Quotes by Mark Batterson

As I look back on my own life, I recognize this simple truth: The greatest opportunities were the scariest lions. Part of me has wanted to play it safe, but I’ve learned that taking no risks is the greatest risk of all.

Embrace relational uncertainty. Its called romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. Its called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. Its called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. Its called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. Its called revelation.

When God blesses you financially, dont raise your standard of living. Raise your standard of giving.

Throwing down your staff is letting go and letting God. And thats counterintuitive for those of us who are control freaks. As our executive pastor Joel Schmidgall likes to say, You can have faith or you can have control, but you cannot have both. If you want God to do something off the chart, you have to take your hands off the controls.

If you let fear dictate your decisions, you will live defensively, reactively, cautiously. Living by faith is playing offense with your life.

We all want to spend eternity with God. We just dont want to spend time with Him. We stand and stare from a distance, satisfied with superficiality. We Facebook more than we seek His face. We text more than we study The Text. And our eyes arent fixed on Jesus. Theyre fixed on our iPhones and iPads - emphasis on i. Then we wonder why God feels so distant. Its because were hugging the rim. We wonder why were bored with our faith. Its because were holding out.We want joy without sacrifice.We want character without suffering.We want success without failure.We want gain without pain.We want a testimony without the test.We want it all without going all out for it.

God will never tempt you. Its not in His nature. In fact, He promises to provide an escape route for every tempting situation. But I can promise you this: God will test your faith. And those tests wont get easier. They will get progressively harder as the stakes get higher. And those tests will undoubtedly revolve around what is most important to you...God will test you to make sure your identity and your security are found in the cross of Jesus Christ. And God will go after anything you trust in more than Him until you put it on the altar.

There are spiritual gifts like mercy, faith, or generosity that enable people to set the standard, so to speak. But just because you dont have that spiritual gift doesnt mean you arent held to any standard at all. Even if you arent gifted in that way, youre still called to live mercifully, faithfully, and generously. You might not set the standard, but you need to meet the standard. There is a baseline that all of us are called to. When the opportunity presents itself, we need to show mercy, exercise faith, and give generously. In the same sense, all of us are called to take risks. If it doesnt involve risk, it doesnt exercise faith.

I dont know about you, but I want God to reveal the second step before I take the first step of faith. But Ive discovered that if I dont take the first step, God generally wont reveal the next step...Most of us will only follow Christ to the point of precedence -- the place where we have been before. But ...If you want God to do something new, you cannot keep doing what youve always done. Youve got to push past the fear of the unknown. Youve got to do something different.

We want a money-back guarantee before we take a step of obedience, but that eliminates faith from the equation. Sometimes we need to take a flying leap of faith.We need to step into the conflict without knowing if we can resolve it. We need to share our faith without knowing how our friends will react to it. We need to pray for a miracle without knowing how God will answer. We need to put ourselves in a situation that activates a spiritual gift weve never exercised before. And we need to go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.If we want to discover new lands, weve got to lose sight of the shore. Weve got to leave the Land of Familiarity behind. Weve got to sail past the predictable. And when we do, we develop a spiritual hunger for the unprecedented and lose our appetite for the habitual. We also get a taste of Gods favor.

...faith is acting as if God has already answered. And acting as if God has answered means acting on our prayers...

We need to study the Word of God diligently. But we dont need to know more. We need to do more with what we know. At the end of the day, God will not say, Well thought, Intellectual, or Well said, Orator. There is only one commendation: Well done, good and faithful servant!

In the Hebrew language, there is no distinction between knowing and doing. Knowing is doing and doing is knowing. In other words, if you arent doing it, then you dont really know it...The phrase all out literally means maximum effort.Its giving God everything youve got -- 100 percent. Its loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Its not just worshiping God with your words. Its worshiping God with blood, sweat, and tears. Its more than sincere sentiments. Its sweat equity in kingdom causes.You cannot be the hands and feet of Jesus if youre sitting on your butt.

Nine times out of ten, failure is resorting to Plan B when Plan A gets too risky, too costly, or too difficult. Thats why most people are living their Plan B. They didnt burn the ships. Plan A people dont have a Plan B...There are moments in life when we need to burn the ships to our past. We do so by making a defining decision that will eliminate the possibility of sailing back to the old world we left behind. You burn the ships named Past Failure and Past Success. You burn the ship named Bad Habit. You burn the ship named Regret. You burn the ship named Guilt. You burn the ship named My Old Way of Life.

If you arent willing to look foolish, youre foolish. And thats why so many people have never built an ark, killed a giant, or walked on water.

True spirituality is the place where desperation meets Jesus.

In every dream journey, there comes a moment when you have to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.

Dreams without deadlines are dead in the water. Deadlines are really lifelines to achieving our goals.

God-ordained dreams arent just born. They are reborn. If they become more important to you than God, you have to sacrifice them for the sake of your soul. You have to put them on the altar and raise the knife. And once the dream is dead and buried, it can be resurrected for Gods glory.

There is nothing God loves more that keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles, and fulfilling dreams.