of spiritual growth. Show me the size
of your dream and I’ll show you the
size of your God. We need dreams
that are destined to fail without
divine intervention. That’s how we
learn to experience faith. That’s how
we learn to hit our knees and live
in raw dependence upon God. At
the end of the day, accomplishing
a dream isn’t the primary goal. The
primary goal is who you become in
the process!
believe in us more than we believe
in ourselves because they see our
God-given potential. That’s precisely
what Jesus did. All the Pharisees saw
was present-tense problems. Jesus
saw future-tense potential. We should
follow suit.
In Whisper, you encourage your
readers to “be like Jesus” in the sense
that He saw potential in unlikely
places and in unlikely people. That
seems a tall order. What are some
practical ways we can begin to
accomplish this?
Mark: Jesus was able to see past
people’s problem and spot their
potential. So when we look with
God’s eyes, with God’s heart that’s
what we should see. We don’t ignore
the problems because that’s isn’t
doing anybody any favors, but we
speak words of encouragement as
God leads us. In the language of
people, I outline the Johari window.
The third quadrant is called the blind
spot quadrant. It consists of what
you can’t see about yourself, but
others can see about you. This is
where we need people who have
permission to speak the truth in love.
This is where we need people to point
out problems we aren’t aware of.
This is where we need people who
16 Solutions
Mark Batterson serves as lead pastor
of National Community Church in
Washington, DC – one church with
eight locations. NCC also owns and
operates the largest coffeehouse
on Capitol Hill. Mark holds a Doctor
of Ministry degree from Regent
University and is the New York Times
bestselling author of 11 books,
including The Circle Maker, In a Pit
with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Wild
Goose Chase and has recently
released Whisper and Play the Man.