Over 1,000 people at our church recently went on the 21 day journey of fasting and prayer that we just concluded this past Sunday. Times like this are always challenging yet refreshing and spiritually productive. What I want to challenge you today with is how to live beyond the journey.

For many of you, the things you fasted and prayed about were things that were a part of your everyday life outside of the journey. You wanted to see God move in the life of a son or daughter or see victory over a certain sin that you’d been struggling with for years. My encouragement to you is to not let the journey stop. Even though you’re not fasting from food or abstaining from watching television, don’t think the spiritual journey has to stop. Part of the benefit of setting aside time to fast and to pray is that benefit we receive when we head back into the real world. We are hopefully more sensitive to God and His Spirit, more attentive to His moving in our lives, and more committed to His Word. Do everything you can to maintain this mindset.

Many others didn’t go with us on the journey. Whether you’re a member of our church or you’re just randomly reading this blog today, you can go on a journey with God beginning today. All you need to do to go on a journey with God is come to God. James tells us, “Draw near to God and He’ll draw near to you.” It really is as easy as that. Do you need to grow in your walk with Christ? Do you need to rid your life of sin? Begin a new journey with God today.

We’ll see you Sunday as we continue our series on Joel with a message called, “Even Now…God Answers Prayer.” Please pray for Pastor Floyd and the GCR Task Force as their meetings conclude today.

Please pause for a moment and pray right now for the meetings of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention. Also, call upon others to pray with you throughout the entire day on Wednesday, and on Thursday until 2:00 p.m.

I am in San Antonio, Texas, preparing to conduct the meetings of our Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. Our members began arriving last night late and will arrive over the next few hours today. Our meeting begins on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. and concludes on Thursday at 2:00 p.m.

These meetings are about the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. We are not meeting for any other purpose than how to bring our churches and our convention itself into maximizing our impact to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ regionally, nationally, and globally.

This should be a very exciting time for our entire convention of churches. Just think, many denominations don’t even consider anything about the Great Commission. We are saying it is our mandate, and now is the time for us to do everything we can do to advance the gospel to places where it has never been before. These places exist in each one of our church fields, as well as all across our nation, and of course worldwide. I am telling you, we do not need to be fretting about the outcome of our recommendations, but anticipating what God wants to do among us.

I have great confidence in this incredible group of leaders that Dr. Johnny Hunt has appointed to serve in this capacity. The balance is good because the diversity is strong. I know these people will attempt to lead Southern Baptists towards our goal: the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is something we can all agree upon and embrace with excitement.

Therefore, pray for us in these significant days. We will bear the responsibility and accountability of making decisions that will possibly impact the future in a historic manner. Personally and collectively, we feel the weight of this responsibility and hold it as a sacred trust. Our number one desire is to bring glory to God. May this happen in our decision-making, our upcoming presentation, and in the response of the Southern Baptist Convention to it.

Share the word everywhere – Pray for us in these days.

This morning I leave to go to Little Rock to speak at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention Evangelism Conference. It is being held at the First Baptist Church in Sherwood, Arkansas. I am scheduled to preach at 2:15 p.m. Please pray for me as I preach at this very important annual meeting. It is attended mostly by pastors, but is a significant gathering due to it being attended by leaders concentrating on winning others to Christ.

<strong>As soon as I complete that preaching assignment, I depart for San Antonio for our Great Commission Resurgence meetings. These meetings are our most significant meetings thus far in this challenging task. We will continue in our process of working through how our convention of 50,000 churches and congregations can more faithfully and effectively fulfill the Great Commission.

If Southern Baptist churches are going to embrace the vision of presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and make disciples of all the nations, we will have to change the way we do some things. This is what Southern Baptists say they desire to do; therefore, we are working through a lot of matters that will help us do this more successively. As Christ-followers, how can we not embrace this biblical and worthy vision? I believe we will, but for us to move to that point, we have many difficult decisions that must be made. Please friends, pray for us like never before.

Our “21 Day Journey With God” in prayer and fasting concluded last night at sunset. God has shared many things with me in this season and I trust He has done the same with you. In this season set aside to pursue God, our God has been faithful to us. I am so very grateful.

Thanks to each of you who set aside these days for some very concentrated time with God. Now as we continue in our walk with Christ, you will see God bring into reality in days to come, many of those requests you laid before Him humbly. May His power be made known in and through our lives like never before.

Call upon others to join us in prayer for this week of Great Commission Resurgence meetings in San Antonio.

The letter below is being sent today to just under 6,000 GCR Prayer Partners, people who have committed to pray for a Great Commission Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. If you are not already a part of that group, I want to encourage you to join them in prayer at this critical time. Please read below for a message about an extremely important upcoming meeting.

Your Great Commission Task Force has listened to Southern Baptists, gathered as much information as possible, asked the tough questions, gone through volumes of information, and has really sought to hear what Southern Baptists desire to do to advance the Great Commission in our generation. Equally, we have been before God to seek His will. Now we enter the season and the crucible of decision-making. The pressure is on and the test is real. For the past three months, these decisions have been in process, and in our next meeting we will finalize and make many difficult decisions. This is why we need you.

On Tuesday through Thursday, January 26-28, our Great Commission Resurgence Task Force will be meeting for our our most significant moment in this journey. As our process goes forward, we will be presenting our report to the upcoming meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee on February 22-23. While additions or revisions to this report are probable before the final report is made in June at the Orlando Southern Baptist Convention, the release of it in February will give Southern Baptists four months to gain clarity and have their questions addressed.

Therefore, I am asking you to give some concentrated prayer time for this upcoming meeting. Please ask your prayer ministries to pray for us. Our need for prayer has never been greater. Please consider even praying for us during the various segments of our meeting. Our meeting begins on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. and concludes on Thursday at 2:00 p.m. We will meet in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings of each day. We would appreciate various groups within your church having continual prayer for our GCR Team during these hours.

How can you pray? We need God’s leadership and will to be manifested. We need the wisdom of God regarding every situation. We need complete clarity on presenting our convention of churches a compelling vision for the future. We need to abound in spiritual unity as we move through this significant meeting. We need courage to make the decisions that will truly advance the Great Commission through the ministries of Southern Baptists. We need God’s protection upon our own lives, our families, and the ministries we are a part of, because dealing with major Great Commission issues brings strong spiritual warfare.

Please continue to enlist people to be a part of our www.pray4gcr.com prayer team. We have just under 6,000 people who are prayer partners with us daily. We would love to see hundreds more join us in this daily commitment to pray for a Great Commission Resurgence to occur in and through the Southern Baptist Convention.

Additionally, please share with your congregation that Dr. Johnny Hunt, the President of our Convention, has issued a “Call to Prayer” for Sunday, January 31. He is appealing to every Southern Baptist Christ-follower and church to pray for the future of our convention of churches on this day.

May God bless you wonderfully for being our parters in prayer.

Yesterday I had the privilege to speak at an International Conference for Pastors. What A thrilling experience to influence these 1,100 Pastor-Leaders from 40 countries of the world.

This experience reminded me of how big and diverse the Body of Christ really is. I met men of God who are seeing God move in their nations greatly. I spent some time with a man who shared how rapidly the underground church is growing in Iran. Additionally, I heard what God was doing in countries like Nigeria and Uganda. God is at work mightily all across the world. He is committed to His redemptive purpose. Hallelujah!

Investing in Pastor-Leaders is filled with God-sized potential. On Monday, I spoke to 47 Global Mission Pastors from some of the most missional churches in America. Today, I assisted in leading a large prayer gathering for several hundred leaders, video-taped a 25-minute session on prayer and fasting that will go around the world, and also preached at this conference.

Friends, be encouraged, God is at work around the world among all peoples. What a blessing it is to know that it is not up to just a few of us. God WILL take His message across the world. Let’s join God in this great purpose.

Spread the news of this glorious gospel.

I arrived in Orlando last night late. I am here to speak to two different groups. Tonight I am speaking to all of the Global Mission Pastors of larger Southern Baptist churches. I am here to communicate with them about the Great Commission Resurgence. On Tuesday, I am speaking at the Synergize 2 Conference, which is a worldwide conference for Pastors and Ministers of the gospel. I leave Orlando early Tuesday evening, arriving back into Northwest Arkansas
on Tuesday night late.

Today we enter our 15th day in our 21-day journey with God. I hope that God is speaking to your life. We need to stay focused this week and see all that God has for us.

Please pray for me this week – the load is heavy. I have a great deal of preparation before me for Sunday and our major GCR Task Force meeting next week. I would appreciate your prayers.

January 15 marks the 20th anniversary of the day we discovered Jeana had cancer. It was an early Monday morning in 1990. We suspected nothing more than a biopsy and a return home. I determined I would take her that morning. I was in the waiting room, not a soul there, when I was summoned to talk with the doctor. He proceeded to tell me she had breast cancer. Jeana was 35 years of age.

We were stunned to say the least. Within minutes our lives changed. She proceeded to have surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. With trips to Houston’s M.D. Anderson Hospital, we sought further medical help. In Jeana’s book, The Uninvited Guest, you can read the story and be encouraged greatly.

On this January 15th, we celebrate life! Miraculously by God’s grace and power, she is healed. Yes, we have had a few scary and concerned moments through the years, but every time, God has prevailed in every way. So many do not have her story. Their stories ended sadly. Yet, due to God’s will and purpose, Jeana has been sustained.

Today, I just want to say I am grateful to God for Jeana and for this miracle. She has walked in a sterling manner, living life with hair to no hair to hair again. She has gone from having the confidence of life to the uncertainty of life to the confidence of life again. She has given herself away to so many people with cancer through the years, loving them, encouraging them, and praying for them. She is the best! I love you, Jeana. You have handled it all so well through the years.

Therefore, to Jeana, my love, “Happy 20 Years,” where we have come from despair on that January 15 to this January 15 blessed! We still enjoy living life together. God has answered our prayer for your healing.

Be encouraged, our God reigns and He heals!

In December, I blogged about my predictions on certain bowl games. Now before you see the results, understand two things:

• People who serve as analysts did worse than I did, so don’t be too hard on me.
• I wanted to be a football coach and have been a student and fan of the game for years, and still did terrible!

From the 18 games I picked, I only got 10 of those games correct! That is awful! Terrible! Which games really surprised me? I was surprised that Virginia Tech defeated Tennessee. I just felt like the Volunteers were powerful enough to deal with them, yet some say Virginia Tech will be a Top 5 team next year. I am surprised that LSU lost to Penn State, even though I know LSU is not at its best right now. Well, perhaps the SEC is not as dominant as people imagine. I was really surprised Ohio State defeated Oregon. I really thought Oregon was unstoppable, but congratulations to Ohio State for a great game. Now I was disappointed for TCU, that they lost to Boise State. At the same time, let me be clear: I am not sure Texas or Alabama would want to play the Boise State team that played the other night. What a team, what a defense and phenomenal offensive scheme. If there was a true playoff system of just the top four teams, I would not be surprised at all if Boise State won the four-team tournament.

Now to address the game: Alabama defeated Texas. More than anything, I regret deeply that Colt McCoy played only one series and hopefully he will be healthy. I love watching both teams play when I can and could be an avid fan for them. Yet I am a Texas fan unless they play the Razorbacks. I grew up 90 miles from Austin and went to a few games growing up. How would the game have gone if Colt McCoy had been healthy? We will never know. Congrats to all of my preacher buddies and church members who are Alabama fans. You deserved it this night.

Therefore, the next time you hear me preach, I will be more accurate than a .555%. Why? Simply put, I preach the Bible. When I preach the Bible, the Bible is always rights. Hey, the only time we are really right, we are on the side of God and His Word.

Yours for making sorry bowl predictions . . . more to come.

Many people gathered for our Solemn Assembly on Sunday night. It was filled with worship, conversation with God, Scripture reading, humility, repentance, intercession-calling upon the Lord, petition, and response to God. Needless to say, it was a real God-moment, a night where only God can be praised.

Many of our people had never participated in a Solemn Assembly. Yet on Sunday night, they did. Lives were impacted as Jesus was honored. Many of you may want to experience it again. Many of you may want to experience this Solemn Assembly before the Lord by yourself, or a small group of people, or even your family.

We have posted this solemn assembly online so it can be viewed and experienced by the entire world. I realize that is quite a statement, but with the Twitter and Facebook and online world, we can invite people to join us. We can multiply what God did in our midst last night. Please call your Twitter and Facebook friends to set aside of few minutes to participate. They can join us wherever they are in the world.

Just think what could happen worldwide if we pushed people to this video:

God may use it to ignite fires for revival and spiritual awakening.

Share the word.