Going All In: One Decision Can Change Everything by Batterson Mark

Author:Batterson, Mark [Batterson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780310337881
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2013-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

If you don’t hold out on God, I can promise you this: God will not hold out on you. But it’s all or nothing.

It’s all of you for all of Him.

No Sacrifice

Let me put my cards on the table.

I don’t think anyone has ever sacrificed anything for God. If you get back more than you gave up, have you sacrificed anything at all? The eternal reward always outweighs the temporal sacrifice. At the end of the day, Judgment Day, our only regret will be whatever we didn’t give back to God.

This may seem counterintuitive, but I’m convinced it’s true: the key to self-fulfillment is self-denial. Self-denial is shorthand for delayed gratification. And by delay, I don’t mean days or months or years. I mean a lifetime. Our delayed gratification on earth translates into eternal glory in heaven.

The selfish part of us has an allergic reaction to the word deny. It’s tough to do when we live in the lap of luxury. We don’t just tolerate indulgence in our culture. We celebrate it. But the fundamental problem with indulgence is that enough is never enough. The more we indulge ourselves in food or sex or the amenities of wealth, the less we will enjoy them. It’s not until we go all in with God that we discover that true joy is only found on the sacrificial side of life.

I cannot prove this quantitatively, but I know it’s true: the more you give away, the more you will enjoy what you have. If you give God the tithe, you’ll enjoy the 90 percent you keep 10 percent more. You’ll also discover that God can do more with 90 percent than you can do with 100 percent. If you double tithe, you’ll enjoy the 80 percent you keep 20 percent more! One of our life goals as a family is to reverse tithe and live off 10 percent while giving away 90 percent. When we get there, I’m confident we’ll enjoy the 10 percent we keep 90 percent more. It’s the sliding scale of joy.

Most of us spend most of our lives accumulating the wrong things. We’ve bought into the consumerist lie that more is more. We mistakenly think that the more we give, the less we’ll have. But in God’s upside-down economy, our logic is backward. You ultimately lose whatever you keep and you ultimately keep whatever you lose for the cause of Christ.

I think of a little rhyme that doubled as a playground rule when I was a kid: finders keepers, losers weepers. It’s the exact opposite in God’s kingdom: finders weepers, losers keepers.

The Rich Young Ruler

On paper, the Rich Young Ruler was the epitome of religiosity. But religiosity and hypocrisy are kissing cousins. In reality, the Rich Young Ruler is the antitype of all in. And his life is a standing warning: if we hold out on God, we’ll miss out on everything God wants to do in us, for us, and through us. Of course, the flip side is true as well.

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