The Circle Maker_Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears

by Mark Batterson

  One of the challenges John and Heidi have faced as they try to live unoffended by God involves their son. He was a normally developing toddler until the day he suddenly and mysteriously lost all communication. They wondered if he would ever talk again. The fear of a wide variety of diagnoses, including high-functioning autism, dropped them to their knees.

  During those desperate days, they went to visit their pastor for counsel and encouragement. While praying for them, the pastor received a promise from God. He jotted Isaiah 59:21 on a sticky note and handed it to them.

  “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the LORD. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants — from this time on and forever,” says the LORD.

  The pastor shut his Bible and said, “I guess that settles it. Your child will talk.”

  For the past ten years, their prayers have been hyperlinked to that promise. In that moment, John and Heidi said “a wall came crashing down” and “a promise came rushing in.” It was the most naturally supernatural moment of their lives. Has it been clear sailing since then? No. Have they experienced disappointments? Yes. But that promise is circled in their Bible. “God gave us a promise, and no matter how many times we have to keep circling, it’s settled.”

  You’ve heard the adage: “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” Here’s a fresh take on that old truth: God said it, I’ve circled it, and that settles it.

  It was settled on the cross when Jesus said, “It is finished.” It wasn’t just the final installment on our sin debt; it was the down payment on all of His promises. “No matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.”

  Remember the promise in Joshua 1:3 that I circled when I did my prayer walk around Capitol Hill? God promised Joshua that He would give him every place where he set his foot, but there is a little addendum at the end of the promise: “as I promised Moses.” The promise was originally given to Moses. Then it was transferred to Joshua. In much the same way, all of God’s promises have been transferred to us via Jesus Christ. While these promises must be interpreted intelligently and applied accurately, there are moments when the Spirit of God will quicken your spirit to claim a promise that was originally intended for someone else. So while we have to be careful not to blindly claim promises that don’t belong to us, our greatest challenge is that we don’t circle the promises we could or should circle.

  By the most conservative estimates, there are more than three thousand promises in Scripture. By virtue of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, every one of them belongs to you. Every one of them has your name on it. The question is: How many of them have you circled?

  Tree Island

  Because this principle of hyperlinking our prayers to the promises of God is so important, let me paint another picture. The promises of God are the high ground, the holy ground, on which we stand. Circling those promises is the way we take our stand.

  I have a friend who owns a log cabin on Lake Anna in central Virginia, and he has been gracious enough to let us vacation there a few times. During our first stay, Summer and I were six weeks out from the Escape from Alcatraz swim in San Francisco, so we put on wetsuits and did a training swim. There was a tree in the middle of the lake that piqued our curiosity. I’d never seen anything quite like it, so we decided to swim out to it. Sure enough, it was literally a solitary tree that was growing on an island in the middle of the lake that wasn’t more than five feet in diameter. I have no idea how it got there, but you can actually see it on Google maps.

  While we swam, Lora pulled Josiah on an inner tube behind the pontoon boat. As we approached the tree island, I told him to jump off the inner tube and swim to me, but Josiah was afraid because we were in the middle of the lake. Like most eight-year-old kids, Josiah felt much more comfortable in the shallow end of a pool where he could see the bottom. What he didn’t know is that the lake had gotten shallow as we approached the tree island. I could feel it under my feet, but everybody else still thought it was deep because we were in the middle of the lake. Then, in one dramatic gesture, I literally stood up in the middle of the lake, and it looked like I was standing on water! When Josiah realized it wasn’t as deep as he had thought, he jumped off the inner tube and swam to the island. Then he stood on water! That moment is more than a fun family memory; it’s the mental image that comes to mind every time I think about standing on the promises of God.

  The promises of God are like that tree island in the middle of the lake. They are the difference between sinking and swimming because they give you a place to stand. When John and Heidi felt like they were going to drown, Isaiah 59:21 was a tree island. It gave them a place to stand, a place to rest. And when God keeps His promises, you won’t just stand on the water; you will waltz into the Promised Land through the waters God has parted.

  Start Circling

  What I’m about to share has the power to revolutionize the way you pray and the way you read the Bible. We often view prayer and Scripture reading as two distinct spiritual disciplines without much overlap, but what if they were meant to be hyperlinked? What if reading became a form of praying and praying became a form of reading?

  One of the primary reasons we don’t pray through is because we run out of things to say. Our lack of persistence is really a lack of conversation pieces. Like an awkward conversation, we don’t know what to say. Or like a conversation on its last leg, we run out of things to talk about. That’s when our prayers turn into a bunch of overused and misapplied clichés. So instead of praying hard about a big dream, we’re left with small talk. Our prayers are as meaningless as a conversation about the weather.

  The solution? Pray through the Bible.

  Prayer was never meant to be a monologue; it was meant to be a dialogue. Think of Scripture as God’s part of the script; prayer is our part. Scripture is God’s way of initiating a conversation; prayer is our response. The paradigm shift happens when you realize that the Bible wasn’t meant to be read through; the Bible was meant to be prayed through. And if you pray through it, you’ll never run out of things to talk about.

  The Bible is a promise book and a prayer book. And while reading is reactive, prayer is proactive. Reading is the way you get through the Bible; prayer is the way you get the Bible through you. As you pray, the Holy Spirit will quicken certain promises to your spirit. It’s very difficult to predict what and when and where and how, but over time, the promises of God will become your promises. Then you need to circle those promises, both figuratively and literally. I never read without a pen so that I can underline, asterisk, and circle. I literally circle the promises in my Bible. Then I do it figuratively by circling them in prayer.

  One of my treasured possessions is my grandfather’s Bible. I sometimes do devotions in his Bible because I want to see the verses he underlined. I love reading his notes in the margins. And I love seeing what promises he circled. The thing that I love most about his Bible is that it literally had to be taped together because it was falling apart. It wasn’t just well read. It was well prayed.

  Chapter 9

  The Favor of Him Who Dwells

  in the Burning Bush

  The first time I saw the old crack house I was surprised that an eyesore like that could exist just five blocks from the Capitol building. Cinder blocks filled the cavities where doors and windows once were. The brick walls were painted a hideous green color that must have come into and gone out of style very quickly many decades before. And the graffiti on the walls seemed like the appropriate finishing touch on this nuisance property.

  I had walked by it hundreds of times. In fact, I walked right by the corner of 2nd and F Street NE when I prayed a circle around Capitol Hill fifteen years ago. But as I walked by it this particular time, it was like a dream was conceived in my spirit by the Holy Spirit: This crack house would make a great coff
eehouse.

  It seemed like a crazy idea for lots of reasons. First of all, no one on our staff had ever worked at a coffeehouse. Besides that, churches build churches, not coffeehouses. We had no business going into the coffeehouse business, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense in a counterintuitive sort of way. After all, Jesus didn’t just hang out at the synagogue. He hung out at wells, and wells were the natural gathering places in ancient culture. One day it dawned on me that coffeehouses are postmodern wells. The only difference is that we draw shots of espresso instead of drawing water out of a well.

  So the dream of creating a postmodern well where our church and community could cross paths was born, and that dream is fulfilled hundreds of times every day with each customer who walks through our doors. Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse has been voted the #1 coffeehouse in the metro DC area. The performance space doubles as one of our seven church campuses. And to top it off, every penny of our six-digit net profit goes to local community projects and our humanitarian efforts in other countries. It’s more than a miracle; it’s a miracle squared.

  Now let me retrace the circle.

  Casing a Crack House

  One reason the coffeehouse seemed like a crazy idea was that National Community Church was just getting off the ground when the dream was conceived. We barely had any people or any money, but that’s a great prescription for prayer. And we prayed hard for nearly eight years. We laid hands on the walls and prayed. We knelt on the property and prayed. We fasted and prayed. And I lost count of how many circles we prayed around that old crack house.

  Inspired by the story of the Jericho miracle, I would often pray around that property seven times at a pop. It was usually around the fourth or fifth lap that I would get strange looks from the security guards at the Federal Judiciary Building across the street. Is this guy casing a crack house? Many of those guards are now regular customers at our coffeehouse. And while I no longer circle the property in prayer, my favorite place to pray is the rooftop of Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse. I climb the ladder, pop the hatch, and pray on the rooftop — so I’m still getting strange looks from the high-rise offices across the street. We’ve gotten more than one inquiry asking why someone is pacing back and forth on the rooftop.

  Do you have a favorite place to pray? A place where you get better reception? A place where your mind is more focused? A place where you have more faith?

  I love praying on top of the coffeehouse because I feel like I’m praying on top of a miracle. It’s hard not to pray with faith when you’re praying in a place where God has already done a miracle.

  I wonder if that is how Elijah felt praying for rain on top of Mount Carmel. God had just answered an impossible prayer right there. Elijah challenged the 450 prophets to a prayer duel on Mount Carmel as each side asked God to consume their sacrifice with fire. Elijah won that sudden-death showdown in dramatic fashion as God grilled his sacrifice. The God who sent fire can certainly send rain, right? God’s answer to Elijah gave him the faith he needed to pray hard. And that is one of the by-products of answered prayer. It gives us the faith to believe God for bigger and better miracles. With each answered prayer, we draw bigger prayer circles. With each act of faithfulness, our faith increases. With each promise kept, our persistence quotient grows.

  In retrospect, I’m glad the coffeehouse took eight years of hard prayer because it stretched our faith in the process. When you have to pray that long, you aren’t even tempted to take it for granted. This may sound commonsensical, but if it hadn’t taken a miracle, it wouldn’t be a miracle.

  Binding Contract

  Originally, the two lawyers who owned 201 F Street NE wanted $1 million dollars for the crack house because of its location, location, location. It’s just one block from Union Station and kitty-corner to the largest office building in DC, which is home to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The corner of 2nd and F Street NE also forms the NW corner of the Capitol Hill historic district.

  We couldn’t touch $1 million, so we prayed, and the harder we prayed the more the price dropped. We ultimately purchased the property for $325,000, but that was less of a miracle than the fact that four people offered more money for the property than we did. And two of them were real estate developers!

  So how did we get it?

  My only explanation is that we circled Matthew 18:18. Our prayers were hyperlinked to that promise, and we double-clicked it by praying hard.

  “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.”

  The word bind means “to place a contract on something.” This is precisely what happens when you pray. When you pray for something in the earthly realm, God puts a contract on it in the heavenly realm if you are praying in accordance with the will of God. So while February 7, 2002, is the date we signed the physical contract, the spiritual contract predates it by several years. The deal dates back to the first prayer circle we drew around it.

  It’s interesting to note that after cooler heads prevailed, and Honi was honored for his prayer that saved a generation, the Sanhedrin sent him a missive citing Job 22:28: “Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee.” They recognized the binding power of Honi’s prayer: “You have decreed [on earth] below and the Holy One … fulfills your word [in heaven] above.” This language is very similar to the promise Jesus made in Matthew 18:18. There is a strong likelihood that Jesus was familiar with the legend of the circle maker because of its historical proximity. Who knows, maybe He had Honi in mind when He made this promise.

  Watching and Waiting

  The Bible tells us that the Lord is watching over His word to perform it.

  There is nothing God loves more than keeping His promises. He is actively watching and waiting for us to simply take Him at His word. He is watching over Matthew 18:18. He is watching over Isaiah 59:21. He is watching over Luke 7:23. He is watching over each and every promise, and if that doesn’t fill you with holy confidence, nothing will.

  Praying hard is standing on the promises of God. And when we stand on His word, God stands by His word. His word is His bond.

  We sometimes pray as if God doesn’t want to keep His promises. You have no idea how badly God wants to keep His promise! That’s why He made the promise in the first place. We sometimes pray as if our bold prayers that circle the promises of God might offend the God who made them. Are you kidding me? God is offended by anything less! There is nothing God wants to do more than prove His power by keeping His promises. But we doubt God because we doubt ourselves. We don’t ask God to extend His hand because we don’t know His heart.

  Psalm 84:11 captures the heart of the heavenly Father:

  No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

  God is not holding out or holding back. It’s not in His nature to withhold any good thing from us. He most certainly won’t bless disobedience, but He most certainly will bless obedience. If you take God at His word, you’ll make the joyful discovery that God wants to bless you far more than you want to be blessed. And His capacity to give is far greater than your capacity to receive.

  I think I got the joy of gift giving from my mom. I also picked up a little idiosyncrasy. Typically, children beg their parents to open gifts before the designated date, whether it is a birthday or Christmas. Not in my family. My mom used to beg me to open my gifts before the designated day because she could hardly wait to give them. And now I do with our kids what she did with me. Parents begging their children to open their gifts early may seem a little dysfunctional, but this is the heart of our heavenly Father. He can hardly wait to keep His promises. He can hardly wait to perform His word. He can hardly wait to answer our prayers. And when we simply take Him at His word, He can hardly contain His joy.

  My favorite sentence in the twenty-third psalm is this: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The word follow isn’t a strong enough translation. It’s a hunting term in Hebrew. It’s like God is hunting you d
own — but not to harm you; God is hunting you down to bless you. He wants to show you His goodness and His mercy, but too often we run away from it. Why? Because we doubt His good intentions. We can’t believe that God is for us. This is why God reminds us so many different times in many different ways and with many different words.

  Circling Our Children

  If you asked me what I pray for more than anything else, the answer is the favor of God. While it’s tough to describe or define, I think the favor of God is what God does for you that you cannot do for yourself. I pray the favor of God around National Community Church. I pray the favor of God around my books. I pray the favor of God around my children.

  When Parker was a baby, I circled Luke 2:52 and turned it into a prayer blessing. I have prayed that blessing around each of my children thousands of times. Almost every night, I circle my kids with this simple prayer: “Lord, let them grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” I realize that Luke 2:52 isn’t technically a promise, but I think I’m on sound theological ground. Luke 2:52 is a time-lapse description of Jesus’ development as a child, and we’re called to be just like Jesus, so why wouldn’t I circle it? Why shouldn’t I turn it into a blessing and pray it around my children?

  I believe that God is watching over my children just like He is watching over His word. He has one eye on Luke 2:52 and one eye on my kids. And He has no problem watching over both of them. He is watching and waiting for opportunities to favor His children.