The premise behind Battersons The Circle Maker
(which has become a very popular book) is that
if we draw circles around important things in
our lives, including our prayers, we will
receive great blessings. Batterson explains:
Over the years, Ive drawn prayer circles
around promises in Scripture and promises the
Holy Spirit has conceived in my spirit. Ive
drawn prayer circles around impossible
situations and impossible people. Ive drawn
prayer circles around everything from life
goals to pieces of property.
Batterson
explains that his goal is to glorify God by
drawing circles around that which we want.
Battersons circle-making formula for getting
prayers answered is reminiscent of the still-
popular book that hit the evangelical market in
2000, The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson.
From the start of the book, the reader is
being offered a method for success in his
spiritual life by one daily prayer. . . .
Wilkinson thinks he has discovered something he
wants to share with all. If well just pray the
prayer of Jabez, word-for-word, every day for a
month, well see Gods blessing and power in
our lives.
The key is that Jabez learned
the right formula for asking things of God.
Wilkinson implies a cause and effect action
that is guaranteedask this way and wait until
you see the results. The Prayer of Jabez was
really fulfilling a lustful desire of manto be
like God:
Man develops a formula to get
what he wants, and God MUST NOW answer these
requests or prayers.
there is no precedent
whatsoever in the Bible that we are to draw
circles in order to have our prayers answered.
On the contrary, there are countless examples
in pagan, wiccan, and New Age literature that
refer to circles. If drawing prayer circles is
such a wonderful God-inspired idea, how is it
that Satanists and those in the occult consider
circles a major part of their belief system?
Could it be that the church is merely imitating
an occultic practice?
It is not circles
that people need, but rather, what God offers
them: a relationship with His Sonno gimmicks,
no magic, no trickeryno circles. God offers
the free gift of eternal life through Jesus
Christ to all those who make a straight line to
His throne of grace and to His everlasting
truth.