Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

by Mark Batterson

As you press into God’s presence, old sinful desires die, and new holy desires are birthed in your spirit.

I love God’s answer: “I will be with you.”

God is with us, and God is for us.

Romans 8:31 states, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Don’t seek answers; seek God. And the answers will seek you.

When God gives a vision, He always makes provision.

“Wait for the gift my Father promised.” ACTS 1:4

But God often takes things away to give them back so that we know they are gifts to be stewarded for His glory.

But waiting is part of praying, and praying is a form of waiting. Prayer will sanctify our waiting, so we wait with holy expectancy. And waiting doesn’t delay God’s plans and purposes. It always expedites them. Waiting is the fast track to whatever it is that God wants to do in our lives. And we’ll discover that on God’s timeline, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Sometimes God’s no simply means not yet.

The word of the LORD came to me. JEREMIAH 1:4

If you want to find your voice, you need to hear the voice of God.

We live in a culture in which everybody wants to be heard, but many people have nothing to say. Don’t worry about building a platform. If you listen to God, people will listen to you. Why? Because you’ll have something to say! And God will give you a platform to speak from.

When you open your Bible, God opens His mouth. The surest way to get a word from the Lord is by getting into God’s Word. God will speak to you. Then God will speak through you.

If you want to find your voice, you need to hear the voice of God.

“I wish that all the LORD’S people were prophets.” NUMBERS 11:29

Prayer isn’t just the way we cultivate our own potential; prayer is the way we recognize potential in others.

And your words have the potential to change lives by helping people discover their identity and destiny in Jesus Christ.

You don’t have to influence thousands of lives to make a difference. Maybe you’re called to influence one person who will influence thousands. You sow into their life so they can reap a harvest. The fruit of their life is your reward.

“It is more noble53 to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”

God used them to speak the right word at the right time. God gets all the glory for everything He does in us and through us, but there are people along the way who get some credit as well.

Prayer is the way we recognize potential in others.

Pray without ceasing. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:17 NASB

1 Timothy 2:1: “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people.”

If you are a worrier by nature, I have good news for you. You have tremendous prayer potential. The apostle Paul writes, “Don’t worry about anything;56 instead, pray about everything.” If you worry about everything, you’ll have a much higher likelihood of praying without ceasing if you simply

learn to turn your worries into prayers. The Holy Spirit can redeem your anxious thoughts by using them as prayer triggers. Think of worry as a prayer alarm. Every time it goes off, you put it to prayer. And when you do, you’ll discover that your anxieties will evaporate like early morning fog. So quit wasting your worries. Redeem them by recycling them. Turn your worries into prayers!

The reason most people don’t feel intimacy with God is that they don’t have a daily prayer rhythm.

God wants a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute relationship with you.

but remember that the key is giving something up and replacing it with prayer.

Create a prayer list or begin journaling your prayers.

If you want God to do something new in your life, you cannot keep doing the same old thing. My advice is simple: do something different. And you’ll see what a difference it makes!

Change of pace + Change of place = Change of perspective

“This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” MATTHEW 17:21 KJV

There are times when circling something in prayer isn’t enough. We need to double-circle it with prayer and fasting. Matthew 17:21 tells us that certain miracles only happen in

response to prayer and fasting.

If we want to hear the voice of God, we’ve got to get rid of the white noise in our lives.

So we must establish a start date and an end date and then figure out what we’re fasting for.

Or we can fast simply to seek the heart of God.

When we work out, we break down our muscle fibers so they can be built back up even stronger. In much the same way, fasting breaks down our pride, our bondages, our will. It helps us break bad habits and build good habits. Fasting is the way we break down our spiritual calluses and regain sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

Maybe there is something you’ve been praying for that you need to start fasting for. You need to take it to the next level.

If you want to break the sin habit, you’ve got to establish a prayer habit.

“Well done, good and faithful servant!” MATTHEW 25:23

I wonder how many of our prayer requests are within our own power to answer? Yet we ask God to do what we can do ourselves. And then we wonder why God doesn’t respond.

Pray about everything. Then pray some more. But at some point, we have to quit praying and start acting. One of the great mistakes we make is asking God to do for us what God wants us to do for Him.

we should be more known for what we’re for than what we’re against.

Don’t just pray about it; do something about it.

Sing to the LORD a new song. PSALM 96:1

Because sacred routines become empty rituals if we do them out of left-brain memory instead of right-brain imagination.

One of the great dangers we face spiritually is learning how and forgetting why.

If we aren’t careful, we aren’t really worshiping God; we’re just lip-synching.