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

by Mark Batterson

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. If your prayers aren’t impossible to you, they are insulting to God. Why? Because they don’t require divine intervention.

There is nothing God loves more than keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles, and fulfilling dreams. That is who He is. That is what He does. And the bigger the circle we draw, the better, because God gets more glory.

Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

The Circle Maker will show you how to claim God-given promises, pursue God-sized dreams, and seize God-ordained opportunities. You’ll learn how to draw prayer circles around your family, your job, your problems, and your goals.

Drawing prayer circles starts with discerning what God wants, what God wills. And until His sovereign will becomes your sanctified wish, your prayer life will be unplugged from its power supply. Sure, you can apply some of the principles you learn in The Circle Maker, and they may help you get what you want, but 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.

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.

The Book of Legends.

A collection of stories from the Talmud and Midrash, The Book of Legends contains the teachings of Jewish rabbis passed down from generation to generation.

perseverance.

impregnable

Instead, God told the Israelite army to silently circle the city. And He promised, after they circled thirteen times over seven days, the wall would fall.

With each circle, a holy confidence was building pressure inside their souls. By the seventh day, their faith was ready to pop.

Six hundred thousand Israelites raised a holy roar that registered on the Richter scale, and the walls came tumbling down.

If you keep circling the promise, God will ultimately deliver on it.

microcosm.

For the Israelites, Jericho symbolized the fulfillment of a dream that originated with Abraham.

nebulous

cumulus

Instead of drawing circles, we ...

Jesus forced them to define exactly what they wanted from Him. Jesus made them verbalize their desire.

drawing prayer circles begins: knowing what to circle.

antithesis

Well-developed faith results in well-defined prayers, and well-defined prayers result in a well-lived life.

Don’t just read the Bible. Start circling the promises. Don’t just make a wish. Write down a list of God-glorifying life goals. Don’t just pray. Keep a prayer journal. Define your dream. Claim your promise. Spell your miracle.

Jericho is spelled many different ways. If you have cancer, it’s spelled healing. If your child is far from God, it’s spelled salvation. If your marriage is falling apart, it’s spelled reconciliation. If you have a vision beyond your resources, it’s spelled provision.

“God does not answer vague prayers.”

Pentecost

not every prayer will be answered the way we script it, but I’m convinced of this: The miracles that have happened would not have happened if I hadn’t drawn a circle around them in the first place.

The more faith you have, the more specific your prayers will be. And the more specific your prayers are, the more glory God receives.

nuanced prayers give God an opportunity to reveal more shades...

spring break in southern California. I stayed behind

You circle the wrong city. You climb the wrong ladder.

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 ...

change of pace + change of place = change of perspective.

I got outside the city walls and marched around the promise, around the problem, around the situation. And when you do that, it won’t just be the drawbridge that drops; the wall will fall.

One afternoon as she was thinking about a bad situation in their North Philly neighborhood, she asked God if He would give them a spiritual victory if she covenanted with Him to pray.

Lord, if You will bless my husband in the place You sent him to establish Your name, if You will break the bonds and destroy the middle wall of partition, if You will give him a church and congregation — a credit to Your people and all Christendom — I will walk with You for three years in prayer, both day and night. I will meet You every morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp; You will never have to wait for me; I will be there to greet You. I will stay there all day; I will devote all of my time to You.

She didn’t just ask the Lord for something, she told the Lord what she would do for him as well. And this immediately made me think about a partnership with Christ. — This is about an exchange. What are you going to offer up?

prayer covenant,

Her husband asked her to pray for another meeting place nearby.

Should we be asking specific people to pray on our behalf?

Most of us don’t get what we want because we quit circling.

We give up too easily. We give up too soon. We quit praying right before the miracle happens.

Our generation desperately needs to rediscover the difference between praying for and praying through.

You are always only one prayer away from a miracle. Praying through is all about intensity.

“I feel like I’ve never prayed before.” I felt like he knew God in a way that I didn’t, and it challenged me to get closer to God.

Have you ever heard someone pray and afterward the prayer had you wanting to get closer to God? If so, why?

defibrillation.