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Editor’s note: The future is uncertain. That’s something we can all agree on. Whether your long-term goal looks like saving for retirement, graduating from school, planning for a new baby, buying a home, or taking that trip that’s been on your bucket list for years, we could all probably use a little encouragement right about now. Your dreams and desires matter to God. And, He wants you to bring all of them to His feet when you come into the throne room. Enjoy this list of encouraging thoughts and prayers from Mark Batterson’s new book, Praying Circles Around Your Future and be encouraged.
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- Sometimes the power of prayer is the power to carry on. It doesn’t always change your circumstances, but it gives you the strength to walk through them. When you pray through, the burden is taken off of your shoulders and carried by your Savior, Who carried the cross to Calvary.
- We sometimes pray like God doesn’t want to keep His promises, and we have to beg Him to. You have no idea how badly God wants to keep His promises. That’s why He made them in the first place.
- God isn’t holding out or holding back at all. It’s not in His nature to withhold any good thing from us.
- If you take God at His word, it takes a load off your shoulders, because you realize He wants to bless you far more than you even want to be blessed. And His capacity to give is far greater than your capacity to receive.
- There is nothing God loves more than keeping His promises. He is actively watching and waiting for us to simply take Him at His word. He’s watching over each and every promise that He’s made, and if that doesn’t fill you with holy confidence, what will?
- Long before you woke up this morning and long after you go to sleep tonight, the Spirit of God was circling you with songs of deliverance. He has been circling you since the day you were conceived, and He’ll circle you until the day you die. The Holy Spirit is praying hard for you with groans that can’t even be translated into human language.
- The hard thing about praying hard is you have to trust the favor of God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.
- We want things to happen at the speed of light instead of the speed of a seed planted in the ground. We want our dreams to become reality overnight. We want our prayers answered immediately, if not sooner. But the key to dreaming big and praying hard is thinking long.
- Prayer doesn’t just change circumstances; more important, it changes us. It doesn’t just alter external realities; it alters internal realities so that we see out of a different lens.
- It’s not just where you end up that’s important; it’s how you get there. The harder the better. It’s true in life; it’s true in prayer.
Excerpted with permission from Praying Circles Around Your Future by Mark Batterson, copyright Mark Batterson.
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Your Turn
We pray you still have high hopes for the future. We have a God far bigger than our circumstances He’ll use those seasons in the valley as a dance floor to bring dry bones to life. We hope you are encouraged to fall to your knees in prayer today, tomorrow, and every day after. Which of God’s promises is bringing you hope and comfort right now? Come share on our blog!