Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

I completed my thirty-fifth trip around the sun yesterday. What a ride. I can't believe I'm 35 years-old today. I'm halfway to seventy. I'm halfway between thirty and forty. I do believe that age is relative. I honestly think I'll die young at a ripe old age because I still feel like a kid. I feel better physically than a did five or ten years ago. And I think I'm getting more curious as I age. I'm interested in everything. I think one of my greatest fears has always been staying the same! I always need to be growing and stretching to feel good about life. I just thought I'd take some time to write a prayer of thanksgiving to God. How do you capture the blessings of thirty-five years in a single prayer? I'm grateful that I was born where I was born and when I was born. I'm grateful for my family. My mom and dad believe in me more than I believe in me, for which I am grateful. I think my bedrock confidence in God and my sense of destiny come from parents who instilled that in me as a child. I'm grateful for a family that loved God, read me Bible stories, and prayed with me every night. I still remember memorizing Bible verses on one of our vacations together. I remember going with my dad to clean the church when he was the part-time janitor and trustee. As I look further back, I'm also grateful for grandparents who set a spiritual standard. I think I am where I am in answer to their prayers for me. Life turns on a dime. I look back and think about how where we have lived defined so much--who my neighborhood friends were, what school I attended, my circle of relationships. I look back and see how God guided when we move to Greendale, Wisconsin and Naperville, Illinois. I love those two places. We could have so easily moved someplace else and life would have been so different. In that sense, life is fragile. But God is the one who had ordered my steps in ways I never could have. I thank God for Corrie Ten Boom. It was after watching the movie about her life, The Hiding Place, that I put my faith in Christ. Who would have ever thought that a woman in a concentration camp in 1944 could live a five-year old boy living in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1975 to Christ!I think God for Alexandria, Minnesota. Our family vacationed there every summer for eighteen years. It was on a prayer walk through a cow pasture in Alexandria, Minnesota that I felt called to ministry. It was my Damascus Road minus the lighting, horse, and voice. But I heard the inaudible yet unmistakable voice of God loud and clear. My life turned on a dime. I'm grateful for the atheletic abilities God gave me. So much of my life was defined by sports and I learned so much that has served me in ministry--lessons about performing under stress, team work, how to control the competitive drive, how to win, how to lose. I think most of us, when we reach thirty-five, could have never guessed we've be where we are ten or fifteen years ago. Life is full of surprises. I would have never put DC on the radar screen. Now that I live here I can't imagine living anyplace else. I feel like I'm living my dream--plant a church and see it grow from the ground up. I can honestly say that I wouldn't want to be anyplace else doing anything else with anyone else. It's not always easy. I definitely need vacations! But I don't want easy. I want to leverage my life and make it count for the kingdom. I have an interesting feeling at I turn this corner of my life. I think the word is convergence. I feel like everything to this point has prepared me for what's next. I feel like I have the potential to be a much better leader and teacher and writer because of everything I've experienced in the first thirty-five years. Part of life's inherent excitement to me is not knowing where I'll end up. I just pray that I'd grow in my humility, purity, and intensity. I genuinely want to give God everything I've got. I want to feel like I feel after a great workout--exhausted and energized. I'm grateful for my family--my wife and my kids. I feel so blessed to have them as a husband and father. I want to love them more and return the blessing they have been to me. The longer I live the more I realize that the quality of those relationships determines the quality of life.I'm grateful for my staff family. I love doing life and doing ministry with them. I'm grateful for my church family. We are a pretty ecclectic and unique group. And that is part of what makes it so much fun. As I look back on this year I'll never forget two experience. I'll never forget the last day of April. I spent the day out at Haines Point. I think I stopped drifting that day because of some of the decisions I made. The piece of driftwood I picked up was a spiritual anchor. And I'll always look back on my first experiment with forty days of prayer and fasting as life-changing. God changed my outlook on life during those forty days. I can't wait to do it again! I'm excited about doing a New Year's Fast in January, a Lent Fast pre-Easter, and another forty days of prayer and fasting next Summer. I think they are key to maintaining spiritual momentum. I feel like I could write all day and only scratch the surface, but it does my soul good to keep these things in my consciousness. I'm beginning this day with a profound sense of gratitude to God for being my God and making me who I am. I don't always like me, but that's when I can take my eyes off of me and focus them on Him. Lord, thanks for all of the above and the millions of small and large blessings that have escaped me. I believe that in eternity you'll reveal all the ways that you blessed me and I was totally unaware of it. I can't wait. Until then...I'll just keep taking laps around the sun.