Mark Batterson

So I picked my smallest book, and it's a book called Circle of Prayer.

And it's a 40-day prayer challenge from my favorite author, Mark Batterson.

And so you can circle, like, the same prayer for 40 days and you say the same one, which usually I'll say a prayer, forget all about it and go on to the next one.

Yeah.

They like to read books.

And one of my heroes was, who's the guy that, Mark Batterson.

Mark Batterson, everybody, he wrote Circle Maker.

Really, really good friend.

We ended up going down the Colorado River together, one of my sons and one of his sons, for seven days we spent floating down the Colorado River.

For me, I could maybe do three books a year.

I'm just not a reader, and they got to be audible.

I'm not going to feel guilty because I can't measure up to Mark Batterson's.

And, uh, i- others, and I can ...

Mark Batterson.

And I'm going-

Yeah

Prayer is the difference between the best that you can do and the best that God can do.

I love what Mark Batterson says.

He says that we should work like it depends on us and pray like it depends on God.

Before Nehemiah ever made a plan, he prayed.

I recently have read several books by a pastor not of our faith who is really interesting.

His name is Mark Batterson, and he pastors a church in Washington, D.C. He's got, I mean, a number of really interesting books, but the most recent ones I read were The Circle Maker, and he's got a follow-up to that called Draw the Circle.

But this whole idea is like, what if you were to kneel down and pray because you're in this urgent situation or whatever the situation is, and just draw yourself into a chalk circle and say, Lord, I'm not leaving this circle until I connect with you.

Dedication in prayer is the idea.

Don't just count your days.

Make your days count, as Mark Batterson would say.

If God gives you more life, will it mean more fruit? If I live, I produce fruit.

Number two, if I die, I get Christ.

But what I'm saying is, even if the delight is in your heart and you're not outwardly, you know, belting out in song in the grocery store.

Well, like what Mark Batterson says in Chase the Lion, he says, "It, it's so easy to become a create- a creature of habit, isn't it? We go through the routine day after day, and before we know it, we're just going through the motions.

Don't settle, settle for status quo.

For that matter, don't settle down at all, ever." But he's basically saying that we should live our lives in a way that they're, it's worth telling stories about.

Just I mean, he blew my mind.

Then we had Mark Batterson, who like, you know, just best of the best wrote Chase the

Lion.

Yeah.

It was great.

Man, and then, gosh, I'll have to be quick.

Mark Batterson, I mean, he's just so great all the time.

My biggest takeaway from him was, and this was a lot of people's actually, but his whole life is summed up in, you need a vision beyond your resources.

And so what that means is you don't plant a tamarisk tree for you.

You plant it for the next generation, right? You plant a tamarisk tree, as author Mark Batterson writes, because you have long vision.

Tamarisk trees are living, breathing symbols that remind us serving God's purpose requires a long obedience in the same direction.

You don't plant a tree for a future generation unless you have an eternal perspective.