Mark Batterson Whisper Quotes

God often speaks loudest when we're quietest.

Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music. That old adage is certainly true of those who walk to the beat of God's drum. When you take your cues from the Holy Spirit, you'll do some things that will make people think you're crazy. So be it. Obey the whisper and see what God does.

A. W. Tozer pictured paniym this way: “God is above, but He’s not pushed up. He’s beneath, but He’s not pressed down. He’s outside, but He’s not excluded. He’s inside, but He’s not confined. God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside of all things embracing and inside of all things filling.”36

Prayer is the difference between the best we can do and the best God can do.

Did you know that embryologists have recently captured the moment of conception via fluorescence microscopy? What they discovered is that at the exact moment a sperm penetrates an egg, the egg releases billions of zinc atoms that emit light. Sparks fly, literally! That miracle of conception is a microcosm that mirrors God's first four words.

We’re the beneficiaries of prayers we know nothing about. God was working long before we arrived on the scene and He’s using us to set up the next generation. We tend to think right here, right now. God is thinking nations and generations. We have no idea how our lives are going to alter the course of history downstream, but there is a divine domino effect for every decision we make. Don’t underestimate the potential impact of obeying God’s prompts. Those are the whispers that will echo for all eternity!

...we live in a culture where tolerance has been elevated above truth. It's considered wrong to say that something is wrong, and I think that's wrong. I certainly want to be known more for what I'm for than what I'm against. And truth shouldn't be used as a weapon. But to think that everybody is right and nobody is wrong is as silly as pretending that everybody wins and nobody loses. Come on, you know the T-ballers are keeping track of the score! And even if not keeping score works for one season in Little League, it doesn't work in the real world. When truth is sacrificed on the altar of tolerance, it might seem as though everybody wins, but in reality everybody loses. God calls us to a higher standard than tolerance. It's called truth, and it's always coupled with grace. Grace means I'll love you no matter what. Truth means I'll be honest with you no matter what.

God said, 'Let there be light.' Here's a paraphrase: Let there be electromagnetic radiation with varying wavelengths traveling at 186,282 miles per second. Let there be radiowaves, microwaves, and X-rays. Let there be photosynthesis and fiber optics. Let there be LASIK surgery, satellite communication, and suntans. Oh, and let there be rainbows after rainstorms. 'Let there be light.' These are God's first recorded words. This is God's first recorded miracle. Light is the source of vision; without it we can't see a thing. Light is the key to technology; it's how we can talk to someone halfway around the world without so much as a second's delay because light can circle the globe seven and a half times a second. Light is the first link in the food chain; no photosynthesis equals no food. Light is the basis of health; the absence of light causes everything from vitamin D deficiency to depression. Light is the origin of energy; in Einstein's equation E = MC squared, energy (E) is defined as mass (M) times the speed of light (C) squared. The speed of light is the constant. And light is the measuring stick for space-time; a meter is defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. Light is the alpha and omega of everything, and that includes you.

Is it possible that what we perceive to be relational, emotional, and spiritual problems are actually hearing problems -- ears that have been deafened to the voice of God? And it's that inability to hear His voice that causes us to lose our voice and lose our way.

If your life is off-key, maybe it's because you've been deafened by the negative self-talk that doesn't let God get a Word in edgewise! Maybe you've listened to the voice of criticism so long you can't believe anything else about yourself. Or maybe it's the Enemy's voice of condemnation that speaks lies about who you really are. If you don't silence those competing voices, they'll eventually deafen you. You won't be able to sing God's song because you won't be able to hear His voice.

Is God's voice the loudest voice in your life? That's the question. If the answer is no, that's the problem.

We live in a culture where everyone wants to have his or her voice heard but has so little to say. And that's because we do so little listening, especially to God. The best way to get people to listen to us is for us to listen to God. Why? Because we'll have something to say that is worth hearing. Ultimately, all of us need to find our voice. And by voice I mean the unique message God wants to speak through our lives. But finding our voice starts with hearing His voice.

Obedience starts with a pierced ear. It's tuning into God's frequency and turning up the volume. It's obeying His whispers, even if a thousand people are screaming something different. 'Tell me to what you pay attention,' said the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, 'and I will tell you who are you.' You will eventually be shaped in the image of the loudest voice in your life. Genuine listening is ultimately an act of submission.

God trusts most those who know Him best, and those who know Him best are those who have spent the most time with Him.

We usually hear what we want to hear and turn a deaf ear to everything else. But remember the package deal? If we don't listen to everything God has to say, we eventually won't hear anything He has to say. And we probably need to hear most what we want to hear least. But this I know for sure: His tone of voice is always loving. Sometimes it's tough love in the form of rebuke or discipline, but it's loving, nonetheless.

Aren’t you grateful for a gentle God? The Almighty could intimidate us with His outside voice, but He woos us with a whisper. And His whisper is the breath of life.

Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music. That old adage is certainly true of those who walk to the beat of God’s drum. When you take your cues from the Holy Spirit, you’ll do some things that will make people think you’re crazy. So be it. Obey the whisper and see what God does.

Pain can be a professor theology. Pain can be a marriage counselor. Pain can be a life coach. Nothing gets our full attention like pain. It breaks down false idols and purifies false motives. It reveals where we need to heal, where we need to grow. It refocuses priorities like nothing else. And pain ins part and parcel of God’s sanctification process in our lives.

You can leave the Bible on your bedside table untouched. You can ignore desires, dreams, doors, promptings and people. But you can’t ignore pain, can you?

Bad timing can be as calamitous as good timing is fortuitous.

We often think that when God closes a door, that is His final answer. We put a period where God puts a comma. We think it’s a no, but it’s really a not yet. Is it easy discerning between the two? Not at all. It’s hard to know when to hang on to a dream and when to let go. But here’s a rule of thumb: if you sense God saying no, give that dream back to Him with an open hand. That often takes more courage than hanging on. But if God hasn’t released you, then keep on keeping on.

One of two things happens over time. Either your theology will conform to your reality, and your expectations will get smaller and smaller until you can hardly believe God for anything. Or your reality will conform to your theology, and your expectations will get bigger and bigger until you can believe God for absolutely everything!

It’s not enough to exercise spiritual gifts; one must exercise them with a measure of emotional intelligence, or they can actually do more emotional harm than good.

There is a theory in organizational development called appreciative inquiry that I subscribe to as a leader and a parent. Instead of exclusively focusing on what’s wrong and trying to fix it, you identify what’s right and try to replicate it. Appreciative inquiry is playing to people’s strengths. It’s catching people doing things right. It’s celebrating what you want to see more of. And it’s bragging about people behind their backs.

Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music.

Not many people sell their souls to the devil, but many of us sell our souls to the culture. Instead of defining success for ourselves, we let the culture define it for us. Instead of daring to be different, we conform to the pattern of this world. Why? We let our culture have the loudest voice.

but thinkers and feelers relate to God differently. So do introverts and extroverts. And that goes for all sixteen personality types in the Myers-Briggs matrix, all nine Enneagram types, and all four DISC profiles.

God is big enough. He’s big enough to speak through doors and dreams and people. He’s close enough to speak through desires and promptings and pain.

And it’s often what we want to hear least that we need to hear most. Trust me, though, you want to hear what He has to say.

If you want to hear His comforting voice, you have to listen to His convicting voice.

First, test your motives. If you don’t test your motives, you might be testing God. And that’s not a good idea. Make sure you’re asking for the right reasons. Are you ready to obey, regardless of God’s answer? Is the fleece a cop-out? If you’re looking for an easy answer without any effort, good luck with that. The driving engine must be a genuine desire to honor God no matter what. Second, delayed obedience is disobedience. Make sure the fleece isn’t a delay tactic. If it’s a subject God has already spoken on, don’t try His patience. Make sure the fleece isn’t a substitute for faith. Remember, faith is taking the first step before God reveals the second step. There is a time to seek God’s will, but there is a time to act on it too. Third, set specific parameters in prayer. If you don’t define the fleece, it’s easy to come up with false negatives or false positives. Notice the specificity of Gideon’s fleece. And don’t discount the fact that it required divine intervention.

Instead of exclusively focusing on what’s wrong and trying to fix it, you identify what’s right and try to replicate it. Appreciative inquiry is playing to people’s strengths. It’s catching people doing things right. It’s celebrating what you want to see more of. And it’s bragging about people behind their backs.

God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost.25

Don’t just go out and do what Dick Eastman or your spiritual hero did. That’s a spiritual cop-out. Copycat spirituality is short lived.

To believe that God speaks only through the Bible is to handcuff the God of the Bible as the Bible has revealed Him to us. Yes, Scripture provides our checks and balances.

Yes, the Bible is our sword. It’s our best offense, our best defense. But when we misinterpret the truth, we’re abusing the Bible.

When I was in college, I wanted to be Joshua. Every time there was an altar call, I responded. Why? Because I didn’t want to leave whatever gift God wanted to give me at the altar.

The Bible comes alive only when we actively obey it.

we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us the gladdest?…I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing.”20 I might even add, it’s a God thing. If there is a lesson to be learned from Eric

It’s trusting God’s heart even when we can’t see His hand. It’s understanding that sometimes the obstacle is the way!

Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.

Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus coined the Latin phrase vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. Translation: “Bidden or not bidden, God is here.

Sixth, tough conversations get tougher the longer you wait. I tend to avoid conflict, but I’ve come to realize that I’m not doing anybody any favors when I do so.

Quiet is a think tank of the soul.”17 Simply put, God often speaks loudest when we’re quietest.