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May 30 - September 10, 2018
Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers.
If your prayers aren’t impossible to you, they are insulting to God.
The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect
God is for you. If you don’t believe that, then you’ll pray small timid prayers; if you do believe it, then you’ll pray big audacious prayers.
Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future. 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.
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.
We pray out of our ignorance, but God answers out of His omniscience. We pray out of our impotence, but God answers out of His omnipotence.
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.
What if Jesus were to ask you this very same question: What do you want me to do for you?
Well-developed faith results in well-defined prayers, and well-defined prayers result in a well-lived life.
pastor of one of the largest churches in Seoul, Korea, wrote, “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.
We talk about “doing” the will of God, but the will of God has much more to do with “being” than “doing.” It’s not about being in the right place at the right time; it’s about being the right person, even if you find yourself in the wrong circumstances.
change of pace + change of place = change of perspective.
Drawing prayer circles is far more powerful than any battering ram. It doesn’t just knock down doors; it fells fifty-foot walls.
Circle makers are history makers.
In the grand scheme of God’s story, there is a footnote behind every headline. The footnote is prayer. And if you focus on the footnotes, God will write the headlines. It’s your prayers that change the eternal plotline.
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.
Praying through is all about consistency.
Praying through is all about intensity.
we should praise God for disappointment because it drives us to our knees. Disappointment is like dream defibrillation. If we respond to it the right way, disappointment can actually restore our prayer rhythm and resurrect our dreams.
God speaks in the past tense, not the future tense. He doesn’t say, “I will deliver.” God says, “I have delivered.”
“Stop praying for it and start praising me for it.” True faith doesn’t just celebrate ex post facto, after the miracle has already happened; true faith celebrates before the miracle happens, as if the miracle has already happened, because you know that you know that God is going to deliver on His promise.
Prayer and praise are both expressions of faith, but praise is a higher dimension of faith. Prayer is asking God to do something, future tense; praise is believing that God has already done it, past tense.
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.
At some point, most of us stop living out of imagination and start living out of memory.
Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.
One litmus test of spiritual maturity is whether your dreams are getting bigger or smaller.
The day we stop dreaming is the day we start dying.
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 cannot build God’s reputation if you aren’t willing to risk yours.
You are only one defining decision away from a totally different life.
Too often we let how get in the way of what God wants us to
Your dreams may start out small, and God will honor those humble dreams, but as your faith grows so do your dreams until you dare to dream thirty-, sixty-, hundredfold dreams.
We’re giving this gift because you have vision beyond your resources.”
A few years ago, I had a revelation while reading the description of what happened on the day of Pentecost. It says the people were “amazed and perplexed.” All of us want to be amazed by God, right? It’s easy to pray, “Amaze me!” But I don’t know anyone who prays, “Perplex me!” But it’s a package deal. If you aren’t willing to be perplexed, you’ll never be amazed.
“Is there a limit to my power?”
A. W. Tozer, believed that a low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils, but a high view of God is the solution to ten thousand temporal problems.
Once you experience a miracle, there is no turning back.
Her unrelenting persistence was the only difference between justice and injustice.
It is a habit to be cultivated. It is a discipline to be developed. It is a skill to be practiced.
The reason many of us give up too soon is that we feel like we have failed if God doesn’t answer our prayer. That isn’t failure. The only way you can fail is if you stop praying.
Have you ever felt like God was doing miracles for everyone and their brother, but you seem to be the odd man out? It seems like God is keeping His promises to everyone but you? I wonder if that’s how John the Baptist felt.
“Never put a comma where God puts a period, and never put a period where God puts a comma.”
first-degree prayers take preventative measures.
there is another dimension of faith that believes that God can undo what has already been done. Second-degree faith is resurrection faith.
When you know you are praying the promises of God, you can pray with holy confidence.
