by Mark Batterson

Wednesday Night DevotionalJohn Little – 8-14-13

The Circle Maker

Circle Maker

God is still looking for Circle Makers

Circle Maker

Circle Makers

Bold prayer honors God…

God honors bold prayer!

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There is nothing God loves more than…

• Keeping promises,• Answering prayers,• Performing miracles, and• Fulfilling dreams.

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• The bigger circle we draw, the better, because God gets more glory!

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• God is ready and waiting…

• God is FOR YOU!

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God is for you!• If you don’t believe it, you will pray small timid

prayers…

• If you do believe it, then…

• you’ll pray big audacious prayers!

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• Who you become is determined by how you pray!

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• Drawing prayer circles starts with discerning…

• …what God wants and

• …what God wills.

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• Until His sovereign will becomes your sanctified wish, your prayer life will be unplugged from its power supply.

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• 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.

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We have not,because we ASK not.

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The Good News• If you do pray, all bets are off.

• You can live with holy anticipation because you never know how or when or where God is going to answer.

• But….He WILL answer!

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No Limits• His answers are not limited by your requests.

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God will answer your prayers…• Somehow,• Someway, and• Sometime.

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• God isn’t offended by your biggest dreams or bold prayers!

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Jericho• Seemed like God had promised something

impossible, and His battle plan seemed nonsensical.

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Jericho• The first time around must have felt a little

foolish.

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Jericho• They hadn’t said a word in 6 days. They circled

the promise silently.

• Finally on the 7th day, they circled silently 6 times, and on the 7th circle sounded their horns and 600,000 Israelites let out a holy roar.

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Jericho is a Microcosm• Jericho establishes a pattern to follow.

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What is your Jericho?• Jericho was the miracle that Israel had hoped

and waited for their entire lives.

• What promise are you praying around?

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Jericho - A thousand years later• Jesus is on His way out of Jericho when 2 blind

men ask for His help.• Jesus asks them, “What do you want me to do

for you?” Matthew 20:32

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• If faith is being sure of what we hope for…

• …then the antithesis of faith is being unsure of what we hope for.

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Start…Write…Keep• 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.

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Jericho is spelled many different ways• If you have cancer…it is spelled “healing.”• If your child is far from God…it is spelled

“salvation.”• If your marriage is falling apart…it is spelled

“reconciliation.”• If you have a vision beyond your resources…it is

spelled “provision.”

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Specific Prayers• God does not answer vague prayers.

• The more faith you have, the more specific your prayers will be.

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Ladder of Success

• Sometimes we fail to realize that our ladder of success is not leaning on the walls of Jericho.

• Our eternal priorities get subjugated by our temporal responsibilities (i.e. the “busy-ness” of life).

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Battering Ram• Many people tackle the problems of life with a

battering ram.• The Israelites didn’t conquer Jericho because

of a brilliant military strategy or brute force.

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Circle Makersare

History Makers

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Counterfactual Theory

Counterfactual theorists ask the

questions.

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6 circles instead of 7• The Israelites would have forfeited the

miracle.

• Most of us don’t get what we pray for because we stop circling.

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Praying Through• Praying through is all about consistency

and intensity.

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Praying through is about intensity• Prayer involves more than words…it’s gut-

wrenching groans and heart-breaking tears.

• It doesn’t just bend God’s ear; it touches His heart.

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• Make the sacrifice.

• Take the risk.

• Draw the circle.

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Praise Through• “Now the gates of Jericho were securely

barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands.’” Joshua 6:1-2

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True Faith• True faith doesn’t just celebrate after the miracle has

already happened.

• True faith celebrates before the miracle happens, as if the miracle has already happened.

• There are moments in life where you need to stop pleading and start praising.

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The First Circle• Dream Big

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Is it possible to dream for 70 years?• 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.

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Is it possible to dream for 70 years?• Instead of creating the future, we start

repeating the past.• Instead of living by faith, we live by logic.

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Prayer and Imagination• Prayer and imagination are directly

proportional.

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• The older you get, the more faith you should have….

• …because you’ve experienced more of God’s faithfulness.

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• If you keep praying,you’ll keep

dreaming.• If you keep dreaming,

you’ll keep praying.

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• Nothing honors God more than a big dream that is way beyond our ability to accomplish.

• Why? Because there is no way we can take credit for it.

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Cloudy with a chance of Quail• Drawing prayer circles often looks like an exercise in

foolishness.

• Noah• Joshua and the Israelites• David with Goliath• The Magi• Peter on the Sea of Galilee

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Moses• …was a man familiar with feeling foolish.

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Moses’ foolishness resulted in Epic Miracles

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• In order to experience a miracle, you have to take a risk.

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• If you don’t take the risk….

• …you forfeit the miracle.

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Moses and the Israelites• “The people of Israel also began to complain,

‘Oh, for some meat!’ they exclaimed. ‘We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted. But now our appetites are gone. All we ever see is this manna!’” Numbers 11:4-6

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Moses’ Response• “Here I am among six hundred thousand men

on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?”

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• Moses is doing the math in his mind and it doesn’t add up.

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Logic vs. Faith• Logic screams No.

• Faith whispers Yes.

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5+2• With man: 5 + 2 = 7

• With God: 5 + 2 = 5,000

• If you put what little you have in your hand into the hand of God, it won’t just add up…

• God will make it multiply!

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• What do you do when a dream doesn’t fit within the logical constraints of your left brain?

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One Decision• You are only one defining decision away from a totally

different life.

• The quail promise was a defining moment for Moses….he went and told the Israelites what the Lord had said.

• He risked his reputation and circled the promise.

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Giving to God• “Give and it will be given to you. A good

measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:38

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Quailmageddon• “Now a wind went out from the Lord and

drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers.” Numbers 11

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Quailmageddon• A day’s walk in the Hebrew system of

measurement, was 15 miles.• So the area covered by quail was about

700 sq. miles.• Washington D.C. is 68 sq. miles.

• AND…the quail were piled 3 feet deep!

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Quailmageddon• Each Israelite gathered no less than

10 homers.• A homer equates to roughly 200 liters.• 10 homers x 600,000 men = 6 million homers

• 105 million quail!!!!

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• Moses could never have anticipated this miracle.• But he circled the promise anyway.• And when you circle the promise in prayer, it’s

always “Cloudy with a chance of Quail.”

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• Imagine and pray, and God will multiply the miracles in your life.

• “Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.” Matthew 13:8

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The bigger the prayer circle, the more the God can multiply.

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Seek what?• Our prayers should not seek answers so much

as we should seek God.

• Sometimes God answers our prayers with “No” and sometimes He answers them with “not yet.”

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“You can’t never always sometimes tell.”• Anything could happen. Anyplace. Anytime.

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A woman’s vision • A woman had a vision during communion one

Sunday.• The vision compelled her to go home, skip

lunch, and write down what she saw.• She ultimately ran out of paper and finished

writing the vision down on brown paper bags.

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A woman’s vision• The year was 1851.

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• The woman...• Harriet Beecher Stowe

• The book…• Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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Never underestimate prayer• God can use an old sage like Honi to end a

drought.

• He can use the bold pen of a little woman to end slavery.

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The Question• Is there a limit to God’s power?

• The obvious answer is “No.”

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Our prayers• Many of us pray as if our problems are bigger

than God.

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Our prayers• The size of our prayers depends on the size of

our God.• If God knows no limits, then neither should

our prayers.

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With God• With God, it’s never a question of “Can He?”• It’s a question of “Will He?”

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The Question• …is translated differently in different versions of

the Bible.• “Is the Lord’s arm too short?”

• “As the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9

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The “Heavens”• Light travels 186,000 miles per second.• The sun is 94.4 million mile away from earth.• The light that warms your face left the sun 8 minutes ago.• There are more than 80 billion galaxies in the universe.• 1 light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles.• The outer edge of the universe is 15.5 billion light years

away.

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• Your best thought on your best day falls 15.5 billion light years short of what God is capable of.

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• The question is not whether you are “qualified.”

• The question is whether you are “called.”

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The Second Circle• Pray Hard!!!

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Persistent Widow• In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared

God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” Luke 18:2-5

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Persistent Widow• Knock until your knuckles are raw.• Cry until your voice is lost.• Plead until your tears run dry.

• God will come through…• …but it will be God’s will...God’s way.

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The common denominator• Holy desperation!

• People who take desperate measures to get to God…God honors them for it.

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Prayer viability• The significance of prayer is not contingent on

properly mixing 26 letters of the English alphabet into the right combination.

• He knows the last punctuation mark before we pronounce the first syllable.

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Persistence Quotient• In standardized math tests, Japanese students consistently score higher

than American students.• Some would assume some natural proclivity toward math was the

difference.

• Researchers gave American and Japanese students a difficult puzzle to solve.– The American students stopped trying to solve the puzzle after 9.5 minutes.– The Japanese students didn’t stop trying to solve the puzzle until 13.9 minutes.

• The study reveals that the difference in math scores may have more to do with persistent effort than some natural mathematical ability

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No Shortcuts• It doesn’t matter where you turn:– Mathematics– Athletics– Music

• There are no shortcuts or substitutes.• Success is a derivative of PERSISTENCE.

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Running out of things to say• Many of us don’t pray through because we

run out of meaningful things to say.

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Hardest Moments in Life• Some of the hardest moments in life are when

you’ve prayed hard but the answer is no and you don’t know why.

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Hardest Moments in Life• Enduring unanswered prayer can result in unresolved

anger toward God that can undermine your faith if you don’t guard your heart.

• Praying hard is praying when it’s hard to pray.

• Sometimes your only option is trust…because it’s the last card in your hand.

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The Third Circle• Think long!

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Honi and the Elder Nurseryman

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Honi and the Elder Nurseryman• We live in a quick-fix real time culture.

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Christians need…– We need the patience of the planter.– We need the foresight of the farmer.– We need the mindset of the sower.

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Daniel• Few people prayed with more consistency and

intensity than Daniel.

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Fasting and Praying• Daniel fasted at critical junctures in his life.• Fasting is a form of praying hard.

• An empty stomach may be the most powerful prayer posture in scripture.

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The moment• “The moment you began praying, a command

was given.” Daniel 9:23

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Goals• Goals are the cause and effect of praying hard.

• Prayer is a “goal incubator.”

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Destiny• Your destiny is not a mystery.

• It is the result of your daily decisions and defining decisions.

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The Circle Maker• It’s not a formula; it’s faith.• It’s not a methodology; it’s theology.• It honestly doesn’t matter whether it’s a circle, a triangle, or

a trapezoid. Drawing prayer circles is nothing more than laying our requests before God and “waiting expectantly.”

• If walking in circles helps you, then make yourself dizzy.• If not, find something, find anything, that helps you pray

through [life].