As I look back on my own life, I recognize this simple truth: The greatest opportunities were the scariest lions. Part of me has wanted to play it safe, but I’ve learned that taking no risks is the greatest risk of all.
When God blesses you financially, don’t raise your standard of living. Raise your standard of giving.
If you let fear dictate your decisions, you will live defensively, reactively, cautiously. Living by faith is playing offense with your life.
…faith is acting as if God has already answered. And acting as if God has answered means acting on our prayers…
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.
True spirituality is “the place where desperation meets Jesus.
In every dream journey, there comes a moment when you have to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.
Dreams without deadlines are dead in the water. Deadlines are really lifelines to achieving our goals.
There is nothing God loves more that keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles, and fulfilling dreams.
…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.
…opportunities typically come disguised as impossible problems. And while most people run away from their problems, Shamgars run at them with their oxgoads.
Most of us will have no idea where we are going most of the time. And I know that is unsettling.But circumstantial uncertainty also goes by another name: Adventure.
Society’s goal is to make us less foolish. From the cradle to grave the pressure is on: “Be normal!” Our inner fool may be shackled and caged by a world made to suppress it, but Jesus came to free the fool.
Nolan Bushnell, the creator of the Atari video game system, once stated, ‘Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea, It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference.
Anytime I’m not reading my Bible or praying, I feel like I’m wasting my time. [Mark’s brother-in-law, Matt ________, speaking]
If you are not open to the unprecedented, you will repeat history. If you are open to the unprecedented, you will change history. The difference is prayer.
Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.
God is great not just because nothing is too big for Him. God is great because nothing is too small for Him, either.
Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm.
Each prayer is like a seed that gets planted in the ground. It disappears for a season, but it eventually bears fruit that blesses future generations. In fact, our prayers bear fruit forever.
Prayer adds an element of surprise to your life that is more fun than a surprise party or surprise gift or surprise romance. In fact, prayer turns life into a party, into a gift, into a romance.
Prayer is the difference between seeing with our physical eyes and seeing with our spiritual eyes.
Learning is the heart of discipleship. You can’t just take up your cross daily. You need to take up the Bible every day.
Half of learning is learning. The other half of learning is unlearning.
…love people when they least expect it and least deserve it. That is the kind of love Jesus shows to us.
…if you can truly surrender to Him, you will do more, be more, experience more. Life will just be more.
…if you’re walking with Jesus and you invite someone to walk with you, there is a good chance they’ll get to know Jesus somewhere along the way.
Goal setting is good stewardship. Instead of letting things happen, goals help us make things happen. Instead of living by default, goals help us live by design. Instead of living out of memory, goals help us live out of imagination.
You can be saved without suffering, but you cannot be sanctified without suffering. That doesn’t mean you seek it out, but it does mean you see it for what it is. It’s an opportunity to glorify God.
Your ability to see failure as a necessary stepping stone directly correlates with your ability to dream bigger and dream better.
I want to go after dreams that are destined to fail without diving intervention.
The very nature of the gospel is Jesus inviting the disciples on an adventure. To do what they’d never done and go where they’d never gone. Never a dull moment! You cannot follow Jesus and be bored at the same time.
Part of discovering the adventure God has designed you for is learning how to frame it or reframe it.
…each of us has an explanatory style… And our explanation is more important than the experience itself. In the words of Aldous Huxley, “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
God is great not just because nothing is too big for Him. God is great but because nothing is too small for Him either.
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.
Even choosing to do nothing is still making a choice.
Confession breaks the power of canceled sin. It also heals the broken heart.
True knowledge should not produce pride; it should produce humility…Because the more you know, the more you know how much you don’t know.
Self-consciousness isn’t just A curse. It is part of THE curse.
Death is a mirror that gives us a glimpse of who we really are.Death is a rearview mirror that puts the past into perspective.
…we think so much about the present and so little about eternity that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity.
…success is when those who know you best respect you most.
Whatever you don’t turn into praise turns into pride.
The author gives an interesting naval etymology of the word “opportunity”. It referred to days in which sailing ships had to wait outside a port for the appropriate tide, which then was their chance until the next tide.
Worship is forgetting about what’s wrong with you and remembering what’s right with God.
How we spend our money, however little we have, still reveals what we value.
The only God-ordained fear is the fear of God, and if we fear Him, we don’t have to fear anyone or anything else.
…the true value of an offering isn’t measured by how much we give. It’s measured by how much we keep…By definition, a sacrifice must involve sacrifice…
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.
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.
The genealogy of blessing always traces back to God-ordained risk.
…your life is your sermon…Are you a good translation?
What sets lion chasers apart isn’t the outcome. It’s the courage to chase God-sized dreams.
God is in the résumé-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities.
Dr. Neal Roese makes a fascinating distinction between two types of regret: regrets of action and regrets of inaction.
Nine times out of 10, criticism is a defense mechanism. We criticize in others what we don’t like in ourselves.
If you really want to get good at anything, you’ve got to work at it for ten thousand hours.
Potential is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.
Most God-ordained dreams die because we are not willing to do something that seems illogical
Ryan-chasers have a life wish. They live life to the fullest because they are willing to look foolish.
The blessings of God will complicate your life, but unlike sin, they will complicate your life in the way it should be complicated.
…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!
If you aren’t hungry for God, you are full of yourself. That’s why God cannot fill you with His Spirit. But if you will empty yourself, if you will die to self, you’ll be a different person by the time you reach the last page of this book.
…we are overwhelmed with information and dying for wisdom.
Part of my driving desire as a pastor is to remove every obstacle except the cross that would keep people from coming to faith in Christ.