Wild Goose Chase

I referred today to a book that I finished reading recently. It's called Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson, who is the founding pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C. I highly recommend it, and I think we may use it as the foundation for a series in 2010.

Batterson's basic premise is that we don't live to the full potential that God has in mind because of 6 cages: responsibility, routine, assumptions, guilt, failure and fear. Here are some notable quotes from the book:

• If you would describe your relationship with God as anything less than adventurous, then maybe you think you're following the Spirit but have actually settled for something less—something I call inverted Christianity.

• …too often we take people out of their natural habitat and try to tame them in the name of Christ. We try to remove the risk. We try to remove the danger. We try to remove the struggle. And what we end up with is a caged Christian.

• You cannot simultaneously live by faith and be bored. Faith and boredom are antithetical.

• pursuing a God-ordained passion, no matter how crazy it seems, is the most responsible thing you can do.

• But more often than not, faith doesn't follow signs. Signs follow faith.

• The way you overcome spiritual inertia and produce spiritual momentum is by making tough decisions. And the tougher the decision, the more potential momentum it will produce.

• One of the greatest acts of worship is keeping a good attitude in a bad situation.

• Faith is trusting God more than you trust your own assumptions.

• If you stay in the cage of your assumptions, memory will overtake imagination. If you chase the Wild Goose, imagination will overtake memory.

• In my experience, God loves using us before we feel like we're ready.

• Guilt has a shrinking effect. It shrinks our dreams. It shrinks our relationships. It shrinks our hearts. It shrinks our lives to the size of our greatest failures. Grace has the opposite effect. It expands our dreams. It expands our relationships. It expands our hearts. And it gives us the courage to chase the Wild Goose all the way to the ends of the earth.

• If you feel like you're stuck in a tragedy, here's my advice: give Jesus complete editorial control over your life. You have to quit trying to write your own story. And you need to accept Jesus not only as Lord and Savior but also as Author.

• We need people who are more afraid of missing opportunities than making mistakes. People who are more afraid of lifelong regrets than temporary failure. People who dare to dream the unthinkable and attempt the impossible.

• Some of us have the opposite mode of operating: perhaps the Lord won't act in our behalf. We live out of fear instead of faith. And that lack of faith results in a lack of guts.

• Faithfulness is not holding the fort. Faithfulness is storming the gates of hell.

• lack of goals is lack of faith. The Bible says, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for.” But most of us are more sure of what we're afraid of than what we hope for.

• ...ultimately it's not about you. It's about the One who wants to write His-story through your life. A world in desperate need can't do without what you will bring when you become part of something that is bigger than you and more important than you: the cause of Christ in this generation. The stakes could not be higher. And like the first-century disciples, we have the opportunity to turn the world upside down.

Hope you enjoy reading Wild Goose Chase.