Mark Batterson claims that it is very important to pray very specific prayers. Jesus, on the other hand, gave us a very different model of how to pray. This is why it is so important to always be holding the messages of “Christian” books up to the entirety of the Bible, not just to a single verse here or there. Batterson focuses on God’s delivery of Jericho to the Hebrews, where God fulfilled the promise He made to the Hebrews he released from captivity in Egypt. Just looking at the fulfillment of the promise, however, wipes out more than 120 years of significant challenges they faced before seeing the fulfillment of that promise.
God already had Jericho in mind long before Moses was even born. Yet it would be a full 80 years before God would send Moses back into Egypt to lead the Hebrews out of captivity. Then they would wander in the desert for another 40 years before God would lead their children and grandchildren into the Promised Land. None of the Hebrews who prayed for delivery from slavery ever actually saw the Promised Land.
Books like The Circle Maker often give the impression that God moves quickly and we only have to wait a few months or years to see answers to prayers. Mark Batterson walked a circle around his city and supposedly saw an answer to his prayer within a decade. But was that really God? America was founded on colonization, where a group of white men laid claim to a land that was already inhabited by others. Mark Batterson walked a circle around a city where there were undoubtedly already churches operating and other people engaged in Kingdom work. So did God really “deliver” that area to him or did he essentially just steal it from others already working there?
While we may love the inspiring messages of books like The Circle Maker, it’s important to hold them up to the entirety of the Bible to determine their veracity. Christian leaders often make a lot of money by selling us truths we want to hear that may not turn out to be so true in the long run. Today. we’ll talk about prayer and whether Mark Batterson is really leading us to pray the way Jesus did and why that is important.
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The Circle Makers Part 3: How Should We Really Pray?