Quotes from Mark Batterson

I threw in the obligatory "if it be Your will" at the end. That tagline may sound spiritual, but it was less a submission to God's will and more a profession of doubt. If you aren't careful, the will of God can become a cop-out if things don't turn out the way you want.

God can deliver you in one day, but it may take years to break old habits or build new habits.

Jesus Himself was untamed.

Before you step into what if, you have to get past if only.

I live by the maxim, love people when they least expect it and least deserve it. That how you change someone's life forever.

When everything is said and done, God isn't going to say, "Well said," "Well thought," or "Well planned." There is one measuring stick: "Well done, good and faithful servant!"5

God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time.

Every once in a while, I need a no-agenda day with nothing to do, but those aren't the days we're going to celebrate at the end of our lives. We won't even remember those days. What we'll remember are the days when we had everything to do, and with God's help, we did it. We won't remember the things that came easy; we'll remember the things that came hard. We'll remember the miracles on the far side of "long and boring.

Joy is not getting what you want; it's appreciating what you have.

No matter how many wrong turns we've taken and no matter how many detours we've been down, it's God's grace that gets us back onto the parade route.

If you want to break the sin habit, you'd better establish a prayer habit.

Prayer and imagination are directly proportional: the more you pray the bigger your imagination becomes because the Holy Spirit supersizes it with God-sized dreams.

fail. But I also believe this: One bold prayer can accomplish more than a thousand well-laid plans. So go ahead and plan, but make sure you circle your plans in prayer. If your plans aren't birthed in prayer and bathed in prayer, they won't succeed.

Your greatest legacy isn't your dream. Your greatest legacy is the next generation of dreamers that your dream inspires—the dreams within a dream.

You may be the only Bible some people ever read. So the question is: Are you a good translation?

You can have faith or you can have control, but you cannot have both.

The spiritual tipping point is when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change. Sadly, too many of us get comfortable with comfort. We follow Christ to the point of inconvenience, but no further. That's when we need a prophet to walk into our lives, throw a mantle around our shoulders, and wake us up to a new possibility, a new reality. We need a prophet to boldly confront Plan B and call us back to Plan A.

even if the people could no longer hear God, he believed that God could still hear them.

God wants to do so much more than simply forgive your sin. He wants to leverage your past regrets for His eternal purpose.

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!

Don't seek miracles. Follow Jesus. And if you follow Jesus long enough and far enough, you'll eventually find yourself in the middle of some miracles.

Too often we pray ASAP prayers — as soon as possible. We need to start praying ALAT prayers — as long as it takes.

Too often the church complains about culture instead of creating it. The energy we spend on criticism is being stolen from creativity. It's sideways energy. We need fewer commentators and more innovators.

We need to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.