Mark Batterson quotes:

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  • I think faith is the small mustard seed of opportunities every day. For example, 'Am I going to love this person? Am I going to share my faith with this person? Am I going to pray that little prayer?' It really is a daily thing where you seize those little mustard seed opportunities and then see what God does.

  • I think you often say more by saying less. And interestingly enough, I mean, Jesus really set the standard. I mean, he could say more with fewer words than anybody. Most of the parables were less than 250 words. And, boy, did he have some one-liners just packed with truth.

  • I think a pastor used to be viewed as the one-stop ministry shop. The pastor served on every committee, volunteered at every event, and made all the hospital visits. I think that is changing and I think that is healthy. Both for the pastor and the congregation.

  • New media is like a megaphone. It amplifies your ability to reach more people.

  • Over the years I've grown more comfortable with making people uncomfortable because that is when growth can happen. You need a little conflict. You need a little tension. And that is part of my calling. A little tough love goes a long way!

  • Jesus didn't die to make us safe. He died to make us dangerous! Faithfulness isn't holding the fort. It's storming the gates of hell with the light and love of Jesus Christ.

  • When God blesses you financially, don't raise your STANDARD OF LIVING. raise your STANDARD OF GIVING.

  • I've always believed in the power of prayer. One prayer can accomplish more than a thousand plans. That isn't a magic formula, but it's an idea that if you pray, keep praying and then praying some more.

  • Submission is the art of compensating for your weakness by playing to each other's strengths.

  • Don't seek opportunity. Seek God and opportunity will seek you.

  • Prayer adds an element of surprise to your life that is more fun than a surprise party or surprise gift or surprise romance. In fact, prayer turns life into a party, into a gift, into a romance.

  • Part of my driving desire as a pastor is to remove every obstacle except the cross that would keep people from coming to faith in Christ.

  • In an urban environment, a church building is a thing of the past.

  • Too often the word 'prayer' induces guilt because we don't do enough of it. After all, I've never met anyone who said they pray too much! All of us fall short. And we often feel like our prayers fall flat.

  • Email helps me keep in touch with my family. I wouldn't know what my extended family was doing every day if we weren't emailing each other.

  • The greatest tragedy in life is that some prayers go unanswered as they go unasked.

  • Prayer is not about letting God know your will; it's about completely submitting to him. You die to yourself.

  • Prayer is the difference between the best we can do and the best God can do.

  • Lion chasers are humble enough to let God call the shots and brave enough to follow where He leads.

  • We've lost the wow of God because we've lost the woe of God. His perfect holiness helps us truly appreciate His amazing grace.

  • If you don't take the risk, you forfeit the miracle.

  • God is not a genie in a bottle, and your wish is not His command. His command better be your wish.

  • If you really believe in the message you're preaching, you want as many people as possible to listen.

  • It's hard for me to imagine why a church that has younger members wouldn't have a blog component.

  • Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.

  • Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers. God isn't offended by your biggest dreams or boldest prayers-he is offended by Anything Less. If your prayers aren't impossible to You, they are insulting to God- why? Because they don't require divine intervention. But ask God to part the Red Sea or make the sun stand still or float an iron axhead and God is moved to Omnipotent action

  • If you aren't hungry for God, you are full of yourself.

  • Instead of complaining about the current state of affairs, we need to offer better alternatives. [...] we need to stop cursing the darkness and start lighting some candles!

  • The goal is glorifying God by drawing circles around the promises, miracles, and dreams He wants for you.

  • The goal of marriage is not happiness, it is holinessThere is no mechanism whereby God can sanctify a person more than having them live in close proximity to another imperfect person.Our fundamental problem is that we are selfish. Marriage is the means whereby God eradicates our selfishness because it is not about me anymore, i t is about we.

  • God is great not just because nothing is too big for Him. God is great because nothing is too small for Him, either.

  • I have an unshakable sense of destiny because I know that as long as I pursue God's calling on my life, then God is ultimately responsible for getting me where He wants me to go.

  • God isn't offended by your biggest dreams or boldest prayers. He is offended by anything less. If your prayers aren't impossible to you, they are insulting to God.

  • You need to circle the goals God wants you to go after, the promises God wants you to claim, and the dreams God wants you to pursue. And once you spell Jericho, you need to circle it in prayer. Then you need to keep circling until the walls come tumbling down.

  • May you keep dreaming until the day you die. May imagination overtake memory. May you die young at a ripe old age.

  • Sometimes God leads us to a place where we have nowhere to turn but to Him; our only option is to trust Him.

  • One of our fundamental spiritual problems is this: we want God to do something new while we keep doing the same old thing.

  • I'm a lifelong Vikings and Packers fan because I lived in both Minnesota and Wisconsin as a kid.

  • God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

  • Look in the rearview mirror long enough & you'll see that God has purposely positioned you everywhere you've been-even when it seemed you'd taken a wrong turn.

  • You don't have to do everything right as a parent, but there is one thing you cannot afford to get wrong. That one thing is prayer. You'll never be a perfect parent, but you can be a praying parent. Prayer is your highest privilege as a parent. There is nothing you can do that will have a higher return on investment. In fact, the dividends are eternal.

  • The author gives an interesting naval etymology of the word "opportunity". It referred to days in which sailing ships had to wait outside a port for the appropriate tide, which then was their chance until the next tide.

  • ...each of us has an explanatory style... And our explanation is more important than the experience itself. In the words of Aldous Huxley, "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

  • ...we think so much about the present and so little about eternity that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity.

  • Part of discovering the adventure God has designed you for is learning how to frame it or reframe it.

  • Potential is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.

  • Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.

  • If you are not open to the unprecedented, you will repeat history. If you are open to the unprecedented, you will change history. The difference is prayer.

  • Worship is forgetting about what's wrong with you and remembering what's right with God.

  • In my experience, take the Holy Spirit out of the equation of your life and it spells boring. Add it into the equation of your life and you never know where you are going to go, what you are going to do, or who you are going to meet.

  • ...success is when those who know you best respect you most.

  • If you really want to get good at anything, you've got to work at it for ten thousand hours.

  • Goal setting is good stewardship. Instead of letting things happen, goals help us make things happen. Instead of living by default, goals help us live by design. Instead of living out of memory, goals help us live out of imagination.

  • Life a life of Spiritual Adventure. Much like a wild goose the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger, an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious, I cannot think of a better description of what it's like to pursue the Spirit's leading through life.

  • If you want God to do something new in you, you cannot keep doing the same old thing. You have to do something different. And if you do, God will create new capacities within you. There will be new gifts and new revelations. But you've got to pray the price. You'll get out of this what you put into it.

  • To me, growing into spiritual maturity is becoming less self-conscious and more God-conscious.

  • One of the truest tests of spiritual maturity is seeing the miraculous in the monotonous.

  • The day we stop dreaming is the day we start dying.

  • There comes a moment when you must quit talking to God about the mountain in your life and start talking to the mountain about your God. You proclaim His power. You declare His sovereignty. You affirm His faithfulness. You stand on His Word. You cling to His promises.

  • I think twenty-somethings are very cause-oriented.

  • Faith is unlearning this senseless worries and misguided beliefs that keep us captive. It is far more complex than simply modifying behavior. Faith is rewiring the human brain. We are literally upgrading our minds by downloading the mind of Christ.

  • I love to read. I remember hearing that the average author takes two years to write a book. So when I read a book, I feel like I am getting two years of life experiences.

  • When we change the way that we pray, everything changes.

  • Routines are normal, natural, healthy things. Most of us take a shower and brush our teeth every day. That is a good routine. Spiritual disciplines are routines. That is a good thing. But once routines become routine you need to change your routine.

  • Jesus on Twitter would have been a pretty amazing thing.

  • All of us love miracles. We just don't like being in a situation that necessitates one.

  • And when you pray to God regularly, irregular things happen on a regular basis.

  • 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.

  • Because you know He can, you can pray with holy confidence.

  • CONVICTIONS are lessons learned from experiences we'd never want to go through again, but wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

  • Do you trust that God is for you even when He doesn't give you what you asked for?

  • Don't accumulate possessions; accumulate experiences!

  • Don't just read the Bible. Start circling the promises. Don't just make a wish. Write down a list of God-glorifying life goals. Don't just pray. Keep a prayer journal. Define your dream. Claim your promise. Spell your miracle.

  • Don't wait to worship God until you get to the Promised Land; you've got to worship along the way.

  • Each prayer is like a seed that gets planted in the ground. It disappears for a season, but it eventually bears fruit that blesses future generations. In fact, our prayers bear fruit forever.

  • Embrace relational uncertainty. It's called romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It's called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It's called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It's called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It's called revelation.

  • Even our hardest prayers are easy for the Omnipotent One to answer because there is no degree of difficulty.

  • Faith doesn't reduce uncertainty. Faith embraces uncertainty.

  • Faith is not logical. But it isn't illogical either. Faith is theological. It does not ignore reality; it just adds God into the equation.

  • Faith is the willingness to look foolish.

  • Finally, I learned that we shouldn't seek answers as much as we should seek God.

  • GOALS are dreams with deadlines, and without those deadlines, our dreams are dead in the water.

  • God blesses us more so that we can be more of a blessing to others.

  • God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time. A sense of destiny is our birthright as followers of Christ. God is awfully good at getting us where He wants us to go. But here's the catch: The right place often seems like the wrong place, and the right time often seems like the wrong time.

  • God is in the résumé-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities.

  • God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go.

  • God won't answer 100% of the prayers we don't pray.

  • God, find us on our knees because we know that when we get our knees, You extend Your powerful right hand.

  • Half of learning is learning. The other half of learning is unlearning.

  • Half of spiritual growth is learning what we don't know. The other half is unlearning what we do know.

  • Have you ever noticed that when you pray, coincidences happen? And when you don't, they don't.

  • I am a pastor so I eat and breathe the Church.

  • I just don't think pastors should turn their pulpits into public policy platforms. It cheapens the gospel. Our congregation doesn't need another political opinion. They need spiritual revelation. They don't need to think about politics on the weekend. They need to be reminded to seek first the kingdom of God.

  • I want to be famous in my home.

  • I've discovered that if I don't take the first step, God generally won't reveal the next step.

  • Id rather be biblically correct than politically correct.

  • If Jesus were living in our culture, he would probably hang out in coffeehouses.

  • If the kingdom of God had departments, we'd want to work in research and development. We felt like Jesus didn't hang out at the synagogue, he hung out at wells. Coffeehouses are postmodern wells. Let's not wait for people to come to us, let's go to them.

  • If we do the little things like they are big things, then God will do the big things like they are little things.

  • If we do the ordinary, God will add an extra to it.

  • If we repent, God always recycles our mistakes.

  • If you are BIG ENOUGH for your dream, your dream isn't BIG ENOUGH for God.

  • If you plant yourself in one place and let your roots grow deep, there is no limit to what God can do.

  • If you wait for perfect conditions to seize an opportunity, you'll be waiting till the day you die.

  • If you want to find your voice, you need to hear the voice of God.

  • If you want to see God move make a move.

  • If you've never had a God-sized dream that scared you half to death, then you haven't really come to life. If you've never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small. If your vision isn't perplexingly impossible, then you need to expand the radiuses of your prayer circles.

  • I'm pretty intentional about being highly invested in my kids' lives.

  • In my experience, it's much easier to act like a Christian than it is to react like one. Anyone can put on an act. But your reactions reveal what is really in your heart.

  • Instead of dissecting Scripture, we need to let Scripture dissect us our thoughts and attitudes, our dreams and desires, our fears and hopes.

  • It is absolutely imperative at the outset that you come to terms with this simple yet life-changing truth: God is for you. If you don't believe that, then you'll pray small timid prayers; if you do believe it, then you'll pray big audacious prayers.

  • It's much easier to act like a Christian than it is to react like one!

  • Jesus didn't die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous. Faithfulness is not holding the fort. It's storming the gates of hell. The will of God is not an insurance plan. It's a daring plan. The complete surrender of your life to the cause of Christ isn't radical. It's normal. It's time to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. It's time to go all in and all out for the All in All. Pack your coffin!

  • Jesus didn't die to make us safe. He died to make us dangerous.

  • Leaders need the courage to acknowledge when something isn't working.

  • Learning isn't a luxury; it's a stewardship issue

  • Maybe it's time to stop creating God in our image and let Him create you in His.

  • Most Christians are educated way beyond the level of their obedience already! We don't need to know more, we need to do more.

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