I just finished Mark Batterson’s book, In a Pit With a Lion.

I highly recommend this book for anyone, but particularly for those people feeling like “There’s more” (which is anyone who will listen closely to the whisper of the heart!).

Some final takeaways from this book…

• “One of our greatest spiritual shortcomings is low expectations. We don’t expect much from God because we aren’t asking for much.”

• “Living in prayer mode is the difference between seeing coincidences and providences. Prayer has a way of helping us recognize that what we might dismiss as human accidents are really divine appointments. All I know from personal experience is this: When I pray, providences happen. When I don’t pray, they don’t happen.”

• A quote from Howard Schultz’s autobiography, “This is my moment, I thought. If I don’t seize the opportunity, if I don’t step out of my comfort zone and risk it all, if I let too much time tick on, my moment will pass. I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, I would replay it in my mind for my whole life, wondering, What if?” (Schultz is the chairman of Starbucks and shares this reflection as he recalls pondering if he should purchase the upstart, unknown coffee chain. History tells us that he made the right decision).

• “More often than not, the only thing between you and your dream is a rational excuse.”

• “I’d rather be disliked for who I am than liked for who I am not.” (Me too!)

• A quote from Gordon MacKenzie’s book Orbiting the Giant Hairball, “My guess is that there was a time – when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you. But none ever came.” (How many people let their dreams die or their genius wither because no one ever validated it? How many people have been stifled because what they dreamed of was not “safe” or “normal”? I don’t want people to do this to me and I don’t want to do it to my children, or other people! I want to encourage people to “CHASE THE LION!”)

• “Part of spiritual maturity is caring less and less about what people think about you and more and more about what God thinks about you.”

• An old proverb, “Those who hear not the music think the dancer is mad.” (I wonder though, what would happen if people heard what I, or you, hear? What would happen if they felt what I feel?)