The Circle Maker (Zondervan, 2011)
Mark Batterson, lead pastor at National Community Church in Washington, DC, wrote The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears in 2011. Mark’s stated purpose in writing The Circle Maker is to “show you how to claim God-given promises, pursue God-ordained dreams, and seize God-ordained opportunities.” Drawing circles begins with discerning God’s will, the goal being to glorify God. As you discern what to circle in prayer and spell out your prayers with specificity, eventually it will spell God’s glory. God will answer at some point, and His answers are not limited by your requests. That means you can live with holy anticipation and pray with holy confidence.
Pastor Batterson emphasizes that prayer solving, rather than problem solving, wins the day. Consistency and intensity are essential to praying. And after you pray through, you need to praise through, even if God doesn’t answer the way you want or in the time you want. Ultimately, the size of your prayer comes down to the size of your God. Your impossible prayer is an easy answer for a mighty God. Far greater than your capability to receive is God’s capacity to give. God always provides just enough just in time. Nothing is too big- or too small- for God. Sometimes God gets in the way to show us the way. Divine detours take us to the miracles we need, but don’t necessarily want.
When drawing prayer circles begins to feel long and boring, because answers don’t seem to be forth coming, Mark encourages us to stop, draw, and pray. Pray primes us, putting us in a spiritual frame of mind and sanctifying our expectations. Staring the day in prayer is the best way to establish a daily rhythm in order to have a daily relationship with God. To break the faith barrier, we need to press in and pray through. Goal-setting is a great way of simultaneously praying hard, thinking long, and dreaming big. Each prayer is precious to God and sealed by Him. The end of a prayer is the beginning of a dream, the beginning of a miracle, the beginning of a promise.
