Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

by Mark Batterson

And when you pray to God regularly, irregular things happen on a regular basis.

Like a grandmaster who strategically positions chess pieces on a chessboard, God is always preparing us and positioning us for divine appointments. And prayer is the way we discern the next move. The plans of God are only revealed in the presence of God. We don’t get our marching orders until we get on our knees! But if we hit our knees, God will take us places we never imagined going by paths we didn’t even know existed.

If you establish a prayer routine, your life will be anything but routine. You will go to places, do things, and meet people you have no business going to, doing, or meeting. You don’t need to seek opportunity. All you have to do is seek God. And if you seek God, opportunity will seek you.

Who you know — the heavenly Father — is far more important than what you know.

Don’t worry about meeting the right people. If you meet with God, God will make sure you meet the right people at the right time.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you don’t apply for a promotion or trade business cards, but seek first His kingdom. You’ve got to do God’s will God’s way.

Stay humble. Stay patient. Stay focused.

The truth is that we already trust God for the big things; now we need to trust Him for the little things, like healing our cancer, getting us out of debt, helping us conceive, or helping us find our soul mate.

God is great not just because nothing is too big for Him; God is also great because nothing is too small.

Like a proud parent watching their child take their first steps, God rejoices over every baby step. And He can turn those small steps of faith into giant leaps.

“God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time, but it’s up to us to see and seize those opportunities that are all around us all the time.”

God is setting up divine appointments all the time. Only God can make the appointment, but only you can keep the appointment. It’s your job to recognize and respond to the God-ordained opportunities that come your way.

“The world has yet to see5 what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.”

All of us want to do amazing things for God, but that isn’t our job; it is God’s job. Our job is simply to consecrate ourselves by yielding our will to His will. And if we do our job, God will do His job. If we consecrate ourselves to God, amazing things will happen. It’s absolutely inevitable. Consecration always ends in amazing!

We try to do things for God instead of letting God do things for us.

We need to work like it depends on us, but we also need to pray like it depends on God. That’s what consecration is all about. It’s letting God do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And that’s how God gets all the glory.

Consecration is a complete surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. We relinquish everything to God — o...

isn’t about kneeling in strange places at strange times; it’s about the willingness to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Consecration is death to self. I know there is a fear that if we give more of ourselves to God, there will be less of us left, but it’s the exact opposite. It’s not until we die to self that we truly come alive. The more we give to God, the more we have and the more we become. It’s only in losing our lives that we will really find them.

choose to look for what God can do.

Sometimes the purpose of prayer is to get us out of circumstances, but more often than not, the purpose of prayer is to get us through them.

There is a big difference between praying away and praying through.

We’re often so anxious to get out of difficult, painful, or challenging situations that we fail to grow through them. We’re so fixated on getting out of them that we don’t get anything out of them. We fail to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us or cultivate the character God is trying to grow in us. We’re so focused on God changing our circumstances that we never allow God to change us! So instead of ten or twenty years of experience, we have one year of experience repeated ten or twenty times.

Sometimes we need to pray “get me out” prayers. But sometimes we need to pray “get me through” prayers. And we need the dis...

But when our circumstances don’t change, it’s often an indication that God is trying to change us.

As I look back through my journals, I’m able to connect the dots between my prayers and God’s answers. Connecting these dots inspires my faith like nothing else because it paints a picture of God’s faithfulness.

I’ve been amazed at how many people’s prayer lives have been revolutionized by the simple act of journaling. I’m convinced it is the key to consistency and specificity in prayer. And it even adds an element of fun. It turns prayer into a game of watching and waiting to see how God will answer!

Long story short, it took a decade of working like it depended on her and praying like it depended on God for her dream to come true.

When we act in faith, we aren’t risking our reputation; we are risking God’s reputation because He’s the one who made the promise in the first place.

But if we aren’t willing to risk our reputation, we’ll never establish God’s reputation.

Why do we mistakenly think that God is offended by our prayers for the impossible? The truth is that God is offended by anything less! God is offended when we ask Him to do things we can do ourselves. It’s the impossible prayers that honor God because they reveal our faith and allow God to reveal His glory.

The request is not granted simply because of repeated requests. Prayer is answered to preserve God’s good name.

So God doesn’t answer prayer just to give us what we want; God answers prayer to bring glory to His name. The beauty of obedience is this: it relieves us of responsibility. It takes all the pressure off of us and places it squarely on God’s sovereign shoulders.

Sometimes we’re afraid of praying for miracles because we’re afraid that God won’t answer, but the answer isn’t up to us.

The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered simply because they go unasked.

If we genuinely believe God is going to answer our prayer for rain, isn’t that exactly what we would wear? Why not dress for the miracle?

God is honored when we act as if He is going to answer our prayers! And acting as if means acting on our prayers. After hitting our knees, we need to take a small step of faith. And those small steps of faith often turn into giant leaps.

Don’t just pray about your dream; act on it. Act as if God is going to deliver on His promise.

The last two words of Mark’s gospel are “signs following.”

We want God to go first. That way we don’t need to exercise any faith at all. But we’ve got it backward. If we want to see God move, we need to make a move. If it seems like God isn’t moving in our lives, maybe it’s because we aren’t moving. But if we make a move, God will move heaven and earth to honor our faith.

Faith is not a noun; it’s a verb — an action verb. The greatest and truest statement of faith is a life well lived.

We can pray until our knees are numb, but if our praying isn’t accompanied by acting, then we won’t get anywhere. We need to put feet to our faith. After kneeling down, we need to stand up and step out in faith. There is an old adage: the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Based on my experience, that first step is always the hardest and longest step. It will require the most faith. It will feel the most awkward. But if we step out in faith, signs will follow. In fact, an avalanche of blessing will overtake us and overwhelm us. We’ll be buried in God’s blessings.

We’re so close to the dream, so close to the promise, so close to the miracle. But we’re waiting for God to part the river, while God is waiting for us to get our feet wet. We’ll never see God part the Jordan River if our feet are firmly planted on dry ground. But if we step into the river, God will part it.

If you want to see God move, make a move.

And one God-idea is worth more than a thousand good ideas.

Good ideas are good, but only God-ideas change the course of history.

Get into God’s presence.

We don’t get a vision from God by going to conferences. We might get some good ideas, but God-ideas are only revealed in the presence of God.

our biggest problems are only solved in the presence of God.

After all, prayer is the difference between the best you can do and the best God can do. And that’s a big difference!