My mom has been reading this book by Mark Batterson.
The Circle Maker
Praying circles around your biggest dreams and greatest fears.
I didn’t know what to think.
Would it be another name-it-and-claim-it prayer book?
No, quite the contrary!
The legend of the Circle Maker.
1st century BC.
A devastating drought.
Honi.
With a six-foot staff in his hand, Hone began to turn like a math compass.
Three hundred sixty degrees.
With authority, Honi called down rain.
Then it happened.
Raindrops descended to the earth.
As we age, either imagination overtakes memory or memory overtakes imagination.
Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway to prayer.
Prayer and imagination are directly proportional:
the more you pray the bigger your imagination becomes.
If you keep praying, you’ll keep dreaming, and conversely,
if you keep dreaming, you’ll keep praying.
The more you pray the bigger your dreams will become.
And the bigger your dreams become the more you will have to pray.
In that process of drawing ever-enlarging prayer circles, the sphere of God’s glory is expanded.
Our date of death is not the date etched on our tombstone.
The day we stop dreaming is the day we start dying.
When imagination is sacrificed on the alter of logic, God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him.
In fact, the death of a dream is often a sublet form of idolatry.
We lose faith in the God who gave us the big dream and settle for a small dream that we can accomplish without His help.
We go after dreams that don’t require divine intervention.
Nothing honors God more than a big dream that is way beyond our ability to accomplish.
Why?
Because there is no way we can take credit for it.
And nothing is better for our spiritual development than a big dream because it keeps us on our knees in raw dependence on God.
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.
And so, as I read, I find my doubts being exposed …
and my faith being challenged .. and stretched.