The Power of If: Excerpts from If
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About this ebook
Mark Batterson
Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC. One church with multiple locations, NCC owns and operates Ebenezers Coffeehouse, the Miracle Theatre, and the DC Dream Center. NCC is currently developing a city block into the Capital Turnaround; the 100,000-square-foot space will include an event venue, a child development center, a mixed-use marketplace, and a coworking space. Mark holds a doctor of ministry degree from Regent University and is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books including The Circle Maker, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Wild Goose Chase, Play the Man, Whisper, and recently released Win the Day. Mark and his wife, Lora, have three children and live on Capitol Hill.
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The Power of If - Mark Batterson
© 2015 by Mark Batterson
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
This book is excerpted from If, published in 2015.
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0411-7
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
The Proprietors are represented by Fedd & Company, Inc.
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 2
Copyright Page 3
1. The Power of If 5
2. Who If 14
3. Bold Predictions 23
4. I Dwell in Possibility 31
5. Change Agents 40
6. One Last If 50
Notes 57
About the Authort 60
Back Ads 61
Back Cover 64
1
The Power of If
Kiss my wife on top of the Eiffel Tower.
It was a picture perfect day in Paris. After climbing 669 steps to the second floor, we hitched a very scary elevator ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Then, with France as my witness, I kissed my wife. Life goal #102? Check!
And it all started with if.
I’ll explain, but first, let’s have a little fun. How was that goal accomplished? Well, that depends on how you look at it. You could simply say that I puckered my lips, took an approach path from the left, closed my eyes at the last second, and voilá—a kiss in France, not to be confused with a French kiss.
That’s how it happened, but there’s more to it than that. That simple kiss was the result of a rather complex itinerary. We flew out of Dulles International Airport on an Airbus A320, made it through French customs, took the regional RER train to Paris, hailed a taxi whose driver enjoyed saying mademoiselle a little too much for my taste, and got walking directions from a French lady with a dog in her purse. Not even kidding! Classic as a croissant! But that too is just a fraction of the story.
You could argue that our Eiffel Tower kiss originated the moment I set life goal #102. And that’s partially true. You won’t accomplish 100 percent of the goals you don’t set. But the true origin of our kiss traces all the way back to the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris when more than a hundred artists submitted plans to design the centerpiece, the masterpiece of the Exposition Universelle.
The winner was an engineer named Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who proposed a 984-foot tower, the tallest building in the world at that time. Skeptics scoffed at his design, calling it useless and artless. Eiffel called her La Dame De Fer—the Iron Lady.
It was Gustave Eiffel’s if that made our romantic rendezvous atop the