Mark Batterson

As we age, pieces of our personality are held hostage by painful moments in our past. Jesus came to set the captive free—the inner child within each one of us. It’s never too late to be who you might have been.

The Holy Spirit will sometimes lead us where we don’t want to go, but He always goes with us! The obstacle is not the enemy. The obstacle is the way, the Jesus Way.

Seeking God with greater consistency, greater intentionality, and greater priority is the solution to a thousand problems. You don’t FIND time. You have to MAKE time. How? You’ve got to pitch a tent like Moses. You need a TIME and a PLACE where you get off the grid and get with God. The only ceiling on your intimacy with God and impact on the world is daily spiritual disciplines.

Half of spiritual growth is learning. The other half is unlearning. Jesus didn’t do an orientation with his disciples. He did a disorientation. Six times in the Sermon on the Mount He says, “You have heard that it was said, but I tell you.” Jesus was uninstalling Old Testament paradigms and reinstalling

God’s greatest gift came wrapped in swaddling cloths. That gift is right relationship with God. It’s God with us, God for us, God in us. But that gift, like any gift, must be unwrapped.

In a pluralistic culture, we’ve got to get better at agreeing to disagree. This week’s podcast unpacks five practices, five principles. 1. Check Your Ego At The Door 2. Identify Least Common Denominators 3. Let your Conscience be your Guide 4. Don’t be Dogmatic about Disputable Matters 5. Love people when they least expect

The secret to the Double Blessing is this: the way you GET IT is by GIVING IT. God doesn’t bless us to raise our standard of living. God blesses us to raise our standard of giving. Discover five steps to flipping the blessing: 1) Take inventory 2) Find your signature 3) Learn their love language 4) Little things are big things 5) Have fun

The will of God is a lot less circumstantial and a lot more attitudinal than we imagine. The circumstances we are asking God to change may be the circumstances God is using to change us. How do you cultivate the attitude of gratitude? 1.) Whatever you don’t turn into PRAISE turns into PRIDE. 2.) Your FOCUS determines your reality. 3.) Don’t let what’s WRONG WITH YOU keep you from worshipping what’s RIGHT WITH GOD.

Before original sin there was original blessing. If we get that sequence wrong, the entire algorithm is off. Why? Because it changes who we see when we look in the mirror. Because it alters the way we relate to God. Blessing is God’s most ancient instinct. It’s also our deepest longing. The good news? God wants to bless you beyond your ability to ask or imagine.

There is a long line of women in Scripture who overcome the odds, put prejudice in its place, defy cultural conventions, and break through the glass ceiling. In the grand scheme of history, women are the unsung heroes. It’s the risks they take, the sacrifices they, and sometimes, the rules they break that change the trajectory of history.