Mark Batterson

“True spirituality is "the place where desperation meets Jesus.”

“In God's kingdom, calling trumps credentials every time! God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called. And the litmus test isn't experience or expertise. It's availability and teachability. If you are willing to go when God gives you a green light, He will take you to inaccessible places to do impossible things.”

“Going all in and all out for the All in All is both a death sentence and a life sentence. Your sinful nature, along with its selfish desires, is nailed to the cross. Then, and only then, does your true personality, your true potential, and your true purpose come alive. After all, God cannot resurrect what has not died. And that's why so many people are half alive. They haven't died to self yet.”

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

“God will never tempt you. It's 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 won't 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.”

“God-ordained dreams aren't 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 God's glory.”

“What's unique about Washington is that no one's from here. Almost everybody came here to change the world, to make a difference.”

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

“Death is a mirror that gives us a glimpse of who we really are.Death is a rearview mirror that puts the past into perspective.”

“Nolan Bushnell, the creator of the Atari video game system, once stated, ‘Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea, It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference.”

“Prayer is the difference between seeing with our physical eyes and seeing with our spiritual eyes.”

“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.”

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

“I don't know about you, but I want God to reveal the second step before I take the first step of faith. But I've discovered that if I don't take the first step, God generally won't 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 you've always done. You've got to push past the fear of the unknown. You've got to do something different.”

“You don't have to go looking for adventure. If you follow Jesus, adventure comes looking for you. Jesus didn't carry a cross to Calvary so that we could live a halfway life. He died so that we could come alive in the truest and fullest sense of the word.”

“Prayer is picking a fight with the Enemy. It's spiritual warfare. Intercession transports us from the sidelines to the front lines without going anywhere. And that is where the battle is won or lost. Prayer is the difference between us fighting for God and God fighting for us. But we can't just hit our knees. We also have to take a step, take a stand. And when we do, we never know what God will do next.”

“The very nature of the gospel is Jesus inviting the disciples on an adventure. To do what they'd never done and go where they'd never gone. Never a dull moment! You cannot follow Jesus and be bored at the same time.”

“I think twenty-somethings are very cause-oriented.”

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

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