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Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers.
God isn’t offended by your biggest dreams or boldest prayers. He is offended by anything less.
The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect — and they intersect when we draw a circle around the impossible situations in our lives and invite God to intervene.
Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.
I felt underqualified and overwhelmed, but that is when God has you right where He wants you. That is how you learn to live in raw dependence — and raw dependence is the raw material out of which God performs His greatest miracles.
I’m keenly aware of the fact that every miracle has a genealogy. If you trace those miracles all the way back to their origin, you’ll find a prayer circle.
God has determined that certain expressions of His power will only be exercised in response to prayer. Simply put, God won’t do it unless you pray for it.
The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered because they go unasked.
God has the ability to answer the prayers we should have prayed but lacked the knowledge or ability to even ask.
Now here’s the problem: Most of us don’t get what we want simply because we don’t know what we want. We’ve never circled any of God’s promises. We’ve never written down a list of life goals. We’ve never defined success for ourselves. And our dreams are as nebulous as cumulus clouds. Instead of drawing circles, we draw blanks.
And that is where drawing prayer circles begins: knowing what to circle.
Well-developed faith results in well-defined prayers, and well-defined prayers result in a well-lived life.
prayer journal.
“God does not answer vague prayers.”
The more faith you have, the more specific your prayers will be. And the more specific your prayers are, the more glory God receives.
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to be successful, but very few people have actually spelled out success for themselves.
Success has nothing to do with how gifted or how resourced you are; it has everything to do with glorifying God in any and every situation by making the most of it. Success is spelled stewardship, and stewardship is spelled success.
If you don’t have a personal definition of success, chances are you will succeed at the wrong thing. You’ll get to the end of your life and realize that you spelled success wrong. And if you spell it wrong, you’ll get it wrong.
You need to circle the goals God wants you to go after, the promises God wants you to claim, and the dreams God wants you to pursue. And once you spell Jericho, you need to circle it in prayer. Then you need to keep circling until the walls come tumbling down.
prayer journal.
Arthur McKinsey’s method of problem solving.
Circle makers are history makers.
Most of us don’t get what we want because we don’t know what we want. Here’s our secondary problem: Most of us don’t get what we want because we quit circling.
Our generation desperately needs to rediscover the difference between praying for and praying through.
There are moments in life when you need to stop pleading and start praising.
Neuroimaging has shown that as we age, the center of cognitive gravity tends to shift from the imaginative right brain to the logical left brain. And this neurological tendency presents a grave spiritual danger.
In the words of Harriet Doerr, “One of the best things about aging is being able to watch imagination overtake memory.” So who’s right? The neurologists? Or Harriet? The answer is both.
If you keep praying, you’ll keep dreaming, and conversely, if you keep dreaming, you’ll keep praying. Dreaming is a form of praying, and praying is a form of dreaming.
When imagination is sacrificed on the altar of logic, God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him.
In order to experience a miracle, you have to take a risk. And one of the most difficult types of risk to take is risking your reputation.
You are only one defining decision away from a totally different life. One defining decision can change your trajectory and put you on a new path toward the Promised Land.
We’re giving this gift because you have vision beyond your resources.”
If you seek answers you won’t find them, but if you seek God, the answers will find you.
Never underestimate the power of a single prayer. God can do anything through anyone who circles their big dreams with bold prayers. With God, there is no precedent, because all things are possible. Providing meat for a month in the middle of nowhere is no problem when you own the cattle on the thousand hills. God can use the bold prayer of an eccentric sage to end a drought or the bold pen of a young mother to end slavery. If you have the courage to circle the dream in prayer, you can’t never always sometimes tell.
Your answer to this question, the question, will determine the size of your prayer circles.
“Is there a limit to my power?”
your biggest problem isn’t an impending divorce or failing business or doctor’s diagnosis. Please understand, I’m not making light of your relational or financial or health issues.
Are your problems bigger than God, or is God bigger than your problems?
Our biggest problem is our small view of God. That is the cause of all lesser evils.
God is not subject to the natural laws He instituted.
Trust me, it doesn’t matter how long or how loud you pray; it comes down to your answer to the question.
Is there a limit to my power?
Praying hard is more than words; it’s blood, sweat, and tears. Praying hard is two-dimensional: praying like it depends on God, and working like it depends on you.
It’s praying until God answers, no matter how long it takes. It’s doing whatever it takes to show God you’re serious.
How desperate are you for the miracle? Desperate enough to pray through the night?
How many times are you willing to circle the promise? Until the day you die?
How long and loud will you knock on the door of opportunity? Until yo...
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God couldn’t care less about protocol. If He did, Jesus would have chosen the Pharisees as His disciples.
The viability of our prayers has more to do with intensity than vocabulary.
There are no shortcuts. There are no substitutes. Success is a derivative of persistence.
