Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

by Mark Batterson

Our prayers don’t have expiration dates.

If you are on God’s side, then God is on your side. God will fight for you as you fight for Him. And you can live with holy confidence, knowing that when God is contending for your cause, your cause is destined to succeed. This doesn’t mean there won’t be setbacks and sacrifices along the way; it just means the war has already been won.

Lord, surprise us.

In His omniscience and omnipotence, God has determined there are some things He will only do in response to prayer. The Bible puts it bluntly: “You do not have33 because you do not ask God.” If we don’t ask, God can’t answer. It’s as simple as that. The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered because they go unasked.

the more you pray, the more you will experience holy surprises.

but there were speed bumps along the way. Praying hard is not the path of least resistance; it’s usually the path of most resistance because we engage in spiritual warfare.

I believe that God never overpromises or underdelivers. He always delivers on His promises, but He does it on His timeline!

If your cause is ordained by God, then the battle belongs to the Lord. It’s His victory to win, not yours.

Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking.

Sometimes God will push us to our absolute limits — the limits of our faith, of our patience, of our gifts. That is how God stretches our faith and builds our character.

None of my dreams have happened quickly or easily.

When you quit circling, you don’t just compromise the present. Every promise, every miracle, every blessing in your future is forfeited.

Our prayers have no space or time limitations because the God who answers them exists outside of the four dimensions He created.

Never underestimate His ability to answer anytime, anyplace, anyhow. He has infinite answers to our finite prayers.

When we pray, we are building a monument to God, a memorial to Him. And those prayers are not perishable.

You’ll never be ready. You’ll never be ready to get married. You’ll never be ready to have kids. You’ll never be ready to start a business or go back to school or move to the mission field. You’ll never be ready financially, emotionally, or spiritually. You’ll never have enough faith, enough cash, or enough courage. And if you are looking for an excuse, you will always find one.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be ready for anything God has called me to. And that’s OK. God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called. If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.

Abraham didn’t know the final destination, but it didn’t keep him from taking the first step in the journey. What’s the first step or next step you need to take in your journey? If you take the first step, God will reveal the second step. The problem is that most of us want the twenty-five-year plan before we’re willing to step out in faith.

You’ll never be ready. You’ll never be set. Sometimes you just need to go for it. The sequence of faith is this: Go. Set. Ready.

Some people spend their entire lives getting ready for what God wants them to do, but they never end up doing it because they never come to the realization that they’ll never be ready. This is where so many of us get stuck. Our failure to act on what we know God is calling us to do not only breeds doubt and discouragement; it’s a form of disobedience.

Why are we waiting for the green light we’ve already been given?

As Christ-followers, we are called to take a why not approach to life. It’s an approach to life that dares to dream. It’s an approach that’s bent toward action. And it doesn’t look for excuses not to do something. Don’t get me wrong. It’s awfully difficult to discern the will of God. Even after prayer and fasting, it usually entails making tough decisions.

But I wonder if we’re so afraid of doing the wrong thing that it keeps us from doing the right thing.

But who can calculate the opportunity costs when we ignore the promptings of the Spirit, thereby missing divine appointments? Faith is not faith until it is acted on. Go. Set. Ready.

There is nothing magical about physically circling something in prayer, but there is something biblical about it.

Drawing prayer circles is a metaphor that simply means “praying until God answers.” It’s a determination to pray as long as it takes, even if it takes longer than you ever imagined.

Drawing prayer circles starts with discerning what God wants, what God wills.

And getting what you want isn’t the goal; the goal is glorifying God by drawing circles around the promises, miracles, and dreams He wants for you.

When the Israelites circled Jericho, they had no idea how God would give them the city. But they didn’t let what they didn’t know keep them from obeying the command they had been given. So they circled the promise over and over and over again. They circled the promise thirteen times over seven days! Why? Because even though they didn’t know how God would deliver on the promise, they knew that God would come though somehow, someway!

The word give means “to conceive.” As you press into God’s presence, old sinful desires die, and new holy desires are birthed in your spirit. These single-cell desires ultimately become lifelong dreams if we nurture them in prayer.

There are moments when we need to turn our desires, ideas, and dreams into prayer fleeces. Now, we have to be very careful when it comes to putting fleeces before the Lord. Generally speaking, signs don’t precede our steps of faith; signs follow. But there are occasions when it’s OK to ask God for confirmation because of our uncertainty. I don’t think we should do it often, and we shouldn’t approach it in a haphazard manner that amounts to nothing more than picking petals off a daisy, saying, “She loves me; she loves me not.”

First, if God has already answered your question in Scripture, then you don’t need to even ask it. Don’t seek revelation when God has already given it. Second, check your motives to make sure they aren’t selfish. The fleece must come out of a genuine desire to honor God and do His will. Third, you have to be willing to accept whatever answer you receive without second-guessing it.

If we could come to grips with two fundamental truths, they would transform our lives: God is with us, and God is for us. That is all you ever need to know. God is with you, and God is for you. Let it sink into your spirit. And as Romans 8:31 states, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

He felt compelled to only ask God when he had a need. He trusted that God knew exactly what he needed, so he turned every need into a prayer. When he needed a pipe fixed, he prayed for a plumber. When he needed food or money or books, he prayed that God would provide.

Müller prayed like it depended on God, but he also worked like it depended on him. Müller wrote, “This … is one of the great secrets44 in connection with successful service for the Lord; to work, as if everything depended upon our diligence, and yet not to rest in the least upon our exertions, but upon the blessing of the Lord.” The key to kingdom productivity is this: work really hard at what God has called you to do, but do not trust in your work; trust in God.

Don’t seek answers; seek God. And the answers will seek you. When God gives a vision, He always makes provision.

When God says no to a prayer, it doesn’t always mean no; sometimes it means not yet. It’s the right request but the wrong time.

What we thought was a no was actually a not yet that turned into a yes! Sometimes we have to be willing to give something up to God in order to get it back from God.

But God will test us to make sure the gift isn’t more important than the Gift Giver, the dream isn’t more important to us than the Dream Giver. He’ll test us to make sure it’s not an idol. If it is, that dream, gift, or desire might need to die so that it can be resurrected. But God often takes things away to give them back so that we know they are gifts to be stewarded for His glory.

When something is given back after it is taken away, whether it’s a house or our health, we don’t take it for granted.

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.

In the words of the apostle Paul, we’re “busybodies.”46 We’re constantly trying to do more and more in less and less time.

And that is when prayer gets marginalized. We think we have too much to do to pray, but the exact opposite is true: we have too much to do not to pray! Martin Luther once declared, “I have so much to do47 that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” The more you have to do, the more you have to pray!

After we pray like it depends on God, we need to work like it depends on us. But if we don’t pray first, our work won’t work. We can’t do something for God until we let God do something for us. He wants to fill us with His Holy Spirit, but we need to empty ourselves first. From the depths of our hearts to the depths of our minds, the Holy Spirit wants to fill every crevice that already exists and create new capacities within us.

God’s callings aren’t understood or accomplished in months or years or decades. It usually takes a lifetime.

I just didn’t know that God would fulfill this part of my calling in this particular way.

We think we’re going somewhere to do something, but God always has ulterior motives. There is a rhyme and reason to His will that we aren’t even aware of.

Your life is a unique translation of Scripture.

You are called to be a prophetic voice to the people God places in your life. But the key to discovering your prophetic voice is cultivating a prophetic ear. If you want to find your voice, you need to hear the voice of God.

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.