The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears

by Mark Batterson

If you win the argument you actually lose, and if you lose the argume...

lose, and if you lose the argument, you...

My only explanation is that Luke 6:38 is true.

For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

That certainly doesn’t mean that you can play God like a slot machine,

give for the right reasons,

You’ll never outg...

It didn’t add up, but God made it multiply.

When you live in obedience, you position yourself for blessing.

And you never know how or when or where God is going to show up.

The Israelites were parked in the Desert of Paran, a region about fifty miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea and fifty miles southwest of the Dead Sea.

Quail tend to live by the water, and they don’t fly long distances.

If it hadn’t been for a supernatural west wind, they would have never ma...

fifteen miles in any direction.

square the radius and multiply by pi, we’re talking about an area that was almost 700 square miles.

Washington, DC, is 68.3 sq...

the quail were piled three feet d...

105 million quail.

After all, the will of God is not a zero-sum game.

When God enters the equation, His output always exceeds your input.

That’s also the way it should work spiritually, but many of us never graduate beyond addition and subtraction.

I could and asked God to help it sell twenty-five thousand copies.

“if it be Your will”

my whisper number was one hundred thousand copies. In the deep recesses of my heart, that was my big dream.

We specifically prayed that God would get the book into the right hands at the right time.

To me, a book sold is not a book sold; it’s a prayer answered.

forty days of prayer and fasting.

I fasted from all forms of entertainment to stay focused on my goal.

I almost denied

they wanted to talk about church government.

On an otherwise uneventful Wednesday afternoon,

“We want to give a gift, and there are no strings attached.

We’re giving this gift because you have vision beyond your resources.”

We refuse to let our budget determine our vision.

Faith is allowing your God-given vision to determine your budget.

does not mean you practice poor financial stewardship, spend beyond your means, and accumulate a huge debt load.

you take a step of faith when God gives you a vision because you trust that the One who gave you the visi...

And it may feel like you’re setting yourself up for failure, but you’re actually setting God up for a miracle.

It’s not our man-made plans that move the Almighty; the Almighty is moved by big dreams and bold prayers.

The first thing I had to do was decipher whether this prompting was just my own desire to be debt free or whether it was the Holy Spirit

heart. It’s tough to discern between natural desires and holy desires,

In retrospect, I think I was trying to manufacture the miracle for God.

When God doesn’t answer our prayer right away, we try to answer it for Him.

But when we try to do God’s job for Him, it always backfires.

God redeemed the forty years Moses spent as a fugitive tending sheep by prepping him to tend His sheep, the people of Israel.

came to the humble conclusion that our prayers are often misguided simply because we’re not omniscient.

If we were absolutely honest, we would have to admit that most of our prayers have as their main objective personal comfort rather than God’s glory.

We would fail to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us or cultivate the character God is trying to shape in us.

Maybe your deadline doesn’t fit God’s timeline.

Maybe no simply means not yet. Maybe it’s a divine delay.