40 Days to Lasting Change. An AHA Challenge

221 Pages·2014·1.55 MB·English

by  Kyle Idleman

CONTENTS
Introduction: Selfless Help
Day 1: Seeking AHA
Day 2: Where Are You?
Day 3: A Tale of Two Fathers
Day 4: Wake Up
Day 5: Right Word at the Right Time
Day 6: Words of a Friend
Day 7: Erasing Famines
Day 8: Getting What We Deserve
Day 9: Redeeming the Pain
Day 10: Escaping the Country of the Blind
Day 11: Let Go of Regret
Day 12: In Plain Sight
Day 13: Seek the Silence
Day 14: Willing to Listen
Day 15: Honest with Myself
Day 16: Honesty That Brings Healing
Day 17: Turn Off Denial
Day 18: One Step at a Time
Day 19: Tricks We Use
Day 20: Confession Is the Cure
Day 21: Blame Game
Day 22: The Usual Suspects
Day 23: It Is a Big Deal
Day 24: Excuses, Excuses
Day 25: This Time It Is a Big Deal
Day 26: Settling the Bill
Day 27: Time to Get Up
Day 28: Change or Die
Day 29: Changing Your Story
Day 30: Getting Past Passivity
Day 31: Obey Anyway
Day 32: Pick Up Your Sword
Day 33: Little Guy, Big Change
Day 34: Killing Time
Day 35: Not Too Late
Day 36: Come Home
Day 37: Older Bro
Day 38: You May Be an Older Brother If …
Day 39: All about the Father
Day 40: More to the Story
Notes
Extras
DAY 1
Seeking AHA
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Psalm 119:18
I love witnessing AHA. I see it almost every weekend at the church where I
serve. I listen to people as they tell about the spiritual awakening they have
experienced. In that moment there was a beautiful collision. At just the right
time, a person’s life collides with God’s Word and the power of the Holy Spirit,
and everything changes.
When Jesus taught about this spiritual transformation, He would most often
tell stories. AHA can’t fully be explained. There is a sense in which it has to be
experienced to be understood. So it’s through stories that AHA is best captured.
Thankfully, as a pastor, I get to hear a lot of them, especially after writing the
book AHA. Here are a few that people have shared with me.
Celina wrote,
After seven years of infertility and my final round of fertility drugs in
1996, I stopped by the prayer room at Southeast Christian Church. As I
prayed I asked God to take away my desire to become a mother if He
did not want me to become pregnant. It was at that moment I sensed
God speak to my heart, You don’t need to become pregnant to be a
mother, Celina. AHA. Two weeks later, Aaron and I were chosen by a
teenage mother to adopt her beautiful baby girl. We welcomed our
daughter Hannah home four weeks later. God is so faithful!
Courtney told me how she turned to compulsive eating to cope with life. Stress
at work, at home, in relationships meant more desserts and bingeing. Despite
trying every self-help diet and exercise fad, she reached 325 pounds. This
seemingly unstoppable weight gain put her at a point of dark depression, which
only worsened her eating. Finally Courtney realized something: food was never
going to fill the emptiness in her heart. At church she heard a message from John
6 in which Jesus described Himself as the “Bread of Life.” She suddenly realized
that she had been trying to make food do for her what only Jesus could do. That
was four years and 170 pounds ago. But the outward change was really just a by-
product of the inner transformation she experienced when she started looking to
Jesus to fill the emptiness of her heart.
AHA.
Ashley’s husband was not a Christian. Jim had no interest in church; he didn’t
think it had anything to offer him. Ashley hoped and prayed he would change his
mind and heart. As the years passed, the couple had children. Eventually the
children became Christians, and mother and kids prayed that God would open
Daddy’s heart. But the children grew, and Daddy didn’t budge. Ashley
wondered why God wasn’t answering their prayers. Then after twenty-two years
of marriage, she began to see a change in her husband’s heart. It was amazing to
watch as Jim read his Bible and hungered to learn about God. Then Ashley and
her two teens held hands and watched with tears in their eyes as Jim was
baptized. What a powerful testimony to two teenagers to witness the answered
prayers in the heart of their dad. “All those years I thought God was moving too
slow,” Ashley said. “God’s timing—not mine.”
AHA.
Maybe you’ve prayed for someone and kept praying and kept praying and
thought, What’s the point? Nothing’s going to change. And then God breaks
through.
Michael wrote, “My big AHA happened when God showed me my obsession
with myself. ‘Christian’ was more of a title than a lifestyle for me, but God has
been helping me take the focus off me and put it on Him, where it belongs.”
This is the kind of AHA many of us need to experience. We need to be
reminded and understand that we are not the center of our faith; we are not the
main character in the Bible; church doesn’t primarily exist for us; all of this life
is for God’s glory and God’s kingdom and His purposes. This is the AHA of
realizing that the focus of the parable of the prodigal son is really on the Father,
that the key to “Jesus loves me” is really Jesus.
Kevin’s life had been an ongoing struggle with alcoholism. The numerous
self-help programs helped for a season, but he was never really on the wagon
long enough to fall off. Even when Kevin thought he’d finally hit rock bottom,
he managed to fall even further. One day he was listening to a sermon about the
Bible passage where Paul said, “Do not get drunk on wine … Instead, be filled
with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). Immediately, this truth from God’s Word opened
Kevin’s eyes. He had been looking to alcohol to do for him what the Holy Spirit
was meant to do: give him comfort, security, boldness, courage, strength,
direction, and hope.
AHA.
Open Our Eyes
What is God trying to tell you?
I don’t think it’s an accident that you’ve picked up this book and come across
the AHA message. God wants to speak to us. He is trying to get our attention
and wake us up so we can have AHA.
We need an awakening. We need honesty. We need action. And we can begin
with seeking and praying for AHA. AHA is an ongoing process of recognizing,
returning, and relating to our heavenly Father.
Living the AHA journey is living in expectation.
My AHA
Pray the AHA prayer of David from Psalm 119:18. Memorize it. Write it down.

Pray it regularly as you read and work through this book. The Message says it
well: “Open my eyes so I can see what you show me of your miracle-wonders.”