I’m blogging my way through Mark Batterson’s book The Circle Maker. For more info on Batterson or the book, click here.
This section was a little more difficult to get through than the 1st Circle (see yesterday’s post) about dreaming big. There were some points that clicked for me, while other parts seemed to be indicating that I needed to work hard to earn God’s approval so that he would answer my prayers. I sincerely doubt that’s Batterson’s take, but that’s what I found myself scribbling in the margin.
Batterson opens by talking about holy desperation, saying that the “viability of our prayers has more to do with intensity than vocabulary.” (p83) He hits on the 10,000 hour rule brought to the public’s attention through Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. He spends much of the time in this section dealing with how we should act when there’s a delay in the answer to our prayer, or when the answer from God is No.
Here are some of his thoughts that grabbed my attention:
…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. (p93)
There is nothing God wants to do more than prove his power by keeping his promises. (p100) I love this, and have often written in my journal that all of God’s promises are backed by all of his power.
(God) has this habit of waiting until the very last moment to answer our prayer to see if we will chicken out or pray through…God provides JUST ENOUGH JUST IN TIME.(p109)
One of our fundamental misunderstandings of spiritual maturity is thinking that it should result in self-sufficiency. It’s the exact opposite. The goal isn’t independence; the goal is codependence on God. (p110) This brings to mind the words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote to the Corinthians about the rough time that he and his traveling partners had experienced. They thought that they were going to die. As a result, they stopped relying on themselves, and learned to rely on God. (2 Corinthians 1:8-10)
God will keep putting you in situations that stretch your faith, and as your faith stretches, so do your dreams. (p111)
Praying hard is linked to working hard, taking steps of action, risking in faith that God is going to come through. Batterson tells some awesome stories of people (from the Bible and from modern life) who believed God, prayed about a big dream, and stepped out into the unknown in obedience and hope.
Praying earnestly literally means “praying with a prayer.” It’s more than words. It means acting on your prayers because you expect an answer. (p 114)
Sometimes God gets in the way to show us the way. (p 124)
Divine detours often get us where God wants us to go…these are the miracles we don’t want, but these are the miracles we need. (p125)
All of us love miracles. We just don’t like being in a situation that necessitates one…but this is how God reveals his glory. (p130)
As I read this section, I found myself wrestling with the tension of working to earn God’s approval vs. the promises of God to hear and answer my prayers. I will likely always wrestle with understanding that part of life. Batterson makes a great point that God always knows better than I do, and sometimes the best thing that God can do for us is NOT answer the prayer we pray, because that would take us to a place that isn’t God’s best for us. Kind of reminds me of a Garth Brooks song…see, country music is spiritual!
I’m looking forward to seeing what Batterson has to say in the next section. I don’t usually blog on Fridays, but I’ll write about the next two sections over the next two days.
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