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Overview
Quit holding back. Quit holding out.
It’s time to go all in and all out for God.
The good news is this: If you don’t hold out on God, God won’t hold out on you. If you give everything you have to follow Jesus, you’ll receive amazing spiritual rewards. But this reality also comes with a deeper truth: Nothing belongs to you. Not even you.
In All In: Student Edition, Mark and Parker Batterson explore what going all in can mean for your life, sharing unique illustrations and unforgettable stories, as well as compelling accounts of biblical characters. Throughout, they demonstrate the amazing things that can happen when you surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Mark Batterson writes: “When did we start believing that God wants to send us to safe places to do easy things? Jesus didn’t die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous.”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780310744696 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Zondervan |
| Publication date: | 03/11/2014 |
| Edition description: | Student |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
| Age Range: | 13 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
All In Student Edition
By Mark Batterson
ZONDERVAN
Copyright © 2014 Mark BattersonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-74469-6
CHAPTER 1
PACK YOUR COFFIN
A hundred years ago came a new breed of missionary: one-way missionaries. They'd buy one-way tickets to the mission field without the idea of return. Their suitcases were actual coffins where they packed what little they owned because they knew they wouldn't be returning home. They sailed out of port waving good-bye to life as they knew it.
A. W. Milne was one of those brave missionaries. He set out for the New Hebrides in the South Pacific, knowing full well that the headhunters who lived there had martyred every missionary before him. But Milne did not fear for his life, because he had already died to himself. His coffin was packed. He ended up living with the tribe for thirty-five years and loved every day of it. When he died, tribe members buried him in the middle of their village and inscribed this epitaph on his tombstone:
When he came there was no light.
When he left there was no darkness.
When did we start believing that God wants to send us to safe places to do easy things? That faithfulness is just holding the fort? That playing it safe is actually safe? That radical is anything but normal?
Come on!
Jesus didn't die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous.
It's time to go all in and all out.
Pack your coffin!
CHAPTER 2THE INVERTED GOSPEL
Back in the day, there was an astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus who challenged the belief that the earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus suggested that the sun didn't revolve around the earth, but rather that the earth revolved around the sun. The Copernican Revolution turned the scientific world upside down, and blew a lot of people's minds.
We all need to experience a little Copernican Revolution in our own lives. That change happens once we come to terms with the fact that the world doesn't revolve around us. That's what babies do: let the world feed them and change their diapers. But you have to grow up sometime, physically and spiritually. Of course, that's easier said than done.
When we're born, everything's about us. Anyone and everyone in our presence is there to serve us. It's as if we're alive solely to have people wait on us. And that's an okay mind-set if you're an infant. If you're seventeen, it's a problem!
Heads up: You're not the center of the universe!
All that to say, sinfulness is selfishness. It's placing yourself above all others—your desires, your "needs," your plans—above everyone else. You might still seek God, but you definitely don't seek Him first. And that's the truth. You seek Him second or third or seventh. Even if you sing "Jesus at the center of it all," what you really want to happen is for others to bow down to you because you bow down to Christ. That right there is a sneaky form of selfishness disguised as holiness, but is not truly Jesus centered. It's all about you. It's less about us serving His purposes and more about Him serving our purposes.
I like to call it the inverted gospel.
Who's Following Who
If you walk into most churches, most people think they're following Jesus, but I'm just not convinced. Those people might think that they are following Jesus, when actually they've invited Jesus to follow them. They call Him Savior, but they haven't ever given Him everything or really sacrificed anything significant for Him. Believe me, I used to be one of them. I wanted to go down my own path and have Jesus tag along. I wanted Jesus to follow me, to provide me with what I wanted, and to follow through with my will.
My Copernican Revolution didn't come to me until I was a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Chicago. This question sparked the revolution: Lord, what do You want me to do with my life? This question is a dangerous one to ask God, but not asking it would be ten times more dangerous.
My life became too hectic to control myself. Honestly, I didn't play God very well. Not to mention how tiring it became. I quit trying to "find myself" and decided to seek the Lord first. And I couldn't get enough of His Word! I got up early to pray. I actually fasted for the first time in my life—I really meant business. I had never truly put God first, but this time I did.
On my last day of summer vacation, I woke up at the crack of dawn to walk around and pray. My family and I had taken a vacation at Lake Ida in Alexandria, Minnesota. The cow pasture I walked through may as well have been the backside of the Sinai Desert with a burning bush. God's presence was obvious. Months after first asking God, I finally got an answer from Him. At that moment, I knew what God wanted me to do with my life.
The first day of my sophomore year, I took the first step toward God's plan for me. I walked into the admissions office at the University of Chicago to tell them that I was transferring to a Bible college in Springfield, Missouri to pursue ministry full time. It's safe to say that the guidance counselor thought I was out of my mind. Most of my friends and family thought I was making a mistake too. I was giving up a full-ride scholarship to one of the top-ranked universities in the country. Sometimes it didn't even make sense to me. It was obvious that the most logical thing in the situation would have been to finish my undergrad studies at U of C and then go to seminary after. But that wasn't what I was going to do. I knew what God was telling me to do, and this was my now-or-never moment to show God that I truly did mean business. I knew I needed to quit going with the course of everyday life, push all my chips to the middle of the table, and go all in with God.
Did this decision completely alter my life? Immediately. Did I ever second guess myself? More than once! But I knew that my amazing adventure with Jesus would never begin until I took that step. That day I finally stopped asking Jesus to follow me, and I started following Him.
Let me ask the question: Who's following who?
Are you following Jesus?
Or have you made it your game and asked Jesus to follow you?
Holy Dare
More than a hundred years ago, a bold Brit made a crazy statement that would challenge generations to come: "The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him."
D. L. Moody heard that call first. They weren't empty words that were just words. They messed with his mind and seeped into his soul. That call to complete dedication would define his life. And his life, in turn, defined dedication.
It was Moody's all in moment.
Maybe this is yours?
In The Circle Maker Student Edition, the prequel to this book, you may have read about the importance of prayer. Prayer turns your best efforts into God's best efforts. You've got to pray a circle around the promises of God the same way the Israelites circled Jericho. And you keep circling until He answers. But you can't just pray like it depends on God. You also have to work like it depends on you. You can't just draw the circle. You have to draw a line in the sand.
You are only one decision away from a totally different life. And it may be the toughest decision you'll ever make. But if you have the courage to completely surrender yourself to the freedom Jesus offers, there is no telling what God will do. All bets are off because all bets are on God.
D. L. Moody left a permanent imprint on his generation. Even now, his passion for the gospel continues to influence millions of people through Moody Church, Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers. That's epic.
Moody left an amazing legacy, but it all started with his dedication. It always does. And nothing has changed. The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him. It's still true.
Why not you?
Why not now?
Amazing Things
Before God does the crazy miracles we often hear about in other people's lives, they usually consecrate themselves to God, which means they decide to be 100 percent committed and devoted and dedicated to God.
"Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you."
Here's our ultimate problem: we try to do God's job for Him. We want to do amazing things for God. And that seems cool and noble and all, but we've got it backward. God wants to do amazing things for us. That's His job, not ours. Our job is consecration. That's it. And if we do our job, God will definitely do His.
Here's a taste of what consecration is NOT:
• Going to church once a week like good little boys and girls.
• Daily devotions, done by waking up 4.7 minutes earlier than normal.
• Fasting during Lent. Not even eating chocolate.
• Keeping the Ten Commandments.
• Sharing your faith with friends who need "saving."
• Giving God the tithe.
• Repeating the sinner's prayer. Not even twenty times.
• It's not volunteering for a ministry.
• It's not leading a small group.
• It's not raising your hands when you're singing.
• It's not going on a mission trip.
All of those things are fine things, but that isn't necessarily consecration. It's more than behavior modification. It's more than conformity to some moral code. It's more than just doing good deeds to cancel out the bad. It's something deeper, and much truer.
I want to break that zing you feel when you hear "consecration." It sounds so Christianese, and I bet you've heard a thousand and one sermons about not sinning. The actual word consecrate means to set yourself apart. By definition, consecration demands full devotion. It's taking your butt off Jesus' throne. There's so much to it. It's giving up pure self-interest. It's giving God veto power. It's surrendering all of you to all of Him. It's recognizing that every second of time, every last ounce of energy, and every penny of money is a gift from God and for God. Consecration is an ever-deepening love for Jesus, a childlike trust in the heavenly Father, and a blind obedience to the Holy Spirit. Consecration is a lot more, but let's keep it simple. Here's my personal definition of consecration:
Consecration is going all in and all out for the All in All.
All In
My greatest concern as a pastor is that people can go to church every week of their lives and never go all in with Jesus Christ. They'll follow the rules but never follow Christ. We've cheapened the gospel by allowing people to buy in without selling out (even though Jesus says to sell everything.) We've made it way too convenient, and too comfortable. We've given people just enough Jesus to be bored but not enough to feel the surge of holy adrenaline that courses through your veins when you decide to follow Him no matter what, no matter where, no matter when.
A guy from Denmark named Søren Kierkegaard believed that boredom was the root of all evil. In other words, boredom isn't just boring. It's wrong. You cannot be in the presence of God and be bored at the same time. You just can't be in the will of God and be bored at the same time. If you follow in the footsteps of Jesus, it will be anything but boring.
The choice is yours—consecration or boredom? If you don't consecrate and dedicate yourself to Christ, you'll get bored. If you do, you won't. And that is where the battle is won or lost. If you don't go all in, you'll never get into the Promised Land. But if you go all out, God will part the Jordan River so you can cross through on dry ground.
Stop trying to do God's job for Him. You don't have to do amazing things. You can't do amazing things. Amazing always begins with consecration. And just like amazing always begins with consecration, consecration always ends with amazing. I'm telling you! Something crazy good always happens on day two of my fasts.
When you look back on your life, the greatest moments will be the ones where you went all in. It's as true today as it was the day Abraham placed Isaac on the altar, the day Jonathan climbed a cliff to fight the Philistines, and the day Peter got out of the boat and walked on water.
In the pages that follow, you're about to read about some amazing all in moments. They're defining moments in Scripture. I'll also share stories of ordinary people who're making an extraordinary difference with their lives. Hopefully, they'll inspire you to risk more, sacrifice more, and dream more.
The longer I follow Jesus, the more convinced I am of this simple truth: God doesn't do what God does because of us. God does what God does in spite of us. All you have to do is stay out of the way.
Stay humble. Stay hungry.
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'll empty yourself, if you'll die to self, you'll be a different person by the time you reach the last page of this book. As I wrote this book, I prayed that God would rewrite your life. I also prayed that God would rewrite history through your life!
CHAPTER 3DRAW THE LINE
"Take up your cross daily, and follow me."
Luke 9:23 NLT
In ad 44, King Herod ordered that James the Greater be thrust through with a sword. He was the first of the apostles to be martyred. And so the bloodbath began. Luke was hung by the neck from an olive tree in Greece. Doubting Thomas was stabbed with a pine spear, tortured with red-hot plates, and burned alive in India. In ad 54, the proconsul of Hierapolis had Philip tortured and crucified because his wife converted to Christianity while listening to Philip preach. Philip continued to preach while on the cross. Matthew was stabbed in the back in Ethiopia. Bartholomew was flogged to death in Armenia. James the Just was thrown off the top of the temple in Jerusalem. After surviving the one-hundred-foot fall, he was clubbed to death by a mob. Simon the Zealot was crucified by the governor of Syria in ad 74. Judas Thaddeus was beaten to death with sticks in Mesopotamia. Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot, was stoned to death and then beheaded. And Peter was crucified upside down at his own request. John the Beloved is the only disciple to die of natural causes, but that's only because he survived his own execution. When a cauldron of boiling oil couldn't kill John, Emperor Diocletian exiled him to the island of Patmos, where he lived until his death in ad 95.
Every Christian living in a first-world country in the twenty-first century should read Foxe's Book of Martyrs. It's a reality check that puts our first-world problems into perspective. This sets the standard for sacrifice. Our risks seem rather tame and most of our sacrifices seem pretty lame by comparison.
Our normal is so subnormal that normal seems radical. To the first-century disciples, normal and radical were synonyms. We've turned them into antonyms.
In Luke 9:23–24, Jesus threw down the gauntlet with his disciples. He wanted to see who was in and who was out. Or more accurately, who was all in.
"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it."
The disciples took that literally. We can at least take it figuratively. I'm not suggesting we will die physically for Christ, but we must die to ourselves. If Jesus hung on His cross, we can certainly carry ours! It's our highest privilege and greatest responsibility.
Anything less than the complete surrender of our lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ is robbing God of the glory He demands and deserves. It's also cheating ourselves out of the eternal reward God has reserved for us.
We won't come alive, in the truest and fullest sense, until we die to self. And we won't find ourselves until we lose ourselves in the cause of Christ.
It's time to ante up.
It's time to go all in.
If Jesus is not Lord of all, then Jesus is not Lord at all.
It's all or nothing.
It's now or never.
The Americanized Gospel
We have Americanized the gospel and spiritualized the American Dream. Am I right or am I right? But neither one comes close to the true gospel. When you try to add something to the gospel, you're not enhancing it. You're ruining it! The gospel, in its purest form, is as good as it gets.
We want God on our terms, but that's just not how we "get" God. That's how we get false, obnoxious religion. You only get a relationship with God on His terms. It's not like we have any abilities (like making time stand still) that God needs. God is perfect and loving, so just take what He offers!
The apostle Paul defines the deal that is on the table this way:
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from All In Student Edition by Mark Batterson. Copyright © 2014 Mark Batterson. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Now or Never
1 Pack Your Coffin 11
2 The Inverted Gospel 13
3 Draw the Line 20
All In
4 Charge 33
5 This Is Only a Test 38
6 Burn the Ships 46
7 Crash the Party 58
All Out
8 Rim Huggers 69
9 Climb the Cliff 74
10 Build the Ark 84
11 Grab Your Oxgoad 93
All in All
12 SDG 105
13 Throw Down Your Staff 112
14 Take a Stand 125
15 Thirty Pieces of Silver 135
All or Nothing
16 The Idol that Provokes to Jealousy 149
17 One Decision Away 159
Acknowledgments 161
Notes 163