Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

by Mark Batterson

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.

But if you get close to God, you won’t miss a thing He says. And if you incline your ear to God, God will incline His ear to you. When too much white noise invades my life and I’m having a hard time hearing the voice of God, I’ll often go into a season of fasting. Fasting is like noise cancellation. It helps me tune out the voices I shouldn’t be listening to and tune into His frequency. It’s still difficult to distinguish between our own thoughts and the inaudible voice of the Holy Spirit, but just like a relationship with a loved one, we begin to discern His voice more accurately. Eventually, it’ll be like the voice of a spouse or child. We’ll be able to interpret even the subtlest intonations.

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

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

we, through prayer, are enabled to see with prophetic eyes. We are given supernatural insight. Then we are prepared to speak with prophetic boldness into the lives God has positioned in our path.

The more we grow in grace, the more prophetic we become. This doesn’t mean we will start predicting the future; it means we’ll start creating it. How? Through our prayers! Prayer is the way we write the future. It’s the difference between letting things happen and making things happen. And when we speak prophetic words into someone’s life, it gives them a new lease on life.

You may not see yourself as a prophet, but you are one. You’re a prophet to your friends. As I write about in Praying Circles around Your Children, parents are prophets to their children.

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.

The fruit of their life is your reward.

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

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.

Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen of his Carmelite Monastery, washing dishes and preparing meals, but he turned his chores into prayers. After many years of practicing the presence of God, prayer became a way of life. In the words of Brother Lawrence, “The time of business54 does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”

We try to call Him to mind55 at least one second of each minute. We do not need to forget other things nor stop our work, but we invite Him to share everything we do or say or think. Hundreds of us have experimented until we have found ways to let Him share every minute of our waking hours.

The simple act of praying for everybody he encountered turned the routine of life into a daily adventure.

Before walking into a meeting, pray for the people you are meeting with. Ask God for favor, discernment, and grace. Then when you leave, pray a blessing on them. A prayer of blessing isn’t just something for pastors to pronounce over congregations at the end of services. If you are a child of God, you are a priest. It’s your right and responsibility to pronounce blessings over everyone in your life — from your children to your colleagues to your customers, and everyone in between.

The key to praying without ceasing is turning everything into a prayer. It usually starts with the big things like problems and dreams. Then it graduates to little things like chores and routines. And eventually, your entire life becomes a continuous prayer.

The best prayer is a well-lived life, day in and day out.

Try experimenting with different types of fasts — from food to television to sleep to Facebook — but remember that the key is giving something up and replacing it with prayer. Try praying at different times, like first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Try experimenting with different techniques. 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

There are times when circling something in prayer isn’t enough. We need to double-circle it with prayer and fasting.

Fasting will take us further into the presence of God than praying, and it will get us there much faster.

No matter what we fast, we need to establish a time frame and an objective. If we don’t determine exactly when the fast starts and finishes, we’ll find excuses to compromise and probably quit. So we must establish a start date and an end date and then figure out what we’re fasting for.

Most people have a willing spirit. It’s the weak flesh that gets in the way. The problem isn’t desire; the problem is power and, more specifically, willpower. That’s where fasting comes into play. The reason fasting gives us more power to pray is because it’s an exercise in willpower. Physical discipline gives us the spiritual discipline to pray through.

Fasting is the way we break down our spiritual calluses and regain sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

I’m more and more convinced that the answer to every prayer is more of the Holy Spirit.

We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but we have to empty ourselves first. And one of the best ways to empty ourselves is through fasting.

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. Maybe it’s because God won’t do for us what we can do for ourselves. God isn’t honored by prayers that are within the realm of human possibility; God is honored when we ask Him to do what is humanly impossible. That way, God gets all the glory! There are some things we don’t need to pray about. We don’t need to pray about loving our neighbors. We don’t need to pray about giving generously or serving sacrificially. We don’t need to pray about blessing someone when it is in our power to do so. We don’t have to pray about turning the other cheek or going the extra mile. God has already spoken on those subjects. There comes a moment when praying becomes a form of spiritual procrastination. It’s time to stop praying and start acting.

action-oriented approach to Scripture.

This, after all, is but an illustration of the fact that our problem is not so much that we don’t know what we should do. We know perfectly well … but we don’t want to do it. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. Pray about everything. Then pray some more. But at some point, we have to quit praying and start acting.

God won’t do for us what we can do ourselves. And many of us get stuck spiritually right there. We are called to pray about everything, but there comes a time when praying can be a form of disobedience, laziness, or negligence. We can’t just pray like it depends on God; we also must work like it depends on us.

Christianity was always intended to be a verb — more specifically, an action verb.

And if we said less and did more, I believe we would have the same kind of impact the first-century church had. And while we’re on the subject, we should be more known for what we’re for than what we’re against. Prayer that doesn’t lead to action isn’t true prayer; it’s self-talk. When we talk to God, God will talk back to us. He will provoke us, rouse us, stir us, goad us, and prompt us. When we say “amen,” inaction is no longer an option.

The only thing that upsets me more than downright evil acts are people who allow injustice to happen with their inaction. Jesus transformed God’s message into action, and it should be our mission to devote our lives to similar action.

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

If you want God to do something new, you cannot keep doing the same old thing.

the rabbi would cover their slate with honey. Honey was the symbol of God’s favor. Then the rabbi would instruct his students to lick the honey off their slate while reciting from Psalm 119: “How sweet are Your words65 to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”

lech acharai. Translation: “come, follow me.” Inherent within that invitation was an understanding that it meant total surrender, complete devotion. It meant taking that rabbi’s yoke on yourself. The yoke represented the sum total of the rabbi’s philosophy and practice. It meant spending every waking moment with him. It meant going wherever he went, doing whatever he did, listening to everything he said.

One of the surest ways to get into the presence of God is to get into the Word of God. If we get into God’s Word, God’s Word will get into us.

It was meant to be memorized and meditated on. It was meant to be prayed and practiced. We have to abide in the Word of God and let the Word of God abide in us.

The word abide is a present imperative verb, which indicates a continual action. It’s not something we start and stop; it’s something we do for the rest of our lives. And we do more of it. The goal is to get closer and closer to God. And the way we do this is by abiding in His Word.

And if we linger in His presence, God’s presence will linger on us. In my experience, God responds to extra effort with an extra blessing. It’s those who spend the most time in God’s presence that God can use the most because they are the people He can trust the most.

Abiding in the Word of God is the way we take enemy territory and hold our ground. It’s our best offense and best defense.

When the Word of God gets in our spirit, which is the spiritual womb, new passions are conceived within us. And inaction is no longer an option. We cannot abide in the Word of God and not be moved to action. We cannot sit on the sidelines. Like David, who ran to the front lines, we’ll be looking for giants to conquer.

Perhaps the spiritual disciplines of studying Scripture and engaging in prayer aren’t two separate disciplines. One is the key to the other.

We’re so busy trying to do something for God that we don’t realize that the key to our success in any endeavor is letting God do something for us. We cannot do something for God if we aren’t with God. We have to press into His presence. And the surest way to get into God’s presence is by getting into God’s Word.

Wherever you read the pronoun you, insert your name. It will help you take what you read more literally, more personally. It will also remind you that your life is a unique translation of Scripture.

Reading without meditating is like eating without digesting.

divine appointments usually come disguised.

Yet Jesus forced them to define exactly what they wanted from Him. Jesus made them verbalize it. He made them spell out exactly what they wanted Him to do, but it wasn’t because Jesus didn’t know what they wanted; He wanted to make sure that they knew what they wanted. What if Jesus asked you the same question: What do you want Me to do for you? Would you be able to spell out the promises, miracles, and dreams God has put in your heart? I’m afraid many of us would find ourselves at a loss for words. We have no idea what we want God to do for us, and then we wonder why it seems like God isn’t doing anything for us. The great irony, of course, is that if we can’t answer this question, then we’re as blind spiritually as these men were physically. Most of us don’t get what we want simply because we don’t know what we want.