“I prayed hundreds of times to God to heal my lungs. And it finally happened on July 2, 2016.”
So says prominent Washington, D.C., pastor Mark Batterson of National Community Church on a recent episode of Greenelines on the Charisma Podcast Network. And this bestselling author chose to celebrate in an unusual way: by running the Chicago Marathon.
But he didn’t accomplish such a challenging goal in a day or a week. As an asthmatic for more than 40 years, he wasn’t a runner. To accomplish his goal, he had to change his habits. And Batterson says that’s not easy in a world where, as February begins, most of us have already broken our New Year’s resolutions.
“I think the problem is that we’ve got to take those goals, and we’ve got to reverse engineer them into daily habits,” he tells Dr. Steve Greene. In his new book, Win the Day (Multnomah), he encourages readers with seven new daily habits that will move them into God’s divine destiny for their lives. The first, he says, is to “flip the script.”
“When I started training, I could barely run three miles, and I didn’t run very fast,” Batterson says. “And so what I had to do was download a training plan. And I did 72 training runs; it covered 475 miles over six months. Then and only then was I ready to run that 26.2 mile race.
“And so whatever that goal is, you’ve got to reverse engineer it and turn it into a daily habit,” he adds. “And, I might add, that is measurable, meaningful and maintainable. And those three things are pretty key when it comes to establishing new habits.”
