What Is The 99 Day Challenge and How Do I Jump On Board?

That’s a question I’ve been getting lately, so I thought I’d answer it. How manly of me.

As of today, The 99 Day Challenge, is whatever you want it to be. It’s a challenge to yourself or to a group to which you belong to add one important thing to your life and do it for 99 days consecutively. The hope is that after that 99 days are up, you’ll have a full-fledged healthy new habit that will be so ingrained in your daily life that it’ll be hard to believe you ever lived without it.

Currently, I’m on a Solitude Challenge. The rules for this challenge are simple. Every day for 99 days in a row, I will spend a minimum of 20 minutes alone with God. I can bring my bible and my journal to that time, but nothing else. I sit in a quiet place and spend that time reading, journaling, and/or praying. It’s been great. The 99 Day Challenge gives me the impetus I need to make this a daily act and not a “most of the time” or “every once in a while thing.” It’s been great.

So then, this site will always just be about you and what you’re doing? That’s Lame.
Yes it is. That’s why, in the future, I’ll be opening the site up to other people. It will always work best with a group, but we’re not ready to test all that yet. When we are, I will throw the gates open and let other people launch their own 99 day challenges and set up group blogs and forums where they can encourage each other and help each other complete the challenge they’ve created. I’m guessing we’ll get there sometime in the next 6 months or so – maybe longer.

In the meantime, if you launch a challenge, I want to know about it just so I can encourage you if possible. So, drop me a comment some time.

No Pain No Gain

“It is doubtful that God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”

A.W. Tozer

I’m guessing that when most people read the title of this post, they’ll assume it’s about burpees.  That’s a reasonable inference, however, it’s about something more.  I ran across this great post on Craig Groeschel’s blog today in which he included the above quote from A.W. Tozer.  There are going to be times when we have to stand alone (not without God, but without the support of people) in order for God to test and season us for use in his Kingdom.  This shouldn’t surprise us.  Every hero in the Bible went through times of seasoning with some success and some failure before being made of use to God.  It’s of course much easier to talk about this when things are light and easy and more difficult when things are tough.  But, as my friend and pastor Blake Holmes has said numerous times, “If you’re trying to figure out your theology when you’re in the hospital room, it’s too late.” Not that you can’t figure it out at that point, but if you’ve already got it figured out, you can stand in victory rather than wallow in despair, even in difficult times.  

Now, how is this related to The 99 Day Challenge? Excellent question.  Thanks Mom.  

Up to now, The 99 Day Challenge has been about one person (me) pursuing one thing (99 burpees on the 99th day).  However, in the future I have a vision of this site being something much more than that.  I would like to see it become a place where individuals or groups could create their own challenges – physical, spiritual, relational, etc. – and chart their progress for all the world to see.  On a personal note, I’ve found that the encouragement I’ve gotten in my burpee challenge from people on Facebook and Twitter has been significant.  It’s great to log on and get all these encouraging notes on my Facebook wall or Twitter account.  So, I think that other people would want that to.  By creating a community on the web specifically geared toward the 99 day challenge, I think that encouragement will only be accentuated and more focused for other people who take on their own challenges in the future.  

For now, this site will chronicle my successes and failures in this one challenge.  In the future it will be about more people being challenged to do more things. 

Are you ready for the challenge?

Why Not 100 Days?

Simple.  I couldn’t get that domain name or anything else like it.  It was going to have to be something like: 100daystoimmortalgreatnessforalleternity.com or something like that.  I didn’t have the energy to type that every day after doing all my burpees.  So.  Here we are with a 99 day challenge.  I don’t think one stinking day is going to kill anyone.  If so, let it be me.  I’ve got insurance.

Another excellent question: “Does this really warrant a full blown website?”

Another one like it: “Weren’t you annoying us enough with all your Twitter traffic about how many burpees you did that day?”

Let me answer both by saying that I hope that the 99 day challenge will become a big part of my life.  It’s a great motivational tool.  I’ve already stuck with this much better than I have any other exercise program I’ve tried since failing to complete the Houston Marathon while not being able to breathe due to the flu.  (Seriously, I tried to run a full marathon while I had the flu.  Idiot.) 

The dream is for this site to be about a lot of people taking on challenges and completing them, thus becoming better  more confident people.  So, read on and enjoy.  There will be many posts about burpees in the coming days and then some about the future of this site and what it will become.  God only knows.  Seriously.