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In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day


Mark Batterson has taken a somewhat obscure couple of Bible passages and made a whole book about it. Yes, he's that good. The book is called In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day. The subtitle is How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars.

The story has to do with one of King David's mighty men, a man by the name of Benaiah. There was this one time when he chased a lion into a snowy pit. Then he killed the lion. End of story. If you're looking for more details, you won't find any. But if you combine that with other references that tell us about Benaiah becoming the leader of ol' Dave's army, and you can can start to put together a few details.

Benaiah was one bad dude. And you can be too. That's what Mark tells us....sort of. Even though there isn't much to the story, Mark does a fantastic job of inspiring us to embrace the tough times in life and realize that God has many plans for us. Only some of the experiences will be filled with rainbows and ponies. Some of them will involve snowy pits and lions, at least metaphorically.

One might imagine this to be a self-help book, but trust me when I say that Mark is not blowing smoke. Some of the gems in here include;

"In the beginning, the Spirit of God was hovering over the chaos. And nothing has changed. God is still hovering over chaos."


"God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want t get where God wants you to go."


"To the infinite all finites are equal."


I could list more, but you're probably wanting to read the book by now. Yeah, my reviews will do that to you.

I also enjoyed that each chapter ended with a review. It was as if Mark wanted to save you time from underlining great quotes and so he pre-selected what to love. 'What's that, you got something totally different out of that chapter? Here's what you should have highlighted.' Seriously, though, it did provide good highlight material.

I received this book from my good friends at Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing. They ask me to say something, but don't tell me what to say. They're kind like that.

You can check out this book for purchase by clicking here.
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