I loved the challenging message about prayer in Draw The Circle by Mark Batterson. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Here are 15 quotes that especially stood out to me.
“You don’t need to seek opportunity. All you have to do is seek God. And if you seek God, opportunity will seek you.”
“Sometimes the purpose of prayer is to get us out of circumstances, but more often than not, the purpose of prayer is to get us through them. I’m certainly not suggesting we shouldn’t pray deliverance prayers, but there are times we need to pray prevailing prayers. …We’re often so anxious to get out of difficult, painful, or challenging situations that we fail to grow through them. We’re so fixated on getting out of them that we don’t get anything out of them. We fail to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us or cultivate the character God is trying to grow in us. We’re so focused on God changing our circumstances that we never allow God to change us! So instead of ten or twenty years of experience, we have one year of experience repeated ten or twenty times. Sometimes we need to pray ‘get me out’ prayers. But sometimes we need to pray ‘get me through’ prayers. And we need the discernment to know when to pray what.”
“After hitting our knees, we need to take a small step of faith. And those small steps of faith often turn into giant leaps. Like Noah, who kept building an ark day after day, we keep hammering away at the dream God has given us. Like the Israelites, who kept circling Jericho for seven days, we keep circling God’s promises. Like Elijah, who kept sending his servant back to look for a rain cloud, we actively and expectantly wait for God’s answer. …We can pray until our knees are numb, but if our praying isn’t accompanied by acting, then we won’t get anywhere. We need to put feet to our faith. After kneeling down, we need to stand up and step out in faith.”
“Maybe our normal is so subnormal that normal seems abnormal. Maybe we need a new normal. Bold prayers and big dreams are normal. Anything less is subnormal.”
“Prayer gives us a God’s-eye view. It heightens our awareness and gives us a sixth sense that enables us to perceive spiritual realities that are beyond our five senses.”
“Praying is planting. Each prayer is like a seed that gets planted in the ground. It disappears for a season, but it eventually bears fruit that blesses future generations. …Even when we die, our prayers don’t. Each prayer takes on a life, an eternal life, of its own.”
“It’s our childlike faith, not our theological vocabulary, that moves the heart of our Heavenly Father.”
“Praying hard is not the path of least resistance; it’s usually the path of most resistance because we engage in spiritual warfare. …It’s the prayers you pray when you feel like you want to quit praying that can bring the greatest breakthroughs.”
“Our problem typically isn’t overclaiming the promises of God; it’s underclaiming them.”
“You’ve got to praise God if the answer is yes and trust Him if the answer if no. If the answer is not yet, you’ve got to keep circling. It’s always too soon to give up! What other option do you have? To pray or not to pray. Those are the only options.”
“Drawing prayer circle isn’t some magic trick to get what you want from God. God is not a genie in a bottle, and your wish is not His command. His command better be your wish. If it’s not, you won’t be drawing prayer circles; you’ll end up walking in circles. …Until His sovereign will becomes your sanctified wish, your prayer life will be unplugged from its power supply.”
“Sin doesn’t just harden the heart; it also hardens our hearing. In fact, it makes us turn a deaf ear to God because we don’t want to hear the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. But if you aren’t willing to listen to the convicting voice of the Spirit, you won’t hear His comforting voice, forgiving voice, or merciful voice either. Sin creates relational distance, and distance makes it harder to hear the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. But if you get close to God, you won’t miss a thing he says. And if you incline your ear to God, God will incline His ear to you.”
“There comes a moment when praying becomes a form of spiritual procrastination. It’s time to stop praying and start acting. …One of the great mistakes we make is asking God to do for us what God wants us to do for Him. …Prayer that doesn’t lead to action isn’t true prayer; it’s self-talk. When we talk to God, God will talk back to us. He will provoke us, rouse us, stir us, goad us, and prompt us. When we say ‘amen,’ inaction is no longer an option.”
“When God answers a prayer, no matter how big or how small, we need to share it. It’s a stewardship issue. If we don’t turn the answer to prayer into praise, it may very well turn into pride.”
Craig T. Owens 