The Circle Maker Mark Batterson Pdf

[Favio Cassidy]

Accordingto Pastor Mark Batterson in this expanded edition of The Circle Maker, "Drawing prayer circles around our dreams isn't just a mechanism whereby we accomplish great things for God. It's a mechanism whereby God accomplishes great things in us."

Sharing inspiring stories from his own experiences as a circle maker, Mark Batterson will help you uncover your heart's deepest desires and God-given dreams and unleash them through the kind of audacious prayer that God delights to answer.

This expanded edition of The Circle Maker also includes Batterson's newest insights on how God answers prayer along with stories that add convincing proof to the reality that God is able to do exceedingly far greater than all we could ask or imagine.

Announcer: On this episode of Maybe God, our conversation on prayer continues with Mark Batterson, the prolific New York Times bestselling author of 23 books, and lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC.

Mark's most popular book, The Circle Maker, has motivated people all over the world to boldly draw circles around their most ambitious prayers. Today, Mark explains why he believes God honors bold prayers, what it means when our prayers aren't answered, and how he personally prayed through some very challenging times in his own personal life.

Eric Huffman: So Mark, thank you for being here. Let's just look back for a minute. So let's go back to 1996. You're in your early 20s, you've decided to go to DC with your wife at that point. Do you have any kids at that point?

Eric Huffman: So you've experienced the pain of a failed church plant. You started a church, it didn't make it like you thought it would. You inherit a church with like 25 people in it, if I'm telling this right, in DC, meeting in a public school in a cafeteria. That's a tough gig, man. Tell me about that and what kind of leader you were at that point in your life.

Mark Batterson: Well, Eric, the first thing I'd say is I'm grateful for the failed attempt the first time, which would have been '94. The cure for the fear of failure is not success. It's failure in small enough doses that you build up an immunity to it, is what I think.

So, you know, our first attempt was a hashtag fail. But that begins to get your ego out of the way and you begin to realize that you're not going to take credit for anything that happens after that. So I'm grateful. And that's the thing that got us to DC and then we inherit this core group of 19 people-

Mark Batterson: Yes, we do. We do. You know, meeting in the DC public school. There was nothing glamorous about it. But I had a father-in-law that was really my mentor or model for ministry, and I saw what long obedience in the same direction looks like.

Those who are listening, whatever you do, you overestimate what you can do in a year or two, but you underestimate what God might be able to do in 10, or 20, or 30. So we just thought, Let's plant ourselves, let's let our roots grow deep, and let's see what God does. So 27 years later, I kind of stand back, and it is a 'look at what the Lord has done'.

Mark Batterson: Well, I mean, it's hard to condense those 27 years, but, you know, we're influencing thousands of people on a weekend. We'll maybe talk a little bit. We have a core conviction that the church belongs in the middle of the marketplace, which-

Mark Batterson: Well, Jesus didn't just hang out at the synagogue, He hung out at wells. Wells were these natural gathering places in ancient culture. So we feel like a church that stays within its four walls isn't a church at all.

So the thing that kind of gets my pulse going is the 273 mission trips that we've taken. It's the outreach. Because we don't want to just build a church, we want to bless a city. So we took a crack house, turned it into Ebenezers Coffeehouse. So we caffeinated our city. And then we're building out a city block right now that's rather unique. You would not mistake it for a traditional church.

Mark Batterson: And I love the church. To me, the gospel is as good as it gets. So I just want to put that out there. At the same time, I think we need to do business's mission. So like that coffeehouse, every penny of profit we make goes to causes that we care about, including a Dream Center in Ward seven of our city that is mentoring kids and discipling kids.

Eric Huffman: Dude, it's just so cool. I want to talk about sort of the steps between where you started and where you are now. I mean, Ebenezers has sort of taken on a [court?] likes, following, or status. It is an incredible story. But it didn't happen just out of nowhere. It didn't happen accidentally. There was some intentionality that went into that.

Mark Batterson: What's funny is, this is 96. That's before Fitbit. That's before Apple watches. That's before everybody in the world was concerned how many steps they get in. But my feeling now is if you're going to pray, why not get steps in at the same time?

I'm a guy that walks and prays. So there was a moment in '96... and I was reading Joshua 1:3. It says, "I'll give you everywhere you set your foot just as I promised Moses." For the record, I think you have to be careful when you interpret these promises and put them in context and all that good stuff.

Mark Batterson: But I just felt like I'm gonna pray a perimeter around Capitol Hill, turned into a 4.7-mile prayer walk. And it wasn't praying for property, it was just praying for people. Like, Let Your kingdom come, let Your will be done in DC as it is in heaven. And 27 years later, I mean, we own six properties, Eric, literally right on that prayer circle. Six properties.

Mark Batterson: I mean, my office right now in the city block that we're building out is literally on the corner of 8th and M Street SE. And occasionally, Eric, I'll like look out the window and almost see my 26-year-old self-circling that building, and we would have had no idea. But there is a God whose vision for our lives is bigger than ours.

I bet someone listening heart skipped a beat right there. Believe it that God is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine. At this point or at this juncture, I think it is important to say that every prayer has to meet a two-fold litmus test. It has to be in the will of God and for the glory of God. So it's not about us.

Eric Huffman: Totally. My first sort of access to your work was Circle Maker, which was the book that was inspired, in part, by your walk that day. I don't know how much time passed between your walk and the book, it doesn't really matter, but Circle maker became a phenomenon. Is that the bestselling book of the 23 that you've written?

Eric Huffman: Okay, just making sure. And it's impacted tons of lives. And that's why you're here in Houston in part because so many people that my church were impacted by Circle Maker. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that's meant for our church. But this idea that you walk around something or someone or even you walk proverbially around a situation, a need, and you pray specific prayers, bold prayers.

Mark Batterson: And the people ask him to pray and he does something pretty curious. He takes his staff, he draws a circle in the sand, he kneels in that circle, and he prays, "Sovereign Lord, I swear before your great name that I will not leave this circle until you have mercy upon your children." Now, that's a bold prayer because if God doesn't answer you're gonna be in that circle for a long time. You might even look like a fool.

Mark Batterson: But I think sometimes we're so afraid to risk our reputation. But to me, that's part of faith. Faith is spelled risk. You can't have one without the other. So long story short, it begins to rain. Eventually it's called the prayer that saved a generation.

So I really believe that when we cross the space time continuum and God begins to connect dots across nations and generations, what we're going to see is that bold prayers had a lot to do with these turning points and tipping points and they have a domino effect.

Mark Batterson: Well, I think, you know, I probably... And there are a couple of disclaimers in the book. It doesn't need to be a circle. It could be a Trapezoid. You can pray Trapezoid. The idea is that you're not just going to pray but pray through. There's this idea of continuing to believe, continuing to pray-

Mark Batterson: Honi was called the Circle Maker but kind of in the original you could also translate late at the circle drawer. And I pitched that to someone on our team, but they saw it in written form and drawer, which is hard to say also spells drawer.

Eric Huffman: It got in there one way or another. That's so good. So you were inspired by the reading you did of Honi. What was the name of the book that you pulled that from? Legends?

Eric Huffman: Right. Right. Right. So cool. So do you feel like had you not drawn the circle and prayed the circle that God might not have given you these things that He's given you? When I say 'you; I mean your church.

Mark Batterson: All of this is past our paygrade. I believe in the sovereignty of God, Eric. I also believe in the free will of man. Now, it's kind of like the unstoppable bullet hitting the impenetrable wall.

Mark Batterson: I don't know other than you have not because you asked not. So God's not going to answer 100% of the prayers you don't pray. Now, I want to be careful because I would flip that coin and say, God has blessings and categories you can't even conceive of.

Mark Batterson: So I think that God is preparing good works in advance, Ephesians 2:10. There's something about prayer that doesn't just make it happen, but also enables us to notice it. So we won't deep dive that. But I think prayer sanctifies the reticular activating system, the part of the brain that determines what you notice and what goes unnoticed, and now you begin to see the divine appointments.

3a8082e126