The Planet of Cham

I am reading a book that I borrowed from my mentor. It is called "In a pit with a lion on a snowy day." It is based on the life of a guy named "Benaiah." In 2nd Samual 23, you can follow his short mentioned life on how he chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day and won. The author points out that he took a huge risk and it paid off. Because of that act & a few others, he became the head of guard for King David. So anyway, I had the book for a few weeks but just cracked it open on the way home from Seattle. Can I say the book is phenomenal! Well..at least for me. The book was written by a guy who planted a church in a theater in D.C. 

     The Book is about seizing God's future, but there is a twist. He is not talking about when everything is going well...he states: "What if the life you really want, and the future God wants for you, is hiding right now in your biggest problem, your worst failure...your greatest fear?" That pretty much gives you some insight. He points out how God takes our craziest problems, greatest fears, and life-wrecking failures and turns them into an incredible future and an abundant life. Go buy the book, I would definitely type the whole book out on here, but geez..im can't focus that long. So I close with some of my underlined quotes (yeah..i have to buy my mentor a new book cuz I marked his up).

Quotes:

"God is in the resume-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepares us for future opportunities. But those God-given opportunities often come disguised as man eating lions. And how we react when we encounter those lions will determine our destiny. We can cower in fear and run away from our greatest challenges. Or we can chase our God-ordained destiny by seizing the God-ordained opportunity." (pg. 14)

"Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what's wrong. We're called to chase lions". (pg. 15)

"There is an old aphorism: 'No guts, no glory.' When we don't have the guts to step out in faith and chase lions, the God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him." (pg. 15)

"Lion chasers are always on the lookout for God-ordained opportunities." (pg. 15)

"I have a simple definition of success: Do the Best you can with what you have where you are. In essence, success is making the most of every opportunity. Spiritual maturity is seeing and seizing God-ordained opportunities. Think of every opportunity as God's gift to you. What you do with those opportunities is your gift to God. I'm absolutely convinced that our greatest regrets in life will be missed opportunities." (pg. 17)

"Maybe that is why God sometimes invites us to defy impossible odds. Maybe it is one way He can show us His omnipotence. Maybe God allows the odds to be stacked against us so He can reveal more of His glory." (pg. 23)

"But maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine proportions. Maybe faith is trusting God no matter how impossible the odds are. Maybe our impossible situations are opportunities to experience a new dimension of God's glory." (pg. 24)

"How you think about God will determine who you become." (pg. 28)

"Our problems seem really big because our God seems really small. In fact, we reduce God to the size of our biggest problem." (pg. 26)

"You know what the greatest tragedy in life is? It is someone whose god gets smaller and smaller with each passing day." (pg. 29)

"God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go." (pg. 30)

"Now here's the catch: Sometimes His itinerary entails coming face to face with a lion in a pit on a snowy day. But when you find yourself in those challenging circumstances, you need to know what God is ordering your footsteps. You can have a sense of destiny because you know that God has considered every contingency in your life, and He always has your best interest at heart. And that sense of destiny, rooted in the sovereignty of God, helps you pray the unthinkable and attempt the impossible." (pg. 30)

Enjoy - Cham