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.

I can’t do this thing on my own.

I’m weak in certain areas that the enemy knows how to exploit all too well. My defenses are useless when I’m alone. I can’t see all the chinks in my armor, but the enemy sees them all and gets right in there. So, what to do? Funny, it’s right there in the Bible:

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. – Philippians 1:28-29 ESV (Emphasis Added)

“Striving side by side.” How many times did I read over that and around it and by it never considering that it was there for me – that God wanted me to read it and understand it and believe it and apply it?

It’s so easy to blow off the Word in the places it doesn’t fit my intentions or my beliefs about myself. I tried and tried to stand firm on my own and defeat the enemy. I never could or at least, very infrequently. It’s only when I link arms with other men that I can stand firm and defeat the enemy. My brothers in arms can stand in the fight and show me the holes in my armor. They can watch my back. And I can do the same for them. It’s the only way this thing works. The days of the soldier of one have to end.

If you’re ready to stand firm, band together with some other men who want to do the same, cover the holes in each other’s armor and watch each other’s backs. It’s the only way you’ll do it.

Yesterday, I was on Philippians 1:15-18. I’ve read that passage many times over the years. But yesterday something from it struck me in a new way. It’s not just that he doesn’t care that people are proclaiming Christ to somehow make things worse for him. That’s huge but not new to me. What I thought about yesterday was Paul’s singular focus on the one most important thing in all life – proclaiming Christ. To him, even if people’s motives were all wrong, but they were proclaiming Christ, that was okay. The proclamation of Christ was Paul’s chief end in life. If it made things worse for him, so be it. He could rejoice in that. Crazy.

It’s super convicting to me to think about Paul’s focus. Mine is so all over the place. Part of that comes with being a husband and father of three little ones. Part of it comes with the society we live in – all the hustle and bustle that we’ve decided is “normal.” But the biggest part of it – is that I just don’t care enough. I live in my own little world and don’t really care nearly enough about my neighbors, the people I serve, or even my own family. My serial selfishness makes it impossible to focus on the one thing that will change everything for everyone, including myself. It’s a huge problem.

So, what to do about it? I’m open to suggestions. My current thought is to find some way to keep the words “proclaim Christ” in my visual field as much as possible for a while. Not sure how to do that. I’m a visual person though (isn’t everyone?) and it helps me to actually see the words. I’ll figure it out.

In the meantime, what helps you keep your focus on proclaiming Christ in all things?

So, I did a little exercising and then Abbie, our 3 year old, came in wanting a glass of milk and a little TV time with Dad. How could I refuse? So, I ended up putting the solitude time off until getting to work. Not too bad really.

I got to work a little early and was just sitting down with my Bible and my journal when I got a call from a local vendor helping us out with an event we were hosting today. He needed me to let him in the building and get him started on his part of the project. Darn. When are you people going to let me have some solitude?

Finally, around 10:45, I got a chance to sit down with my Bible and my journal and get started. I’m starting out in Philippians. No rush to motor my way through it, but just taking my time – camping out as needed. It was good. It’s been a while since I journaled and that was great. I’m really looking forward to this, but I’ll get started a little earlier tomorrow. Honestly, I’m not sure that what I did today, really counted as solitude. It counted as a quiet time, but that’s not exactly the point of this little exercise. My plan is to get out in the backyard tomorrow before things get rolling at the house and see if I can spend some real time in solitude with Jesus. We’ll see what happens.

Beginning on Day 1 and proceeding on to Day 99, I will spend at least 20 minutes each day in complete solitude to the best of my abilities. No iPhone, no email, no TV, etc. During this time I will read my Bible, pray, journal, and meditate. That’s it.

I’m looking forward to this. It’ll be good to have some structure around this time.

Now, for the nitty-gritty. When to start? Desi’s going out of town tomorrow night. The weekend should be kind of crazy. So, I’m planning to start on Monday. More to report then.

I’m excited about the idea of taking on a complete book of scripture – Philippians or James for example – and memorizing the whole thing.  I think there’s something about memorizing big chunks of scripture like that that will be profitable to me.  However, after thinking about things a bit, I want to lower the bar just a bit.  I know that concept – lowering the bar – is antithetical to our must win, must improve society, but the realist in me is saying, “Why don’t you pick something you might actually have a chance at before you take on a huge task like that?” I don’t always listen to that guy (Randy Realist) but I think I will in this case.  He’s making some sense. 

My current thinking for the next challenge is this: I think I’ll do 99 days of solitude.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to take the next three months off and go live in isolation in a monastery somewhere. No (Still with me, Desi?).  It does mean that I’ll spend time in solitude for the next 99 days.  I need to figure out how I’ll define solitude.  For example, does reading a good Christian book count? I don’t think so.  Sorry
Donald Miller. No, I think it will look more like me sitting and reading a scripture, thinking about it for a while, and then journaling my prayers about that. 

For me, 99 days in a row of that will be a huge task.  I’m more active in my prayer and reading during some seasons and less so in others. Doing it for 99 days regardless of season or circumstance will be good for me.  

I need to figure out the ground rules and the start date, but I’ll have that in the next day or two.  

Looking forward to this next singular social experiment.  Wondering when will be the time to open up the challenge to more than just myself.  

To be continued.

For some reason, my back has decided to hate burpees with an unbelievable passion.  I can do a few right now, but can’t crank them out in any kind of numbers.  It stinks.  I guess that’s what I get for trying to go from a near zero-level of fitness all the way to a pretty serious level of workout in just a few weeks.  In my younger days, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but now, alas, it is.

So, what did I learn from all this?

First of all, I’ve got my eye on another challenge.  It’s not a physical one and should, therefore be more doable. I’ll unveil it in a few days, but I’m pretty sure I’m settled on a rather ambitious (for me) scripture memory plan.  I have to finalize it a bit, but the gist of it is that I’m going to memorize some serious scripture over the next 99 days.

Getting back to the learning thing, I think I learned a little about myself.  The only times I didn’t do my burpees were when something with my body prevented me from doing them – or once or twice when I forgot.  However, that’s really not good enough.  The whole point of the thing is to string together 99 days of perfection.  99 days of absolute perseverance.  That’s a huge growth area for me and I failed miserably.  Yes, I’m having back problems, but still, I need to figure this thing out. I need to reel off 99 days and complete one of these.

Now, just to give myself a break, it was a difficult challenge and, as mentioned previously, it’s not easy to go from zero fitness-wise to a fairly high level workout in that amount of time.  My body just wasn’t ready.

So, then.  We have a 99 Day Challenge rule to live by or something like that here:

Make sure you are as prepared as you can be before taking on a challenge.

Don’t enter into these things lightly.  That’s what I did and it didn’t go too well.  This next one will be different.  Really coach.  I swear.

Thanks for following along and thanks for all the encouragement on Twitter and Facebook.  Especially Jason Williams and Rob Barry.  You guys consistently ask how I’m doing with this thing and I appreciate it.  Sorry to have let you down.  Are you up for another go round?

Well, I went 29 days into the challenge quite well.  I did have one little mishap in which I actually forgot to do my burpees, but then made them up on the next day so all was right in the universe.  However, I’m now having a crisis.

The burpee chain broke a few days ago.  Almost every year around this time I get an upper respiratory infection (URI for you medical types) and this year is no different.  I’ve been barking up raw oysters for several days now and am just now getting to the point that I think I can breathe again. I’m going to try to pick up again tonight and do 30 burpees.  If I can breathe, I will.  If not, I won’t.  We’ll see what happens.  

I’ve been intending to write about this for a few days, but my fear of being ostracized and quarantined due to the fear of swine flu kept me silent.  Don’t hate me.  

I’ve run all this by the 99 day challenge executive board (me, myself, and I) and everything is fine for me to pick up again as soon as I can breathe enough to actually do the exercises.  I’ll let y’all know how it goes once I get going again. 

Thanks for hanging in their with me on this epic journey.