The Circle Maker

The Circle Maker (Zondervan, 2011)

Mark Batterson, lead pastor at National Community Church in Washington, DC, wrote The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears in 2011.  Mark’s stated purpose in writing The Circle Maker is to “show you how to claim God-given promises, pursue God-ordained dreams, and seize God-ordained opportunities.”  Drawing circles begins with discerning God’s will, the goal being to glorify God.  As you discern what to circle in prayer and spell out your prayers with specificity, eventually it will spell God’s glory.  God will answer at some point, and His answers are not limited by your requests.  That means you can live with holy anticipation and pray with holy confidence.

Pastor Batterson emphasizes that prayer solving, rather than problem solving, wins the day.  Consistency and intensity are essential to praying.  And after you pray through, you need to praise through, even if God doesn’t answer the way you want or in the time you want.  Ultimately, the size of your prayer comes down to the size of your God.  Your impossible prayer is an easy answer for a mighty God.  Far greater than your capability to receive is God’s capacity to give.  God always provides just enough just in time.  Nothing is too big- or too small- for God.  Sometimes God gets in the way to show us the way.  Divine detours take us to the miracles we need, but don’t necessarily want.

When drawing prayer circles begins to feel long and boring,  because answers don’t seem to be forth coming, Mark encourages us to stop, draw, and pray.  Pray primes us, putting us in a spiritual frame of mind and sanctifying our expectations.  Staring the day in prayer is the best way to establish a daily rhythm in order to have a daily relationship with God.  To break the faith barrier, we need to press in and pray through.  Goal-setting is a great way of simultaneously praying hard, thinking long, and dreaming big.  Each prayer is precious to God and sealed by Him.  The end of a prayer is the beginning of a dream, the beginning of a miracle, the beginning of a promise.

 

 

 

The Circle Maker

Divine detours

” . . . divine detours often get us where God wants us to go.”- Mark Batterson

“Don’t be afraid.  Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today.  The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again.  The Lord himself will fight for you.  Just stay calm.”- Exodus 14:13-14 (NIV)

Mark Batterson concludes Chapter 11 of The Circle Maker by noting we can get as angry as Balaam (Numbers 22) when we can’t get to where we want to go.  We don’t welcome God’s divine detours.  However, as Mark points out, the real miracle in Balaam’s story isn’t his talking donkey.  The real miracle is God loving us enough to get in our way when we’re stubbornly trying to go the wrong way.

One component of praying hard is persisting in prayer when the answer we get isn’t the one we want, yet choosing to believe God has a better plan.  Mark emphasizes the importance of praying for open as well as closed doors:

“Quite frankly, we love it when God opens doors for us!  When God slams a door in our face?  Not so much!  But you can’t half-circle the promise.  It’s a package deal.  You can’t pray for open doors if you aren’t willing to accept closed doors, because one leads to the other.”

Mark states that God has us right where He wants us when we have no idea where to go or what to do.  Trusting that God will fight our battles for us enables us to take our hands off the challenges we face and put those challenges in God’s hands.

Today’s question: Following your ministry downsizing or vocation loss, what divine detours have produced unexpected blessings?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Thinking long”

 

 

Divine detours