday. That is a lot for our little church. We’re going to keep on praying for those empty chairs. I’m thinking momma was onto something!

• Numbers were back up to normal today! I just love the dynamics of a full room.
• Emily led worship for her first time today. She did an awesome job! We had a full band and a new vocalist. Way to go Arran!
• We started One Prayer today! I think the video message went great.
• Craig Groeschel pretty much knocked it out of the park today with, “God is…Love”
• Very powerful message. I’m already looking forward to next week’s message!
• We had our communion meal and a church business meeting after the service today. As usual the food was great.
• Had to talk about finances today at the business meeting. I don’t like to have to talk about them, but we were short last month and we haven’t paid rent yet. Things need to change for us to make it through the summer months.
• So get this: I FORGOT TO TAKE AN OFFERING TODAY! What?!?!?!?!
• Seriously folks, of all the times to forget, this was a very inconvenient time.
• However, I told the church where we were at and people stepped up. Thanks to all of you who gave for the first time, gave beyond your normal giving, and those who gave sacrificially. I knew you’d do it! You rock!
• Bottom line: this isn’t my church. This is God’s church, and his people (RCC people) care enough to keep it going. That totally fires me up!
• Remember to pray about giving to the One Prayer church planting initiative. We’ll be taking up an offering on June 28th, exactly 1 yr from the date of our very first church service in Missoula!

• Small, but great group of people today.
• We didn’t have a worship leader for this week, so I wasn’t sure what to do. My first instinct was “I’ll do it!”.
• But, I realized that I’m not called to do it, so I declined. I just decided we weren’t going to do music. WHAT?! I know, it’s insane.
• Instead we prayed together as a group. We used the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 as a model, and prayed through it for about 30 minutes. I thought it was a great opportunity to pray together.
• Bottom line: church doesn’t have to look exactly the same every week. In fact, the Bible doesn’t really give us the full picture into how to conduct our services. Most of what we do is tradition. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s not pretend that it is sacred.
• The greatest thing happened: within 1 day, I had 2 people wanting to step up and lead worship, and another who wants to play on the team.
• Sometimes you just have to create a vacuum in order for people to step up and plug up the hole! I’m totally stoked.
• We wrapped up our Sacred Pathways series looking at the Activist and the Enthusiast. Elijah in 1 Kings 17-18 was the activist we studied, and Peter was our enthusiast. Fun study.
• We start One Prayer this Sunday and I can’t wait!
• Also don’t miss our Communion Meal this Sunday. I’m going to be doing a “State of the Church” meeting during our meal. It’s important to be there.
• See you on Sunday!