All In Quotes

“...faith is acting as if God has already answered. And acting as if God has answered means acting on our prayers...”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“If you aren't willing to look foolish, you're foolish. And that's why so many people have never built an ark, killed a giant, or walked on water.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Jesus proclaimed the favor of God in His very first sermon. Then He sealed the deal with His death and resurrection. Favor is a function of surrender. If we don't hold out on God, God will not hold out on us.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“We want a money-back guarantee before we take a step of obedience, but that eliminates faith from the equation. Sometimes we need to take a flying leap of faith.

We need to step into the conflict without knowing if we can resolve it. We need to share our faith without knowing how our friends will react to it. We need to pray for a miracle without knowing how God will answer. We need to put ourselves in a situation that activates a spiritual gift we've never exercised before. And we need to go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.

If we want to discover new lands, we've got to lose sight of the shore. We've got to leave the Land of Familiarity behind. We've got to sail past the predictable. And when we do, we develop a spiritual hunger for the unprecedented and lose our appetite for the habitual. We also get a taste of God's favor.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“I don't know about you, but I want God to reveal the second step before I take the first step of faith. But I've discovered that if I don't take the first step, God generally won't reveal the next step...

Most of us will only follow Christ to the point of precedence -- the place where we have been before. But ...

If you want God to do something new, you cannot keep doing what you've always done. You've got to push past the fear of the unknown. You've got to do something different.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“When your life is over, the world will ask you only one question: 'Did you do what you were supposed to do?'"

That's not just a good question. That's the question...

It cannot be answered with words. It must be answered with your life.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“When we do what's right, regardless of circumstances or consequences, we set the table for God to turn the tables. All we need to do is stand up, step in, or step out.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“There are spiritual gifts like mercy, faith, or generosity that enable people to set the standard, so to speak. But just because you don't have that spiritual gift doesn't mean you aren't held to any standard at all. Even if you aren't gifted in that way, you're still called to live mercifully, faithfully, and generously. You might not set the standard, but you need to meet the standard. There is a baseline that all of us are called to. When the opportunity presents itself, we need to show mercy, exercise faith, and give generously. In the same sense, all of us are called to take risks. If it doesn't involve risk, it doesn't exercise faith.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Faithfulness is not holding the fort. It's storming the gates of hell and taking back enemy territory that belongs to God.

I'm afraid we've reduced righteousness to the absence of wrongness, but goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Remember the parable of the bags of gold? Breaking even is bad. You've got to ante up everything.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“In the Hebrew language, there is no distinction between knowing and doing. Knowing is doing and doing is knowing. In other words, if you aren't doing it, then you don't really know it...

The phrase all out literally means "maximum effort."

It's giving God everything you've got -- 100 percent. It's loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's not just worshiping God with your words. It's worshiping God with blood, sweat, and tears. It's more than sincere sentiments. It's sweat equity in kingdom causes.

You cannot be the hands and feet of Jesus if you're sitting on your butt.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“We need to study the Word of God diligently. But we don't need to know more. We need to do more with what we know. At the end of the day, God will not say, "Well thought, Intellectual," or "Well said, Orator." There is only one commendation: "Well done, good and faithful servant!”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“We give people political labels, sexual labels, and religious labels. But in the process, we strip them of their individuality and complexity. Prejudice is pre-judging. It's assuming that bad stories end badly, but Jesus is in the business of turning bad beginnings into happily ever afters.
...
God cannot give up on you. It's not in His nature. His goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life. All you have to do is turn around. All you have to do is crash the party!”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Confession breaks the power of canceled sin. It also heals the broken heart.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“...if you do the job no one wants, you might eventually get the job everybody wants. But you have to be willing to climb the ladder, starting with the bottom rung.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“...if you give all of yourself to God, you can ask and expect that God will give all of Himself to you because that's precisely what He wants to do. We have not because we ask not, and we ask not because we're not all in!”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“The only way to predict the future is to create it. You don't let it happen. You make it happen. How? Stop regretting the past and start learning from it. Let go of guilt by leaning into God's grace. Quit beating yourself up and let the Spirit of God heal your heart. You cannot divorce yourself from the past. You are married to it forever. But God wants to reconcile your past by redeeming it. God is in the recycling business; He makes recycled goods out of wasted lives.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Nine times out of ten, failure is resorting to Plan B when Plan A gets too risky, too costly, or too difficult. That's why most people are living their Plan B. They didn't burn the ships. Plan A people don't have a Plan B...

There are moments in life when we need to burn the ships to our past. We do so by making a defining decision that will eliminate the possibility of sailing back to the old world we left behind. You burn the ships named Past Failure and Past Success. You burn the ship named Bad Habit. You burn the ship named Regret. You burn the ship named Guilt. You burn the ship named My Old Way of Life.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Put your Isaac on the altar! Then, and only then, will you see what God can do. He cannot give back what you do not give up. But if you surrender yourself to Him, He will provide the ram in the thicket.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“God-ordained dreams aren't just born. They are reborn. If they become more important to you than God, you have to sacrifice them for the sake of your soul. You have to put them on the altar and raise the knife. And once the dream is dead and buried, it can be resurrected for God's glory.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“At its core, sinfulness is selfishness. It's enthroning yourself - your desires, your needs, your plans - above all else. You may still seek God, but you don't seek Him first. You seek Him second or third or seventh. You may sing "Jesus at the center of it all," but what you really want is for people to bow down to you as you bow down to Christ. It's a subtle form of selfishness that masquerades as spirituality, but it's not Christ-centric. It's me-centric. It's less about us serving His purposes and more about Him serving our purposes.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Grace is loving people for who they are, where they are. It's loving people *before* they change, not just *after* they change. And that grace is the difference between holy and holier-than-thou. Holiness, in its purest form, is irresistible. That's why sinners couldn't be kept away from Jesus. Hypocrisy has the opposite effect. It's as repulsive to the irreligious as the Pharisees' religiosity was to Jesus.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“When we are born into this world, the world revolves around us. We’re spoon-fed on the front end and diaper-changed on the back end. It’s as if the entire world exists to meet our every need. And that’s fine if you are a two-month-old baby. If you’re twenty-two, it’s a problem! Newsflash:”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Don’t accumulate possessions, accumulate experiences or vice versa–”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“The paradigm shift happens when we come to terms with the fact that the world doesn’t revolve around us.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Jesus didn’t die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous. Faithfulness”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“The moment you bow your knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ, all of your sin is transferred to Christ’s account and paid in full. It was nailed to the cross two thousand years ago! But that’s only half the gospel. Mercy is not getting what you deserve — the wrath of God. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve — the righteousness of Christ. Everything you’ve done wrong is forgiven and forgotten. And everything Christ did right — His righteousness — is transferred to your account. And then God calls it even. It’s like God says, “I’ll take the blame for everything you did wrong and give you credit for everything I did right.” It doesn’t get any better than that, and that’s why it’s called the gospel. It’s not just good news. It’s the best news.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“When did we start believing that God wants to send us to safe places to do easy things?”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“Consecration is going all in and all out for the All in All.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“The word consecrate means to set yourself apart. By definition, consecration demands full devotion. It’s dethroning yourself and enthroning Jesus Christ. It’s the complete divestiture of all self-interest. It’s giving God veto power. It’s surrendering all of you to all of Him. It’s a simple recognition that every second of time, every ounce of energy, and every penny of money is a gift from God and for God. Consecration is an ever-deepening love for Jesus, a childlike trust in the heavenly Father, and a blind obedience to the Holy Spirit. Consecration is all that and a thousand things more. But for the sake of simplicity, let me give you my personal definition of consecration.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life

“More than a hundred years ago, a British revivalist issued a holy dare that would change a life, a city, and a generation. That timeless challenge echoes across every generation: “The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.”
― Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life