Mark Batterson's Blog, page 16

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...

So Far So God

When Ebenezers was being built, I was invited to speak at a community meeting on Capitol Hill. I was nervous because I knew we needed the community’s backing to get our property rezoned. I was also concerned that people would think of us as a Christian coffeehouse rather than a legit coffeehouse.

After sharing our vision for Ebenezers, I fielded questions. Someone asked me what Ebenezers meant, and I said that it basically meant “so far so good.” But that isn’t what it meant. And I knew it. I su...

The Tribe of the Transplanted

Several years ago I had the privilege of attending the National Prayer Breakfast held annually at the Washington Hilton Hotel. The breakfast is a bipartisan gathering of leaders from all branches of government and both houses of Congress as well as delegations of leaders from foreign countries. The speaker that year was Bill Frist. Prior to his tenure in the U.S. Senate, Dr. Frist performed more than 150 heart transplants as a thoracic surgeon. During his remarks, he talked in reverent tones abo...

Happily Forever After

One decision can change your life in dramatic ways. One wrong decision can ruin a reputation you’ve worked a lifetime to build. One wrong decision can end a marriage or end a career. Like David’s decision to pursue another man’s wife, many of us look back on a wrong decision with deep regret. We beat ourselves up over a lapse in judgment. We ponder our missteps and wonder, What if? We wish we could turn back time and undo what we’ve done. But we can’t. We cannot change the past. But we can learn...

Tomorrow is Today

On Good Friday, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for a nonviolent march that violated an injunction against parading without a permit. The next day, eight white clergy published an article criticizing King’s actions as “unwise and untimely.” Dr. King responded with a letter from a Birmingham Jail, which he wrote on pieces of toilet paper and margins of newspapers. That letter is a modern-day epistle. Dr. King said, “You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in B...

Seek the Shadows

Sometimes you have to die to the dream God has given you so that God can resurrect the dream in its glorified form. And by glorified form, I simply mean pursuing the dream for God’s glory. When you stop living for selfish purposes, the pressure comes off. And that’s when your destiny comes into focus.

We try so hard to manufacture opportunities, but anything that is manufactured by human effort doesn’t come with God’s warranty. We try so hard to impress people, but our attempts to impress are ut...