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

by Mark Batterson

But testing for allergies isn’t a pointless exercise in cruel and unusual punishment, even though it might seem like it. It is a form of reverse engineering.

She wanted to discover the root causes of my reactions. And the solution isn’t just avoiding those allergens. The cure is actually exposing myself to them in small doses.

The cure for the fear of failure is not success. It’s failure. The cure for the fear of rejection is not acceptance. It’s rejection. You’ve got to be exposed to small quantities of whatever...

Jesus never ran away from His detractors or persecutors. He chased them.

That is the essence of courage, isn’t it? Courage is putting yourself into defenseless positions.

He could have aborted His redemptive mission with one call for angelic backup. But Jesus wasn’t trying to save Himself. He was trying to save you. So He put Himself in a defenseless position. He had the courage to go to the cross.

Courage is doing what is right regardless of circumstances or consequences.

Then, after getting a blow-by-blow description of his epic acts of courage, you ask Benaiah to tell you about the scariest moments of his life. I’m guessing Benaiah would give you a puzzled look and tell you that he had just told you about them. The greatest moments doubled as the scariest moments. They were one and the same.

Sure, Benaiah killed the lion. But not before it scared the living daylights out of him!

I don’t care how battle-tested or battle-scarred you are. I don’t care how crazy or courageous you are. You don’t come face to face with a five-hundred-pound lion without experiencing sheer terror. But the scariest moment of his life turned into the greatest moment of his life. The same is true for all of us. If you take a second to reflect on your life, you’ll discover that the greatest experiences are often the scariest, and the scariest experiences are often the greatest.

So why do we pay money to ride roller coasters? Because we have a need for controlled danger. We need a dose of fear every now and then.

fear that makes us feel alive.

Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about? Maybe it is time to quit running and time to start chasing. Try something new. Take some risks. Start doing some things that are worth recounting in jaw-dropping detail. I think we owe it to our kids and grandkids.

Too many of us pray as if God’s primary objective is to keep us from getting scared. But the goal of life is not the elimination of fear. The goal is to muster the moral courage to chase lions.

If the truth be told, the alternative to fear is boredom. And boredom isn’t just boring. Boredom is inexcusable! Søren Kierkegaard went so far as to say that “boredom is the root of all evil” because it means we’re refusing to be who God made us to be. If you’re bored, one thing is for sure: You’re not following in the footsteps of Christ.

Points to Remember • Don’t let mental lions keep you from experiencing everything God has to offer. • Half of spiritual growth is learning what we don’t know. The other half is unlearning what we do know. • It is the failure to unlearn irrational fears and misconceptions that keeps us from becoming who God wants us to be. • When we read Scripture, our brains are rewired in alignment with the Word, and we develop the mind of Christ. • The goal of life is not the elimination of fear. The goal is to muster the moral courage to chase lions.

Opportunities often look like insurmountable obstacles. So, if we want to take advantage of these opportunities, we have to learn to see problems in a new way—God’s way. Then our biggest problems may just start looking like our greatest opportunities.

“When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

I think David prayed for his sheep. I can’t prove it,

I bet David specifically prayed that God would protect his flock by keeping lions and bears away. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But David’s prayers went unanswered. On numerous occasions, lions and bears attacked David’s flock. I wonder if David ever questioned God: Why doesn’t God answer my prayers for safety?

He sees the way his unanswered prayers actually prepared him for the opportunity of a lifetime. Every time a lion or bear attacked his flock, David had pulled a stone out of his shepherd’s bag, put it in his slingshot, took aim, and fired. And David realizes that the bears and lions were target practice.

At the end of our lives, like David, we’ll thank God for the lions and bears and giants.

This may sound somewhat sadistic, but follow the logic: It’s our past problems that prepare us for future opportunities. So someday we may be as grateful for the bad things as the good things because the bad things helped prepare us for the good things.

No one likes being in the pits or put out to pasture, but maybe God is developing character and honing skills that will serve you later in life.

C. S. Lewis said, “If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where would I be now?”

Many of our prayers are misguided. We pray for comfort instead of character. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through.

Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking Him what He wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances.

If we could see what God sees, we would pray very different prayers.

Sometimes an unanswered prayer is God, in His sovereign wisdom, sparing us the pain of unintended consequences.

Maybe prayer is less about changing our circumstances than it is changing our perspective.

Maybe we need to quit praying safe prayers.

Let me share something I’ve learned from some of my personal struggles. When I get into a spiritual or emotional slump, it’s usually because I’ve zoomed in on a problem. I’m fixating on something I don’t like about myself or someone else or my circumstances. And nine times out of ten, the solution is zooming out so I can get some perspective.

So how do we zoom out? The one-word answer is worship.

Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshiping what’s right with God.