Managing the CoaH Challenge
Hello Church,
Happy New Year!
I hope and pray that all of you are Growing in Grace as you read Scripture and pray.
I know that the 119 tasks found in the CoaH Challenge can appear daunting, so I wanted to speak on that.
· Instead of seeing the challenge as 119 individual tasks, look at it as 11 categories. This can help you better manage the quantity. Try to accomplish one assignment from each category.
· Familiarize yourself with the list, especially at the beginning. Read it through several times over the week, including clicking the links and reading the notes at the bottom. The more familiar you become with the list, the less daunting it’ll appear.
· As you go through the list, discern which areas are weak areas in which you need to give extra attention. Remember the illustration of exercising at a gym. If your upper body is strong but your legs are weak, then for balance, you need to pay more attention to strengthening your lower body. You do this without ignoring your upper body; you just do some extra exercises and reps to build up muscles in those scrawny legs.
· Once you decide on which challenges you want to tackle, space them out. Make a schedule. Which one or two will you do first, which ones will you do next?
· Also, stretch yourself. Since you’re doing this challenge, do at least one or two tasks that are actually challenging. For some that may mean reading the whole Bible in a year, for others it may mean fasting for one day.
Now, it’s also important that we approach these challenges with the right spiritual perspective. Pastor Woohyun came up with the following helpful hints:
It’s great that so many of you are participating in the #COAHCHALLENGE. This list of spiritual disciplines has been provided to you not to burden you, but to offer you a way to receive God’s grace, experience God’s power, and deepen your relationship with God and mature in Christ. In other words, the ultimate purpose of these disciplines is to help you enjoy God more. Listen to what David Mathis says in his book Habits of Grace: “The means of grace [spiritual disciplines] are not about earning God’s favor, twisting His arm, or controlling His blessing, but readying ourselves for consistent saturation in the roll of His tides” (22). In other words, we’re inviting you to place yourself along the regular paths of grace where we can be expectant of God’s blessing. However, we understand that we could easily make this all about duty – checking off the box. With that said, here are 10 things that will help you to engage in our challenge more meaningful:
BEFORE you engage in a challenge:
1. Remind yourself of the reasons for engaging in this challenge;
· For the glory of God
· For the good of others
· For the satisfaction of our souls (because we get to enjoy God more through it)
2. Pray for the Holy Spirit’s help to keep your heart in the right place;
3. Share with someone that you’re starting a particular challenge (and ask for their prayers) or invite someone to do it with you (for accountability);
4. Plan your schedule so that you’re not rushing to get the challenge done – but rather, to have more meaningful time with God through it. Remember quality over quantity!
DURING the challenge:
5. Pray for God’s grace which will supply the energy for discipline and effort;
6. Fight the good fight by persevering through it. Mathis writes, “The way to receive the gift of God’s empowering our actions is to do the actions. If He gives the gift of effort, we receive that gift by expending the effort” (28). In other words, remember that the only way to experience “God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose” (Philippians 2:13) is to engage with the work!
AFTER you finish the challenge:
7. Ask a few questions to help you reflect on your experience. For example:
· How did God minister to me?
· How did I experience God?
· What’s one thing that I learned about God?
· Was it difficult? If so, what made it difficult?
8. Share your experience with someone (ex. what you have learned, how God has ministered to you, what were some things or distractions that made your experience difficult, etc.);
9. Thank God for the opportunity to grow in grace;
10. Learn from your experience and engage in another challenge!
Soli Deo Gloria
Pastor Peter
