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Description
This March’s God’s Relay Race had some unexpected surprises. Also, during the recording of this episode one of my microphones broke so we MacGyvered a solution and kept going.
Normally these podcasts are limited to 10 minutes, however I let this one go a little long to capture some of the experiences from this God’s Relay Race. Have no fear God came through just like He always does.
Whether its traffic jams, nine-degree weather or broken microphones, the many streams of God’s people and purpose will come together to make Him glad. Listen and learn more about the wave of God’s restoration happening right now!
Transcript
Nathan Sack 00:10
Welcome to another Faith Horizons Kingdom brief. These are short podcasts between 5 and 10 minutes. The purpose of a kingdom brief is to share highlights from ongoing Kingdom activities and announce events in Kansas City. This March’s God’s Relay Race had some unexpected surprises. Also, during the recording of this episode, one of my microphones broke so we MacGyvered the solution and kept going. Normally these podcasts are limited to 10 minutes. However, I let this one go a little long to capture some of the experiences from this month’s God’s Relay Race. Have no fear God came through just like He always does. Whether it’s traffic jams, nine-degree weather or broken microphones, the many streams of God’s people and purposes will come together to make Him glad. Listen and learn more about the wave of God’s restoration happening right now. Here’s my conversation with Scott Stanger. This Saturday, we did things a little bit different at God’s Relay Race because you and Cheryl got stuck in traffic. Just tell us a little bit about that you even left your house a little bit late which praise God, because you were just trying to do the copies for the worship.
Scott Stanger 01:19
Right, right. I was printing off the songs when a new worship leader for our prayer gathering. And I was printing off the song sheets for everyone and is it was taking longer than normal for some reason. And so we left the house 5 minutes late, we were driving separate vehicles and we left the house 5 minutes late. We’re 20 minutes from the venue normally, and when we got on I 70 going westbound 5 minutes before on I 70 an 18 Wheeler that was eastbound jumped over the concrete barrier at such a high rate of speed and was coming oncoming traffic. And they wrecked somehow into like a bridge post or whatever. But the point is, thank God no one was injured. No one was injured. But it created a horrific traffic snarl there for 2 hours, we were stuck in traffic, it couldn’t get off the highway down the shoulders or anything because it was just complete gridlock. And anyway, we were sitting there, and I’m corresponding with you, Nathan, and some of the other people who just happen to be coming early that morning. Normally, these people don’t come early, but they were. And so I knew that and I was corresponding with them as well. There was another event that was going on at that venue at Plexpod that day. And so there were some people that were gathered there to gain access to the building. So I was able to coordinate with some things. But you know, I think to your what you’re asking is how do you how do you in the moment improvise? Well, I’ve been trained at Price Waterhouse, when I was in the business turnaround group that I was in that a process you go through as you’re coming into a situation with a company that needs to be turned around and put back on a path of profitability as you go in and you stabilize, standardize and maximize or might say optimize. But in other words, you’re stabilizing the cash situation getting cash flowing, and then you’re, you’re standardizing those things that need to be standardized. And eventually, you just get it humming enough that you optimize or maximize everything and restore it to a place of profitability and scalability and success. Well, that is I’ve adopted that a little bit in a from a macro scale down to a micro scale. And there’s another decision-making process I have adopted that I think it was from the top gun fighter training program of the Navy in their fighter pilots. And it’s called the OODA Loop. O-O- D- A. OODA stands for observe, orientate, decide and act and you loop through that over and over and over. Now, these fighter pilots are trained to do that in split second increments as they’re making decisions in the combat in the air with other enemy pilots. But nonetheless, it’s observing where you were what’s happening around you. orientating yourself into what’s happening around you, making a decision, acting on it, and then looping through that process over and over and over in iterations to develop something on the fly. That brings the accomplished objective, which was to gather before the Lord and in the power of the Holy Spirit and in His presence and to pray and worship and intercede for what He wants to do in In the times we live, in the marketplace of Kansas City, in Kansas City as a whole, and in our nation, in a generation, and so on. So, Nathan, and Pete and Kevin and Kathy and Erica and others, Scott and so on, they just rallied to the cause. And I was just blown away. And it was important, it was actually, you know, and praise God, again, that nobody was injured in that horrific accident. And so from that standpoint, I just say that which the enemy perhaps meant for harm instead God used it because it was a major thrust forward for God’s Relay Race, as collectively, we come together and executed, prayer gathering, prayer gathering of what He wants to do. And people were there.
Nathan Sack 05:55
You had Kansas City business people like, I mean, Scott Roth said that, you know, this is what we do we solve problems. That’s, that’s what we do. And so we, it was this amazing, you know, that in the moment, you know, we were there, we’re just like, we’re not sure, you know, so. But there was just as this bubbling of, of laughter began to start, because we’ve all been there before. We’ve been there done this, and, and we’re there just, it’s not like it’s a life and death situation. It’s just all we have to do is get in the building and do prayer. That’s, that was the goal. The goal was nothing major.
Scott Stanger 06:28
You could have stood out in the parking lot. And although it was nine degrees…
Nathan Sack 06:33
That was a little bit inhibiting. Prohibiting. So but we were able to get in and the right people, they step towards the problem. People step towards the problem, and you know, help set up the table, help set up the chairs, you know, we set up the pictures, we set up the piano.
Scott Stanger 06:54
You really said something, we stepped towards the problem. And although you’re saying that in the context of the machinations of what needed to happen for a prayer event, prayer gathering, oh, whoa, here’s somebody, make the coffee, somebody over here, put the signs up, somebody here, you know, get access and the front door and blah, blah, blah, all those things. But really, that is a statement of what we are doing. Collectively, we are stepping towards the problems that we see in our, in our marketplace of Kansas City in our city of Kansas City, and a nation the times that we live, we are come boldly before the throne of grace, as the scripture tells us, we’re doing that. But we’re doing that for the purpose of stepping towards the problem with God’s solution. So the team without the so called leader or founder, and I don’t like terms like that I don’t refer to myself in that way at all. But nonetheless, the person who kind of got the ball rolling, wasn’t there. And so you wonder who is anybody going to go and get the ball out of the closet and get it rolling. But you stepped towards the problem of the event, which is really, whether you want to say prophetically or it’s symbolically stepping towards a problem, why we’re even gathering in the first place to come before God’s boldly before His throne of grace and stepping towards the problem with His solution.
Nathan Sack 08:25
Amen. That’s so true. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s kind of even what God’s Relay Race has done is it’s stepped towards a problem. Yeah. You know, there wasn’t, or there, there needed to be another strong prayer business prayer group in Kansas City. And so, you know, you, I know that it came out of the vision of 1923. We’ve got that but it also it did step towards the problem that that we needed to centralize Westport, rather than all the way out in South Kansas City prayer group for businesses in Kansas City and a gathering place of these…
Scott Stanger 09:03
In the, in the heart of the city-
Nathan Sack 09:06
In the heart of the city of these men and women who are in the marketplace, so that they can find people who are in the same stream as they are.
Scott Stanger 09:13
Bingo, yeah, we need that. Just imagine, think of Chiefs football game. And what would it be like to execute a play, instead of them coming together in a huddle? If they all stood out there in, you know, distributed in the positions that places that they’re getting ready to execute a play, it would be so much harder, you need to come together in that huddle, you need to be able to look into the eyes of the other person, and sense the energy in the moment and know oh, we’re getting ready to run this. We’re getting ready to do that here. Here. We’re advancing. We’ve had three plays in a row. We went forward this one we didn’t blah, blah, blah. But that’s what we do. We come and we step towards the problem with God’s solution and maybe it’s not just a problem, but we’re stepping towards the opportunity, opportunity what God wants to do in our midst. And here we are, we’re coming in or listening to the play in our helmet, headphones. And then we’re going and we’re getting into formation and we’re executing what He wants to do. And gaining the joy, the joy, the Lord is our strength. We’re gaining momentum, we’re gaining confidence to wind the gust of His wind of His Spirit in our sails so that we all sail forward.
Nathan Sack 10:36
Excellent. Yeah, absolutely true. I felt like there was a lot about that- the Esther story that you wanted to go into. I felt like there was a- it was like you were able to touch it. But I felt like there-
Scott Stanger 10:50
Was going on right now. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Sack 10:52
So just would you like to just go into the Esther, because I actually after you had mentioned that, in the, in the prayer meeting, I realized that, you know, Esther, was preparing herself and getting, you know, first of all, Esther and Mordecai operated together as a, as a team. And you brought that up. And then also Esther was preparing herself to stand before the king, on behalf of her people.
Scott Stanger 11:20
Of her people. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it’s important for us, many of us Western Christians, in the modern era, gentile Christians, we don’t identify so much with a lot of the things of the Old Testament, the stories, the feasts, and so on. God ordained a rhythm of flow, a harmony of the river of time. And we, it would be in our best interest to identify with those a little bit closer us as American Christians or Western Christians, to know the times in the seasons. And right now, this week is the time of Purim, a celebration from the book of Esther, where Esther was used in a profound way to deliver her people from annihilation. And she went through a 12-month preparation period, broken down into 6 months of this and 6 months of that, as she was prepared for her moment with the king, where she was going to be able to have the voice of God, the intercession of God on behalf of the Jewish people. Well, we’re, we’re in a season like that, where we, as the body of Christ are being prepared for something significant that is unfolding, you know, whether it’s the pandemic that we’ve been dealing with for the last two years, or here we are, some might say, maybe we’re on the precipice of a of another world war or a significant war and Ukraine and Russia, we we’ve got, you know, so many other things that plague us as a nation of political turmoil, some racial unrest, we’ve got all sorts of gender identities that are playing in so many different things. And we, as the body of Christ, need to be prepared to be the mouthpiece of God’s voice into the times, into our communities, into our businesses, all the different aspects of society into not only our nation and the nations but into a generation. We need to be prepared as Esther was. And this week is the annual celebration of Purim. It’s this Thursday, March 16, and 17. And so that’s, that was a little bit of what we touched about. As we closed out, God’s Relay Race on Saturday was just being aware of the ebb and the flow, just like a river has an ebb and a flow. It has a time where it’s in a deep pool and it’s still or it’s when in whitewater rapids, we have to be in touch, in tune, in rhythm with the ebb and the flow of what God is doing in us and through us and beyond us in this Esther moment.
Nathan Sack 14:19
Well, do you have anything else you’d like to talk about or-
Scott Stanger 14:22
Last month, we really did an emphasis on Haggai. And then I repeated that a little bit. And then because of this being an Esther and Purim season, I talked about the book of Esther, and I talked about Ezra, Nehemiah and, and all of these books, Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah and Malachi. These are all a part of a- the storyline of restoration. That’s really what was going on. If we look in the Old Testament, we see they all these books fall into a period of 100 plus years of restoration, or God was restoring his people into the promised land which they had been removed or exiled from the promised land. Yet God’s promises were eternal. He had, he had said, No, I have an eternal purpose here forever for the promised land and my people in the Promised Land. And we are going through a time of restoration as well, you know, 500 years ago, Martin Luther was there, and he kicked off the Reformation, we can all look back on that, I don’t know that he would have thought in the midst of it go, Oh, we’re in the Reformation here. Of course, not, as he put those 95 theses up on the door there. But you don’t always realize you’re in the moment. It’s not until afterwards, you reflect and you connect some dots. But I think that sometimes you, you can have a little bit of a sense, there’s something big, there’s a wave that’s raising up, rising, and we’re catching this wave. And I want to call this wave, the wave of restoration. We’re in a wave of restoration right now God is restoring some things that are missing or neglected, foundational elements to us, as is the body of Christ. So that’s why you can go back to these books, Esther and Ezra and Nehemiah and so on, and you can start to read them. And as you do, and you prayerfully meditate upon them, you’ll find ourselves getting into the narrative, the flow of the river of what He’s doing in our midst, and these times.
Nathan Sack 16:42
And then one of the other things that was brought up at this, there was a lot about rivers. And just so much about rivers. And to your point, you know, there was one person that said it so well, he said, there’s just so many different tributaries of the kingdom of God of God’s purpose, so many different tributaries of God’s purpose coming together and uniting as one.
Scott Stanger 17:03
And we even emphasize that Psalm 46 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God and that’s what we are, God’s Relay Race or the marketplace of Kansas City as but one stream that’s flowing into the river of God and the river of time and what He’s doing and it’s time. Something else that that particular person emphasized not only the river, but now, now, now, now. Now is the time there’s no more hesitation. Let’s jump in with both feet into the river of God. Splish splash get it, get moving forward. You know, don’t just sit there and talk about the river or look at the river. Wonder what the river tastes like, feels like, moves like- no. Jump in all of us together.
Show Notes
God’s Relay Race is a workplace prayer gathering that meets on the second Saturday every month at the Plexpod in Wesport.
You’re invited!
The Second Saturday of every month from 8-10am at the Westport Plexpod.
To add to your calendar, click on the link below.
Add to Calendar
You’re invited to pray with other business leaders!
For more information go to – www.kcpray.com
