It Happened Again!

A review of The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson, published by Zondervan in 2011

It happened again! Every time I read a book by Mark Batterson I come away challenged and I come away thinking and praying that God will help me do better.

The Circle Maker is a book about prayer. For most believers, this would be a reason for them to not to read the book. Most of us have several books on our shelves on the topic of prayer but still struggle with the discipline of prayer in our lives.

We put the latest leadership principles into practice; we stay current with technology; and we force ourselves to become knowledgeable on current trends and fads in worship, preaching and discipleship methods. But has our prayer life advanced? Probably not. The Circle Maker will challenge you to advance your prayer life!

Batterson talks about answered prayer in his own life; in the life of National Community Church; in the life of friends and parishioners of National Community Church plus the prayers of family members who have gone on to their reward.

I’m embarrassed by this but at times when I would read about answered prayers in Mark’s life, I found myself thinking, “All he did was pray.” And then I had to confess my own prayerlessness and dependency upon other means which could be translated as idols.

There were several “take aways” for me. For instance, Batterson wrote that most of us don’t get what we want because we don’t know what we want. We haven’t given thought to what our needs are. Another take away for me was that many of us don’t get what we want because we don’t ask.

I was thoroughly challenged by the section of the book that related our dreams to our prayers. It seems that the more we dream, the more we pray and the more we pray the bigger our dreams are. I never really put the two together like that before. It has now become quite a challenge for me. Especially when you consider that if our prayers aren’t impossible to us, they may be an insult to God. Why would we ask Him to do something that we could do on our own or with the help of some others? Paul wrote in Ephesians that God was able to do more than we could dream or imagine.

Also I was challenged by the section of the book on Life Goals. Mark provides a ten step plan for goal setting that would benefit all readers.

If you are a pastor, teacher or small group leader, you will want to use this book in your teaching/preaching. But don’t get so caught up in communicating what was written to others that you don’t allow the message to get deep down into your being.

Again, this is a great book. It’s not dry! It’s not legalistic! And it’s not something from long ago. This is something happening today with a promise of tomorrow being even greater!