The Circle Maker (Enhanced Edition): Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears

by Mark Batterson

The favor of Him who dwells in the burning bush is a unique dimension of God’s favor that enables you to stand before those who would naturally stand in opposition to you, but they supernaturally step aside or stand behind you. That is how the favor of Him who dwells in the burning bush manifested itself when Moses stood before Pharaoh. It gave a slave, on whom there was a warrant out for his arrest, the boldness to declare the promise God had given him at the burning bush: “Let my people go.”

I learned that we don’t have to be afraid of the enemy’s attacks. They are counterproductive when we counteract them with prayer.

The more opposition we experience, the harder we have to pray, and the harder we have to pray, the more miracles God does.

They formed a prayer circle, and when it was Harry Ironside’s turn, he circled Psalm 50:10 with a simple Honi-like prayer: “Lord, we know you own the cattle on a thousand hills. Please sell some of them, and send us the money.”

While I’ve certainly gone through tough financial times, I’ve also experienced enough miracles to know that when God gives a vision, He makes provision.

He has this habit of waiting until the very last moment to answer our prayer to see if we will chicken out or pray through.

If we chicken out, we miss out on the miracle; if we pray through, God will come through, but it may well be at the last moment possible.

God loves showing up in unexpected ways at unexpected times.

It may seem like God is nowhere to be seen, but maybe God is setting the stage for a miracle.

This I know for sure: God is always stage right. He’s ready to make His grand entrance. All He is waiting for is your prayer cue.

When God provided the miraculous manna for the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness, it says He provided “enough for that day.” Just enough. The language describing God’s provision is extremely precise. Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered a little had enough. God provided just enough. Then He gave them a curious command: “Do not keep any of it until morning.” So why does God provide just enough? Why would God forbid leftovers? What’s wrong with taking a little initiative and gathering enough manna for two days or two weeks? Here’s my take on the manna miracle: The manna was a daily reminder of their daily dependence on God. God wanted to cultivate their daily dependence by providing for their needs on a daily basis. Nothing has changed. Isn’t that the point of the Lord’s Prayer? “Give us today our daily bread.”

We want a one-week or one-month or one-year supply of God’s provision, but God wants us to drop to our knees every day in raw dependence on Him.

And God knows that if He provided too much too soon, we’d lose our spiritual hunger. He knows we’d stop trusting in our Provider ...

One of our fundamental misunderstandings of spiritual maturity is thinking that it should result in self-sufficiency. It’s the exact opposite. The goal isn’t in...

Our desire for self-sufficiency is a subtle expression of our sinful nature. It’s a desire to get to a place where we don’t need God, don’t need faith, and don’t need to pray. ...

God will keep putting you in situations that stretch your faith, and as your faith stretches, so do your dreams.

If you pass the test, you graduate to bigger and bigger dreams. And it won’t get easier; it’ll get harder. It won’t get less complicated; it’ll get more complicated. But complications are evidence of God’s blessing. And if it’s from God, then it’s a holy complication.

You need to come to terms with this two-sided truth: The blessings of God won’t just bless you; they w...

Sin will complicate your life in negative ways. The blessings of God will complicate y...

Blessings will complicate your life, but they will complicate your life in ways God wants it complicated.

A few years ago, I prayed a prayer that changed my life. I believe it can change your life as well, but it takes tremendous courage to pray it like you mean it. And you have to count the cost. Lord, complicate my life.

My portfolio as a pastor is twofold: (1) comfort the afflicted and (2) afflict the comfortable. It’s the second half of the job description that is more difficult.

Let’s be honest: many, if not most, of our prayers are selfish in nature. We pray as if God’s chief objective is our personal comfort. It’s not. God’s chief objective is His glory. And sometimes His gain involves a little pain.

Praying hard is hard because you can’t just pray like it depends on God; you also have to work like it depends on you. You can’t just be willing to pray about it; you also have to be willing to do something about it. And this is where many of us get stuck spiritually. We’re willing to pray right up to the point of discomfort, but no further. We’re willing to pray right up to the point of inconvenience, but no further. Praying hard is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but that is when you know you’re getting close to a miracle!

The reason God doesn’t answer our prayers isn’t that we aren’t praying hard enough; the reason, more often than not, is that we aren’t willing to work hard enough.

Praying hard is synonymous with w...

Think of praying hard and working hard as concentric circles. It’s the way we double-circle our dreams and His promises. There comes a moment, after you have prayed through, when you have to start doing something about it. You have to t...

Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

Praying earnestly literally means “praying with a prayer.” It’s more than words. It means acting on your prayers because you expect an answer.

prophets of Baal; he challenged them to a sacrifice showdown. He didn’t tell the widow of Zarephath to pray; he told her to bake a loaf of bread with her last batch of dough. And in a remake miracle, Elijah didn’t pray for God to part the Jordan River; he struck it with his rolled-up cloak. Each miracle was precipitated by a concrete step of faith: setting up a sacrifice on Mount Carmel, baking a loaf of bread, and striking the Jordan River. And God honored those steps of faith by sending fire to consume Elijah’s sacrifice, multiplying that ...

One reason many of us never get an answer to our prayers is that all we do is pray. You can’t just pray like Elijah; you have to act like Elijah. You can’t just get on yo...

But if you want God to move, sometimes you have to make a move.

When the Israelites were on the verge of entering the Promised Land, God commanded the priests to not just look toward the sea but to step into the river. It’s one of the most counterintuitive commands in Scripture. “When you reach the banks of the Jordan River, take a few steps into the river.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly like getting my feet wet. I’d much rather have God part the river, and then I’ll step into the miracle. We want God to go first. That way we don’t get our feet wet. But it’s often our unwillingness to take a step of faith and get our feet wet that keeps us from experiencing a miracle. Some people spend their entire lives on the eastern shore of the Jordan waiting for God to part the river while God waits for them to get their feet wet.

After you have prayed hard, you need to swallow hard and take a flying leap of faith. That’s how you circle the miracle.

Many people never see God part the Jordan River in their lives because their feet are firmly planted on dry ground. We’re waiting for God to make a move while God is waiting for us to make a move. We say to God, “Why don’t you part this river?” And God says to us, “Why don’t you get your feet wet?” But if you make a move, you’ll see God move. And He can move heaven and earth.

The key to getting out of the boat is hearing the voice of God. If you’re going to get out of the boat in the middle of a lake in the middle of the night, you better make sure that Jesus said, “Come.” But if Jesus says, “Come,” you better not stay in the boat.

Have you ever had a moment, as Peter did, when God called you to do something that seemed unsafe? Your response to those promptings will make you or break you. It may seem unsafe or insane, but if you stay in the boat, you’ll never walk on water.

When God makes something happen, we can thank Him because we can see it. When God keeps something from happening, we don’t know how to thank Him because we don’t know what He did. But someday God will reveal the invisible answers, and we’ll praise Him for them.

Praying hard starts with listening to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. And if you are faithful in the small things and obey those little promptings, then God can use you to do big things.

So why does Jesus do it this way? He could have provided the four-drachma coin in a more conventional manner, but He tells Peter to go fish for it. I think there are a few reasons. First of all, God loves doing different miracles in different ways because it reveals different dimensions of His power and personality. But I wonder if the biggest reason is that Jesus wanted to see if Peter would trust Him in the realm where Peter had the greatest professional proficiency and self-sufficiency. As a professional fisherman, fishing was the one area where Peter would have been most tempted to think he didn’t need Jesus. He thought he knew every trick of the fishing trade, but Jesus wanted to show him a new trick. We’ll call it “the coin in the mouth of the fish” trick. We know how the story ends. Peter catches a fish and cashes in a smelly coin. But if you’ve caught hundreds of thousands of fish, none of which has ever had a coin in its mouth, how do you have the faith to believe that the next one will have a four-drachma coin? It seems impossible, doesn’t it? But there is only one way to find out if God will keep His promise: Obey the crazy prompting.

Now let me ask you a question: Where do you feel like you need God least? Where are you most proficient, most sufficient? Maybe that is precisely where God wants you to trust Him to do something beyond your ability. It’s just when you think you have God all figured out that He pulls the coin out of the fish’s mouth. And it is God’s strange and mysterious ways that renew our awe, our trust, and our dependence.

Let me spell it out: If you want to see crazy miracles, obey the crazy promptings of the Holy Spirit. Grab your pole, head to the lake, row the boat, cast the line, set the hook, and reel it in. As you obey the promptings by casting your line, you never...

Some of the hardest moments in life are when you’ve prayed hard but the answer is no and you don’t know why. And you may never know why. But that is the litmus test of trust. Do you trust that God is for you even when He doesn’t give you what you asked for? Do you trust that He has reasons beyond your reason? Do you trust that His plan is better than yours?

The hardest thing about praying hard is enduring unanswered prayers. If you don’t guard your heart, unresolved anger toward God can undermine faith. Sometimes your only option is trust because it is the last card in your hand, but it’s the wild card. If you can trust God when the answer is no, you’re likely to give Him praise when the answer is yes. You need to press in and press on. By definition, praying hard is praying when it’s hard to pray. And it’s the hard times that teach us to pray hard. But if you keep praying through, the peace that transcends understanding will guard your heart and your mind.

So sometimes the answer to our prayers is no and you’ll never understand why. But here’s some good news: What we perceive as unanswered prayers are often the greatest answers.

Our heavenly Father is far too wise and loves us far too much to give us everything we ask for.

Someday we’ll thank God for the prayers He didn’t answer as much or more than the ones He did.

Our frustration will turn to celebration if we patiently and persi...

But I’ve learned a valuable lesson about unanswered prayer: Sometimes God gets in the way to show us the way.

The real miracle in this story isn’t the talking donkey; the real miracle is a God who loves us enough to get in the way when we’re going the wrong way. These are the miracles we don’t want, but these are the miracles we need. And when I look back on my own life, I’m grateful for the moments God got in the way of my plans and rerouted me. What seems like an unanswered prayer means that God has a better answer.