Mark Batterson's Blog, page 16

Time to Take a Stand

There comes a time when you have to face your fears and take a stand for what is right. That is what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did. They risked their lives when they refused to bow down to a ninety foot idol.

I’ve got to be honest. I would have been tempted to rationalize compromise in those circumstances. I’ll bow on the outside but not on the inside. I’ll cross my fingers while I’m bowing so it doesn’t really count. I’ll just pretend the idol is Jehovah. They could have compromised, but ...

Faith Allergies

Faith Allergies

Lion chasers experience the same fears as everyone else. I bet Benaiah was afraid of the boogeyman as a kid. But lion chasers have learned to face those fears. They have unlearned the fear of uncertainty, the fear of risk, the fear of looking foolish, and the countless other fears that could hold them back. Their faith has been defragmented. They don’t necessarily know more than other people. But they have unlearned the fears that kept them captive. And they all did it the same w...

God’s Grammar

I’ve forgotten most of the sermons I’ve heard, and I’m sure our congregation has forgotten most of mine. But every once in a while, there is a moment of revelation in the middle of a message that is life altering. That’s what I experienced listening to an old sermon by Dr. Charles Crabtree titled “God’s Grammar.” I found one little line to be absolutely unforgettable: “Never put a comma where God puts a period and never put a period where God puts a comma.”

When someone dies, we naturally put a ...

Little Nudges

You cannot make choices for others. And if your heart has been broken by an abusive parent or a rebellious child or an ex-spouse, that might be what you need to hear. You shouldn’t take responsibility for someone else’s sins, but you are able to choose your response. You are, in fact, a choice architect. 

If you are in a position of leadership, engineering opportunities is part of your portfolio. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a parent or a coach or a manager or a pastor. One well-timed compli...

The God Pocket

There is a subtext to the story of the Good Samaritan that is easily overlooked, and it has to do with money management.

The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. “Look after him,” he said, “and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.”

A denarius was a day’s wage. In today’s dollars, based on the median income in DC, this is $594 before taxes. What that tells me is this: the Good Samaritan created financial margin so that he could be a b...

Nostalgia for God

A hundred years ago, a pair of English ornithologists took some birds from their mother’s nest on the island of Skokholm off the coast of Wales. They tagged those birds and transported them to various places far from home. Then they released them to see whether those birds could find their way home.

One of those birds was flown by airplane to Venice. Despite the tremendous distance of about a thousand miles and despite the fact that this species of bird was not native to the region around Venice...

Truth With a Capital “T”

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. It asks, “How do we know that we know?” And whether we consciously construct it or not, we all have an epistemological starting point by which we survey all of life. It establishes our moral baseline, delineating between right and wrong. For some, it fluctuates as much as the latest fad. For others, it’s as fixed as the scientific method. For me, it’s as tried and true as the Bible. And I make no apologies for th...

The Sacrifice of Praise

How did Job survive hell on earth? “He fell to the ground in worship.”

If you want to make it through the tough times, you have to give God the sacrifice of praise. I know that’s easier said than done, but there’s no other way. And the hardest praise is often the highest praise.

That’s how Job survived his dark night of the soul.

That’s how David survived the wilderness years.

That’s what got Paul and Silas out of prison.

I have a mantra that is repeated at our church all the time: don’t let wha...

One Article

Albert Schweitzer was a twentieth-century renaissance man—doctor, philosopher, and organist extraordinaire. He signed with Columbia Records and produced twenty-five recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach. But it was his work as a medical missionary that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. That entrepreneurial enterprise began in the spring of 1913 when Albert and his wife, Helene, traveled fourteen days by raft up the Ogooué River, through the Central African rainforest, to reach a mission ou...

The Game of Inches

In the summer of 1957, twelve-year-old Ed Catmull was driving cross-country with his family to Yellowstone National Park. As they zigzagged on a canyon road with no guardrail, a car driving in the opposite direction drifted into their lane. Ed remembers his mom screaming, his dad swerving. They came within two inches of driving off the cliff, game over.

That’s how close we came to missing Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Up. Why? Because Ed Catmull is the founder and president of Pixar Animati...