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

by Mark Batterson

Then you have to circle them over and over again.

He felt like he wasn’t qualified, so he asked God to send someone else to do it.

But God doesn’t call the qualified; God qualifies the called.

If God has called you, you’re qualified.

The issue is always, “Are you called?”

And if the answer is yes, then you need to write the book as an act of obedience. It

you need to keep stretching.

As we were recuperating from the huge expenditure of time, energy, and resources, we felt God challenging us: Why don’t you do this every day?

Bill had a hard time believing he was qualified to manage what Golfweek magazine called “one of the America’s best courses.”

He circled that dream for more than a decade.

They prayed for God’s favor. They prayed for God’s glory. They prayed for God’s will.

With each circle, self-doubt shrunk and a holy confidence grew.

Bill is the first to give God all of the glory for his personal and professional achievements.

Sometimes when you hear answers to prayer that others have experienced, it can be discouraging instead of encouraging because you wonder why God has answered their prayers but not yours.

There is usually a backstory.

He prayed the only promise he could remember: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

It doesn’t always change your circumstances, but it gives you the strength to walk through them.

They didn’t always get what they wanted, when they wanted it.

knocking until your knuckles are raw, crying out until your voice is lost,

pleading until your tears run dry.

And if you pray through, God will come through.

But it will be God’s will, God’s way.

excruciating and exhausting,

how the greatest prayer victories are won.

praying like it depends on God, and working like it depends on you.

It’s doing whatever it takes to show God you’re serious.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there is no more desperate...

There comes a moment when you need to defy protocol, drop to your knees, and ...

Does The Judge know that about you?

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 you knock the door down?

And if you don’t pray like it depends on God, the biggest miracles and best promises will remain out of your prayer reach.

But this reveals something about the nature of God.

holy desperation.

pray with audacity and tenacity.

The viability of our prayers has more to do with intensity than vocabulary.

That is modeled by the Holy Spirit Himself, who has been intensely and unceasingly interceding for you your

entire...

the Spirit of God was circling you with songs of deliverance.

He is praying hard for you with ultrasonic groans that cannot be formulated into words, and those unutterable intercessions should fill you with an unspeakable confidence.

God is for you in the most active sense imaginable.

Researchers concluded that the difference in math scores might have less to do with intelligence quotient and more to do with persistence quotient.

Persistence is the magic bullet, and the magic number seems to be ten thousand.

ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert

seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that

it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

It is a discipline to be developed. It

Then the Lord promised Elijah that He would send rain, but like every promise, Elijah still had to circle it via persistent prayer.

Six times he told his servant to look toward the sea, but there was no sign of rain.

We allow our circumstances to get between God and us instead of putting God between us and our circumstances.

think Elijah would have prayed ten thousand times if that is what it took, but between the sixth and seventh prayer,