In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars

by Mark Batterson

God is raising up a generation of lion chasers that have the courage to compete for the kingdom.

Briner when he says that

the same spirit needs to prevail in sending our children into culture-shaping professions like entertainment, journalism, education, and politics.

We need to stop criticizing culture and start creating it.

In the words of Michelangelo, we need to criticize by creating. And you can’t create without taking a calculated risk.

All I can say is this: Crazy dreams still come true.

Our ultimate destiny is determined by whether or not we seize the God-ordained opportunities presented to us. If we seize those opportunities, the dominos continue to fall and create a chain reaction. But if we miss those opportunities, we short-circuit God’s plan for our lives. That doesn’t mean we should live in fear that we’ll somehow miss the will of God. He’ll keep giving us second and third and fourth chances.

The grace of God has no expiration date.

There is certainly a time to be prudent. But there is also a time to be valiant.

It uses the adjective valiant.

Lion chasers are opportunists.

Lion chasers aren’t focused on avoiding problems. Their modus operandi is seizing God-ordained opportunities. And like my friend, the lawyer-turned-moviemaker, they typically start out as mustard-seed opportunities.

Dreams are still achieved one opportunity at a time.

Strive for valiance. Make the call. Apply for the program. Send the e-mail. Hand in your resignation. Set up the meeting.

The genealogy of success always traces back to mustard-s...

You’ve got to prove yourself when the little opportunities present themselves. And when you do, God will bring bigger and better opportunities your way.

He is a biblical footnote, but like Benaiah, he does something pretty remarkable.

They find a way of making circumstances work in their favor.

Isn’t it ironic that some people who have so much do so little and others who have so little do so much?

don’t let what they can’t do keep them from doing what they

Success is doing the best you can with what you ha...

Think of every opportunity as a gift from God. What you do with that opportunity is your gift to God.

Make the most of every opportunity.

Every day is filled with countless God-ordained opportunities. Not a day goes by that we don’t have an opportunity to love, an opportunity to serve, an opportunity to give, or an opportunity to learn.

Opportunity doesn’t knock. Opportunity roars!

Prayer is an opportunity incubator.

Seizing an opportunity usually feels like swallowing a whale or chasing a lion. But at the end of our lives, we won’t regret the mistakes we made nearly as much as the opportunities we missed. It will be the “what if” questions that haunt us.

In the business world, missed opportunities are called “opportunity costs.”

the opportunity costs would have been staggering.

Righteousness isn’t just running away from sin. Righteousness is chasing lions.

There is a time to be cautious and a time to throw caution to the wind. There is a time to test the waters and a time to cast your bread upon

the water. There is a time to be prudent and a time to be valiant. And it takes tremendous discernment to know the difference. But I know this for sure: If you wait for perfect conditions before you seize an opportunity, you’ll be waiting till the day you die.

More often than not, the only thing between you and your dream is a rational excuse.

didn’t let what he couldn’t do keep him from doing what he could.

“My time has not yet come.”

Maybe it’s time to dust off that dream God has given you. Maybe it’s time to throw your hat in the ring. What are you waiting for?

Nothing will ever be…perfect, and nothing can be totally planned. The best you can hope for is to be about half certain of your plan and know that you and the team you’ve assembled are willing to work hard enough to overcome the inevitable problems as they arrive.

And arrive they will. The only thing you can be certain of in business is that the problems you have not thought of will eventually crop up—and always at the worst times.

Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

A dream becomes reality one opportunity at a time. And if you work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God, there is no telling what God can do in you and through you.

Normality is overrated. Think of it this way. We are called to conform to Christ. And Christ was a nonconformist. So conforming to Christ results in nonconformity.

holiness is equated with cultural conformity.

I’d rather be disliked for who I am than liked for who I’m not.

“the suppression of creative genius.”

My guess is that there was a time—perhaps when you were very young—when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you.

Enter Jesus. Our inner fool may be shackled and caged by a world made to suppress it. But Jesus came to free the fool.

“proclaim that captives will be released.”

We have to return to the time when 98 percent of us were geniuses and we all raised our hands and said we were artists. We’ve got to take Jesus’s advice and “become like little children.”

One of my favorite words is neoteny. It derives from the Greek word neos, which means “new, fresh, or youthful.” Neoteny is “the retention of youthful qualities by adults.”

Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neoteny is the retention of those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our geeks—open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous, eager to see what the new day brings.5