I’ve had a lot of fun conversations about risk this week! I love that people are listening to God and allowing Him to whisper dreams in their hearts. With that in mind, one of the things that I think people miss is that taking risks should include wise calculations. Mark and I have stepped out multiple times in faith, but behind all of our decisions is a mountain of planning and figuring. Yes, we hear from God, and yes, it is usually beyond our reach. That being said, there are many parts to the equation that you can plan for and you need to always partner risk with wisdom.

Here are some tips for hearing from God and living a life of bold faith:

1. When you begin to hear from God, you need to begin to get a financial plan. Most of the things that God puts on our hearts equate to needing cash along the way. If you are hearing from God and aren’t being a wise saver/spender, you are being irresponsible. If your plan is to live off of welfare because you are “living in faith”, that is not a good plan. If you REALLY heard from God, then begin setting aside the funds as you go because you believe it to the core of your decision making.

2. You need wise counsel. I am most afraid of people who hear from God and don’t include wise people in the conversation. Who did God place in your life as a sounding board? (In addition to the financial piece above, if your “wise counsel” handles money poorly, you need some new counsel.) When God speaks to us about a new opportunity, we jump into action and start making calls to the few key people who walk alongside of us in life. Troy Jones had given us advice at every major turn of our lives since Mark was 15 and I was 20. We keep going back to him because he listens to God and he knows us inside and out.

3. You need boundaries of when to quit. Let’s face it…sometimes our plan just isn’t progressing forward even after our BEST attempt. Put boundaries around your plans that allow you to go another direction! Mark and I had an “end date” for our church. If it wasn’t growing and financially viable at a certain point we were going to pack our bags and quit. Why? It’s simple…our core dream is to impact people’s lives (we’ll never quit on that), but if the plan we are functioning within doesn’t do that, we’ll give up on the plan at some point in order to keep our dream alive one way or another.

I hope that helps as you are making decisions of how to pursue the whisper on your heart! I’m a BIG fan of risk, but I’m equally impressed by wisdom. If you can put the two together, nothing will stop you in life.

I LOVE this blog from Mark Batterson. You can read all of his blogs at www.markbatterson.com. Enjoy!

Blessed is he who is not offended at me.

Luke 7:23

At this point in the 21-Day prayer challenge, you might be experiencing a little faith fatigue. You aren’t alone. All of us go through prayer slumps! Sometimes it’s the slow erosion of faith. But more often than not, the loss of a prayer life is traced to unanswered prayer. Death by disappointment. What do you do when God doesn’t answer how you want or when you want? Let me tell you what you don’t do: you don’t stop praying! It’s always too soon to quit. It’s always too soon to give up. You need to resolve that you’ll keep circling until the day you die.

John and Heidi are part of the prayer circle that prays for me. In fact, they are some of the most prayerful people I know. God has given them some amazing answers to their prayers for others, but many of their own prayers for their own challenges have seemingly gone unanswered. But there is no quit in them. They just keep on praying like it depends on God because they know it does. They haven’t thrown in the prayer towel despite the disappointments. Their secret? One promise has sustained them through the toughest times and deepest disappointments. They circled Luke 7:23: blessed is he who is not offended at me.

Here’s the context.

Jesus is doing miracles right and left. He is healing diseases, casting out demons, and restoring sight to the blind, but John the Baptist misses the miracle train. It seems like Jesus is rescuing everybody except his most faithful follower who is in prison. And John is his cousin, nonetheless. It seems like Jesus could have, and maybe should have, organized a rescue operation and busted him out before he was beheaded. Instead he sends a message via his disciples. He tells them to tell John about all the miracles he is doing and then he asks them to relay this simple promise: blessed is he who is not offended at me.

Have you ever felt like God was doing miracles for everyone and their brother, but you seem to be the odd man out? It seems like God is keeping His promises to everyone but you? I wonder if that’s how John the Baptist felt. What do you do when you feel like God is answering everyone’s prayers but yours?

In the words of my friends who have experienced their fair share of unanswered prayers: “We try to live our lives unoffended by God. Jesus promises that we will be blessed if we aren’t offended. Obviously we aren’t in prison about to be beheaded, but we have seen many answers to our prayers for other people when we have prayed for their finances, their health and their kids. Yet in our own lives, well…”

When God doesn’t answer how or when you want, you have a choice to make. You can give up or hang on. You can let go or pray through. You can get frustrated with God or choose to live unoffended.

My friends have chosen to live unoffended: “Jesus promises blessing if we are not offended when He does things for others. And if He does it for them, He might do it for us. I don’t know why God does what He does. I do know that 100% of the prayers I don’t pray won’t get answered.” I love that approach to prayer, that approach to life. It’s the circle maker’s mantra: 100% of the prayers you don’t pray won’t get answered.

Live unoffended.

What an amazing journey we’re on! One week ago we began a series about prayer partnered with asking God for the BIGGEST desires of our hearts. We were challenged to believe God and ask specifically. Yesterday was already full of stories of changed lives! Here’s a few highlights:

A woman in our church was in extreme pain from a disease and was fearing a trip to the hospital with serious ramifications…now she is healed!

Another woman in our church made a VERY important decision after praying with two of her friends. This decision will change the course of her life and her ministry!

Our church is being given an opportunity that will impact our community in significant ways…details to come!

A family in our church has been praying for reconciliation with a difficult relationship. That person called them up this week and wanted to talk it through. The meeting ended with healed hearts and hugs!

God is SO big and when we ask Him to bring to completion the desires that He has put in us…He ALWAYS answers!

On another note about Sunday, Mark spoke a great message on fasting. He encouraged us to pray this week on how God would like us to fast the week of January 22. Is it one meal? One day? A Daniel fast? Whatever it is, I encourage you to listen to Mark’s message online and partner with us for MORE answers and miracles.

We also launched small groups this weekend! It was a GREAT start with every group getting people right away. There is also currently still room in every group, so go to www.coffeechurch.com to sign up today. Through this week, various groups will begin to close as they fill up, so please register sooner than later, especially if you have tight schedules.

If you want to grow financially, I highly recommend the Financial Peace University small group. North Creek pays half price for all of our attenders, so it’s quite a deal and will CHANGE the trajectory of your financial future.

We are also offering a Sunday morning small group called The Jesus Story. This group is so easy to attend since you are already on campus! If you want to create new relationships within our church, but have challenging schedules, this may be the perfect option!

One more to highlight (they are all so good!!) is Marcus and Tasha’s group on adventurous faith on Monday nights. This will be located at the church, so there is plenty of room for lots of kids. Maybe you are looking to grow and help your kids develop some friendships? This is a win-win with some of my favorite people!

I might just have to write two highlight blogs this week, because something is happening at the Coffee Church! God, continue to pour out your amazing blessings into the hearts of lives of your people! Help us to obey that voice in our hearts that gives us the direction to follow YOU!

Please email me your miracle stories at stacy@coffeechurch.com. We want to keep a record of what God is doing! Have a great week!

I grew up as the daughter of a race car driver, sitting in the stands from the time I was born, watching my dad tear around the track. If you’ve never been close to a race track, it’s hard to imagine. The slope is much more pronounced than it looks like from a distance and the magnitude of it is astounding. Even from the stands it is deceiving how truly epic it really is. I remember the races, but I really remember the crashes, particularly one where my dad’s car left the track entirely, flipped towards the stands, and ended on it’s roof, stopped only by the fences that are placed to protect the spectators. I was keenly aware that my dad was taking big risks at every turn.

I often see leading a church in the same light. It’s really hard to grasp the magnitude of it, and until you are in it, you don’t really realize how much risk you need to take at every given turn. When you are racing, it is just as dangerous to slow down as it is to speed up, depending on the moment of that decision. We carefully weigh out literally every move to give our best assessment of what it will take to survive the next leg of the race. But, just as in racing, those decisions often need to be made so quickly, it must almost be instinctual.

The greatest lesson I learned from all of those years in the stands came from the moment when my dad crawled out from under his flipped car. He had misjudged the situation, the risk was too great, and the car took a beating. That being said, he crawled out. Sometimes in ministry, we’ll misjudge the situation and we’ll have a little repair work to do, but most likely, we’ll come crawling out and live to race another day. It was that lesson that has given me the fearlessness to make the decisions that need to be made along the way. Sometimes we may crash, but sometimes we may win.

Mark is currently gone on a prayer retreat/personal growth trip! This time he went to Seattle, stayed in hotel, and had one agenda: allowing God to speak to him. It’s a pretty simple concept, but one that is imperative to his leadership. He happened to partner this trip with a second day hanging out with our friend/mentor, Troy Jones, for his staff meeting and lunch. I look forward to getting him back and hearing about what God has done in his heart and spirit.

I am grateful for a pastor that takes time to hear from God, away from the buzz of internet and television, but I was also thinking that this is a good discipline for all of us. As we lead our kids, our marriages, our lives, it is important that we all hear from God. What would your life be like if you planned just ONE day away from everything once a year? A day to ask God what He would have for your life and those that you lead? A day to dream again for the desires that He has placed in your heart? A day to forgive, repent, or grieve with Jesus.

So that’s my challenge for the day: schedule a prayer retreat for yourself. Even if you just stay at a hotel around the corner from your house, it can be all that you need! Turn off the internet, the TV, and let the kids fend for themselves! You are valuable to God and He has something to say to you.