The Circle Maker_Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears

by Mark Batterson

  Is there a limit to my power?

  Have you answered the question? There are only two options: yes or no. Until you come to the conviction that God’s grace and power know no limits, you will draw small prayer circles. Once you embrace the omnipotence of God, you’ll draw ever-enlarging circles around your God-given, God-sized dreams.

  How big is your God? Is He big enough to heal your marriage or heal your child? Is He bigger than a positive MRI or a negative evaluation? Is He bigger than your secret sin or secret dream?

  Sizing Up God

  Moses was perplexed by the promise God had given him. How could God possibly provide meat for a month? It didn’t add up! But at that critical juncture, when Moses had to decide whether or not to circle the promise, God posed the question.

  Is there a limit to my power?

  When God prompted me to pray for a $2 million miracle, I had to answer the question. It seemed like an impossible promise to me, but to the God who can provide 105 million quail out of nowhere, what’s $2 million?

  The size of prayers depends on the size of our God. And if God knows no limits, then neither should our prayers. God exists outside of the four space-time dimensions He created. We should pray that way!

  It reminds me of the man who was sizing up God by asking, “God, how long is a million years to you?” God said, “A million years is like a second.” Then the man asked, “How much is a million dollars to you?” God said, “A million dollars is like a penny.” The man smiled and said, “Could you spare a penny?” God smiled back and said, “Sure, just wait a second.”

  With God, there is no big or small, easy or difficult, possible or impossible. This is difficult to comprehend because all we’ve ever known are the four dimensions we were born into, but God is not subject to the natural laws He instituted. He has no beginning and no end. To the infinite, all finites are equal. Even our hardest prayers are easy for the Omnipotent One to answer because there is no degree of difficulty.

  If you’re like me, you tend to use bigger words for bigger requests. You pull out your best vocabulary words for your biggest prayers, as if God’s answer depends on the correct combination of words. Trust me, it doesn’t matter how long or how loud you pray; it comes down to your answer to the question.

  Is there a limit to my power?

  With God, it’s never an issue of “Can He?” It’s only a question of “Will He?” And while you don’t always know if He will, you know He can. And because you know He can, you can pray with holy confidence.

  Warts

  I answered the question when I was thirteen years old, or maybe I should say, the question was answered for me. Our family visited a new church one Sunday, and a prayer team from that church showed up unannounced at our front door on Monday. The doorbell caught us a little off guard. So did their faith. After introducing themselves, they simply asked if we needed prayer for anything. At that point in my life, I struggled with severe asthma. I was hospitalized half a dozen times during my preteen years. So we asked them to ask God to heal me. That prayer team formed a prayer circle around me and laid their hands on my head. It made me feel a little uncomfortable, but I had never heard anyone pray with that much intensity. They prayed as if they believed. Then they left.

  Sometime between falling asleep that night and waking up the next morning, God did a miracle, but it wasn’t the miracle I expected. God answered that prayer, but it wasn’t the answer I anticipated. I still had asthma the next morning, but every wart on my feet was gone. No kidding. At first I wondered if God misinterpreted the prayer. Or maybe this was some kind of prayer joke? I couldn’t help but wonder if prayer was like the game of telephone where a message gets passed from person to person until it finally gets to God. Maybe somewhere between here and heaven, asthma got translated into warts. Or maybe there was someone with warts who was breathing great that day because they got my answer while I got theirs.

  That’s when I heard the still small voice of the Holy Spirit for the first time in my life. Please understand that Spirit-whispers are few and far between, but those whispers echo forever. The Spirit said to my spirit, Mark, I just want you to know that I’m able.

  Like the day after the day that God sent rain in answer to Honi’s prayer, it was hard not to believe the next day. Once you experience a miracle, there is no turning back. It is difficult to doubt God. I wonder if that was how Moses was able to circle the impossible promise of meat to eat. God had already sent manna. God had already parted the Red Sea. God had already performed ten miraculous signs and delivered Israel out of Egypt.

  How can you not believe when God has proven Himself over and over again?

  One footnote.

  This question — Is there a limit to my power? — is translated differently in different versions of the Bible. One version reads, “Is the LORD’S arm too short?” Another translation reads, “Is the LORD’S hand waxed short?” In both instances, the hand or arm of the Lord is referenced as a metaphor for God’s power.

  With this as a backdrop, reconsider the ten miracles God performed to deliver Israel out of Egypt. These miracles are not attributed to the hand of God or arm of God.

  “This is the finger of God.”

  While we don’t know which finger it was, those ten miracles were attributed to one digit. My guess? His pinky! And if one finger is capable of ten miracles, then what can the hand of God or arm of God accomplish?

  When it comes to the will of God, I’m hit-and-miss. And my prayer batting average is no better than anyone else when it comes to hitting God’s curveballs. I often second-guess the will of God, but I don’t doubt the power of God. God is able. I don’t always know if He will, but I always know that He can.

  15.5 Billion Light-Years

  While God’s power is technically measureless, the prophet Isaiah gives us a glimpse of God’s omnipotence and omniscience by comparing them to the size of the universe. The distance between His wisdom and ours, His power and ours, is likened to the distance from one side of the universe to the other.

  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

  The universe is so large that it requires an awfully long tape measure. The basic unit of measurement is a light-year. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, which is so fast that in the time it takes to snap your fingers, light circumnavigates the globe half a dozen times.

  To put the speed of light and size of the universe into perspective, the sun is 94.4 million miles away from the earth at its farthest distance from us. If you could drive to the sun traveling 65 miles per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it would take you more than 163 years to get there. The light that warms your face on a sunny day, on the other hand, left the surface of the sun only 8 minutes ago. So while 94.4 million miles may seem like a long distance by earthly standards, it’s our next-door neighbor by celestial measurements. The sun is the nearest star in our tiny little galaxy known as the Milky Way. There are more than 80 billion galaxies in the universe, which, for the record, equates to more than 10 galaxies per person! I don’t think you have to worry about running out of things to do when you get to heaven. It’s an awfully big sandbox.

  In one minute, light travels 11 million miles. In one day, light travels 160 billion miles. In one year, light travels an unfathomable 5 trillion, 865 billion, 696 million miles. But that’s just one light-year. The outer edge of the universe, according to astrophysicists, is 15.5 billion light-years away! If that seems incomprehensible, it’s because it’s virtually unimaginable. Yet God says that this is the distance between His thoughts and our thoughts. So here’s my thought: Your best thought on your best day falls 15.5 billion light-years short of how great and how good God really is. Even the most brilliant among us underestimate God by 15.5 billion light-years. God is able to do 15.5 billion light-years beyond what you can ask or imagine.

  By definition, a big dream is a dream that is bigger than you. In other w
ords, it’s beyond your human ability to accomplish. And this means there will be moments when you doubt yourself. That’s normal. But that’s when you need to remind yourself that your dream isn’t bigger than God; God is 15.5 billion light-years bigger than your dream.

  If you’ve never had a God-sized dream that scared you half to death, then you haven’t really come to life. If you’ve never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small. If your vision isn’t perplexingly impossible, then you need to expand the radiuses of your prayer circles.

  Qualified Versus Called

  A big dream is simultaneously the best feeling and worst feeling in the world. It’s exhilarating because it’s beyond your ability; it’s frightening for the same exact reason. So if you are going to dream big, you have to manage the emotional tension. Facing your fears is the beginning of the battle. Then you have to circle them over and over again.

  Have you ever felt like your dream was too big for you?

  Moses felt that way more than once. When God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses felt like it was too big. He felt like he wasn’t qualified, so he asked God to send someone else to do it. That is par for the course. In my experience, you’ll never feel qualified. But God doesn’t call the qualified; God qualifies the called.

  I wasn’t qualified to pastor National Community Church. The only thing I had on my résumé was a nine-week summer internship. We had no business going into the coffeehouse business. No one on our team had ever worked in a coffeehouse when we started pursuing that dream. But it doesn’t matter if you qualify for the loan, qualify for the job, or qualify for the program. If God has called you, you’re qualified.

  The issue is never, “Are you qualified?” The issue is always, “Are you called?”

  I make this distinction between qualified and called with aspiring writers all the time. Too many authors worry about whether or not their book will get published. That isn’t the question. The question is this: Are you called to write? That’s the only question you need to answer. And if the answer is yes, then you need to write the book as an act of obedience. It doesn’t matter whether anyone reads it or not.

  I remember the day I walked into Union Station to inquire about renting the movie theaters for our Sunday services. I felt intimidated by the opportunity. It seemed too good. It seemed too big. We were a church of only fifty people at that point, and Union Station was the most visited destination in Washington, DC. How could fifty people hold services in a place where twenty-five million people pass through every year? We barely filled a large living room. How could we fill what was once the largest room under a single roof in the world? The dream was too big for me, but it’s never too big for God. And what seemed too big then eventually became too small to contain what God was doing in us and through us.

  If you want to keep growing spiritually, you need to keep stretching. How? By going after dreams that are bigger than you are. When NCC was a church of fifty people, we took a huge step of faith by hosting a Convoy of Hope outreach that fed five thousand people. We knew it required four hundred volunteers. We knew we only had fifty people. But we felt that God was calling us to go for it.

  A few years ago, we hosted another Convoy of Hope at RFK Stadium. This time we fed ten thousand guests. 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? To be honest, we were pretty satisfied doing it once a year, but God upped the ante. Now our dream is a Dream Center in southeast DC that serves as a need-meeting machine 24/7. It’s beyond our ability, but that is why we believe God will bless it.

  Moses Complex

  Bill Grove had a big dream. He also had a self-described Moses complex. His big dream was to be the general manager of the TPC Scottsdale, the PGA’s flagship golf course of the West. But that dream seemed too big for the former golf pro. Like Moses, Bill had a hard time believing he was qualified to manage what Golfweek magazine called “one of the America’s best courses.”

  Bill doubted himself, but he didn’t doubt God. He circled that dream for more than a decade. The defining moment was the Wednesday evening, after a prayer service at their church, when Bill and his wife, Debbie, and their eight-year-old daughter, Kacey, drove to the TPC Scottsdale and pulled into the parking lot. They joined hands and circled the clubhouse like it was Jericho. Seven times they circled it. The diners in the clubhouse restaurant gave them a few strange looks, but Bill and Debbie and Kacey kept circling. They prayed for God’s favor. They prayed for God’s glory. They prayed for God’s will.

  With each circle, it was like God got bigger and bigger. With each circle, self-doubt shrunk and a holy confidence grew. With each circle, a prayer battle was won.

  Not long after drawing that prayer circle, Bill got his dream job as general manager of the TPC Scottsdale, and God has been answering Bill’s prayer for the seventeen years he has been in that capacity. TPC Scottsdale now plays host to the largest PGA tournament in the country, and it has been named one of the top fifty golf resort destinations in the world by Condé Nast Traveler, one of the premier traveling magazines. And while you would have to discover it on your own because Bill is too humble to mention it, Bill has been recognized for his achievements by the Southwest Section PGA with one of its highest honors: Golf Professional of the Year.

  Bill is the first to give God all of the glory for his personal and professional achievements. They aren’t a testament to Bill Grove; they are a testament to what God can achieve through a humble servant who dares to dream big dreams and pray bold prayers.

  A Letter to God

  Now let me retrace this circle a little farther back.

  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. But let me remind you that these answers have rarely happened as quickly or easily as they sound. There is usually a backstory. So we are quick to celebrate the answer to prayer, but the answer probably didn’t come quickly. I’ve never met a person who didn’t experience some big disappointments on the way to his or her big dream.

  Bill would never have gotten his dream job if he hadn’t lost his job of eleven years as the head professional at a private golf club in 1985. It was a devastating blow to his ego, even though he lost the job for righteous reasons. When Bill would not agree to an unfair business deal, his plan went out the window, along with his job. Bill was so afraid and so desperate that he fell on his knees in the shower one night and cried out for mercy. He prayed the only promise he could remember: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” Bill said, “I went from walking into a shower feeling like I was carrying five hundred pounds to leaving that shower feeling as though I had the strength to lift five hundred pounds.”

  Sometimes the power of prayer is the power to carry on. It doesn’t always change your circumstances, but it gives you the strength to walk through them. When you pray through, the burden is taken off of your shoulders and put on the shoulders of Him who carried the cross to Calvary.

  After Bill had worked odd jobs as a golf pro for six years, he and Debbie threw up their arms and got back on their knees because they weren’t any closer to their dream than they had been a decade before. That’s when they decided to write a letter to God. They posted that letter on their refrigerator, and every time they walked by the refrigerator, they praised God, Jericho style, for the job that He was going to provide.

  Over the next decade, one job led to another until Bill landed his dream job as general manager at TPC Scottsdale. It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen. Every time they needed to sell an old house or get a new job, Bill and Debbie wrote a letter to God and posted it on their refrigerator. It was their unique way of circling their situation in prayer. They didn’t always get what they wanted, when they wanted it. Sometimes it felt like God was taking His time, and
He was. But God never misses His postmark. After a decade of divine delays and detours, Bill got the dream job he had circled in prayer for more than a decade.

  Is your dream too big for you?

  It better be because that will force you to pray circles around it. If you keep circling it in prayer, God will get bigger and bigger until you see your impossible prayer for what it really is: an easy answer for an almighty God.

  Part 2

  The Second Circle —

  Pray Hard

  One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”

  The parable of the persistent widow is one of the most pixilated pictures of prayer in Scripture. It shows us what praying hard looks like: knocking until your knuckles are raw, crying out until your voice is lost, pleading until your tears run dry. Praying hard is praying through. And if you pray through, God will come through. But it will be God’s will, God’s way.