Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Mark Batterson, (2015-10-06) from his book, If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities (Kindle Location 346). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) I know, so many of us hate to change.   We don’t like it and we won’t do it.   But what if a little bit of change would make a major difference in your life?   What if?  Would you do it? Mark says, “The concept of leverage has been, well, leveraged in a thousand ways. But let me zero in on systems thinking. In any system, a leverage point is the place in a system’s structure where a solution element can be applied. A high leverage point is a place where a small amount of change force can cause a large change in the system’s behavior. It’s a 1 percent change that makes a 99 percent difference.” And that can be true in our lives too. Mark says, “There is no higher leverage point than the two-letter word if. It defines our dee

A thought by Mark Batterson, (2015-10-06) from his book, If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities (Kindle Location 310). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. . (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) This is a quote by Eric Metaxas who was the keynote speaker for the 2012 National Day of Prayer Breakfast that Mark attended.   And it had a great impact on Mark.   Mark said, “It was like tectonic plates shifted with that one seismic statement, and I still feel the aftershocks. Most people who reject God are really rejecting religion, without knowing it. They aren’t really rejecting God for who He is. They are actually rejecting God for who He isn’t.” Mark goes on, “Eric pushed the envelope even further: ‘Everything I rejected about God was not God. It was religion. . . . It was people who go to church and do not show the love of [Jesus], people who don’t practice what they preach, people who are indifferent to the poor and

A thought by Mark Batterson, (2015-10-06) from his book, If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities (Kindle Location 246). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Mark says, “I am my own historian. It’s God who ordains our days, orders our steps, and prepares good works in advance. But we have to be students of our own history, including our if only regrets. We have to learn the lessons and leverage the mistakes. We have to connect the dots between cause and effect. And we have to reimagine our future through the frame of God’s promises.” We have a part in living out our lives and of course we many times make mistakes and then our regrets take over.   But Mark says, “No matter how many regrets you have, God is the God of second chances. No matter how deep-seated those regrets are, He can turn your if only regrets into what if possibilities.” Now to me that is great news.   He can take ou

A thought by Mark Batterson, (2015-10-06) from his book, If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities  (Kindle Location 218). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Mark says, “Technically, history is the study of past events— what actually happened. But there is a branch of history, counterfactual theory, that asks the what if questions.” Think of this.   Mark says, “What if one of the four musket balls that passed through George Washington’s coat during the Battle of Monongahela in 1755 had pierced his heart? What if the D-Day invasion by Allied forces on June 6, 1944, had failed to halt the Nazi regime? What if the confederates had won the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863?” Mark does the same thing with Scripture, “What if David had missed Goliath’s forehead? What if Esther had not fasted, thereby finding favor, thus saving the Jewish people from genocide? What i