Chase the Lion: If Your Dream Doesn't Scare You, It's Too Small

by Mark Batterson

I had the right idea in the wrong place.

The hardest part of any dream journey is the holding pattern.

If you dare to dream big, you better think long.

Because an opportunity isn’t an opportunity if you have to compromise your integrity.

But here’s what I’ve found: if you keep growing, what is impossible today can be accomplished in a year or two or ten.

When God does a miracle, you believe Him for bigger and better miracles the next time. That’s how you steward miracles—you up the ante. You keep leapfrogging by faith until one day you look back and can hardly believe how far you’ve come with God’s help.

But life can’t be cut short when it lasts for all eternity.

“God didn’t tell me I had to come out. He only told me I had to go in.”

It’s not coming out that is courageous; it’s going in.

We live in a culture that idolizes success and demonizes failure. But in God’s kingdom the outcome isn’t the issue. Success isn’t winning or losing; it’s obeying.

In God’s book success is spelled stewardship. It’s making the most of the time, talent, and treasure God has given you. It’s doing the best you can with what you have where you are.

Here’s my personal definition of success: when those who know you best respect you most.

Just as courage is not the absence of fear, success is not the absence of failure.

If you don’t try out, you’ll miss out.

God doesn’t always call us to win. Sometimes He just calls us to try.

It’s how you handle adversity. It’s how you handle disappointment. It’s how you handle mistakes. It’s how you handle an offense.

It’s not for naught. It never is! Every prayer will be answered, every sacrifice will be honored, every good deed will be rewarded, and every seed of faith will bear fruit.

There is a moment in every dream journey when you have to fight for what you believe in.

The Enemy comes to steal your joy, kill your dreams, and destroy your life. Jesus came that you might have life and have it more abundantly.

It’s okay to talk to God about your problems, but at some point you need to talk to your problems about God.

Valor is running toward trouble when everyone else is running away. Valor is going above and beyond the call of duty. Valor is putting yourself in the line of fire for someone else.

Until the pain of staying the same becomes more acute than the pain of change, nothing happens. We simply maintain the status quo. And we convince ourselves that playing it safe is safe. But the greatest risk is taking no risks at all.

What if the life you really want, and the future God wants for you, is hiding right now in your biggest problem, your worst failure, your greatest fear?

Impossible odds don’t break their spirit. Impossible odds steel their resolve and fuel their fire. Lion chasers have a sanctified stubborn streak that refuses to give up when they can fight for their God-given dreams.

The day you stop dreaming is the day you start dying. The day you start dreaming is the day you really start living.

If you’re going to get out of a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, you’d better make sure that Jesus said, “Come.” But if Jesus says, “Come,” you’d better not stay in the boat.

If He says, “Stay,” then stay. If He says, “Come,” then come.

There is a time and a place to err on the side of caution. But if you always err on that side, it probably says more about your personality than it does about prudence.

The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear. True love leads to fearlessness.

When you know that God loves you no matter what, you’re not afraid to fail, because you know that God will be right there to pick you up if you fall down.

The cure for the fear of failure isn’t success. The cure for the fear of failure is failure in small enough doses that we build up an immunity to it.

When a lion’s roar registers in the auditory cortex, the brain sends an immediate message to the body: run away as fast and as far as you can. That’s the normal reaction, but lion chasers aren’t normal. They don’t run away from what they’re afraid of; they run toward the roar. They don’t seek safety; they seek situations that scare them to life. Lion chasers are more afraid of missing opportunities than making mistakes.

“Call me crazy!” Not only do I consider it a supreme compliment, but I think it’s one key to discerning the will of God.

there is always an element of crazy in God’s plans and purposes.

I am, however, advocating an occasional decision that flies in the face of the facts, that spits in the face of the status quo.

You can run away from what you’re afraid of, but you’ll be running the rest of your life. At some point you have to face your fear. And when you do, you’ll discover that fear itself is a coward in the face of courage.

You’ll never be ready. The issue isn’t readiness; it’s willingness.

At the end of our lives, our greatest regrets won’t be the mistakes we made. It’ll be the opportunities we left on the table.

When you stop building altars to God and start building monuments to yourself, it’s the beginning of the end.

what the Enemy intends for evil, God will use for good. Don’t waste suffering. Don’t waste failure. Don’t waste disappointment. Don’t waste cancer. Don’t waste divorce. God wants to recycle those things for His purposes!

You have gifts and abilities that you aren’t even aware of, but they are often buried beneath perceived weaknesses. In those disadvantages, dreams are playing hide-and-seek.

When it comes to difficult circumstances, you have two choices. You can complain about them, or you can make the most of them. Whether those circumstances are self-inflicted or the result of someone else’s actions, lion chasers make the most of them.

Sometimes the circumstances we’re trying to change are the very circumstances God is using to change us.

Instead of expending all your energy trying to get out of them, get something out of them.

Chasing a dream often starts with identifying and confessing your excuses.

Generally speaking, you are probably never going to be more than about 80 percent certain. Waiting for greater certainty may cause you to miss an opportunity. Depending upon your personality, no amount of information may move you past a particular degree of certainty.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your dream is contingent upon someone else having the courage to pursue his or her dream. And someone else’s dream is contingent upon you pursuing yours!

Our dreams are more interconnected with one another than any of us could ever imagine, and the best way to fulfill your dream is to help others fulfill theirs.

don’t let an arrow of criticism pierce your heart unless it first passes through the filter of Scripture.

you have to come to terms with the fact that you can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.