Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Day 20
I
planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
I Corinthians 3:6
Toward the end of his life, Honi the
Circle Maker was walking down a dirt road when he saw a man planting a carob
tree. Always the inquisitive sage, Honi
questioned him, “How long will it take this tree to bear fruit?” The man replied, “Seventy years.” Honi said, “Are you quite sure you will live
another seventy years to eat its fruit?”
The man replied, “Perhaps not. However,
when I was born into this world, I found many carob trees planted by my father
and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my
children and grandchildren so they will be able to eat the fruit of these
trees.”
This
incident led to an insight that changed the way Honi prayed. In a moment of revelation, the Circle Maker
realized that praying is planting. Each
prayer is like a seed that goes in the ground.
It disappears for a season, but it eventually bears fruit that blesses
future generations. In fact, our prayers
bear fruit forever. No expiration date!
Even when we die, our prayers don’t.
Each prayer takes on a life, an eternal life, of its own. I know this because of the moments in my life
when the Holy Spirit has reminded me: the prayers of your grandfather are being
answered in your life right now. My
grandfather died when I was six! His
prayers did not! Like a carob tree
planted in the ground, our prayer seeds will bear fruit long after we are long
gone!
The Circle Maker revolves around 3
mantras: Dream Big, Pray Hard and Think Long.
It's the last one that is so tough in our quick-fix culture. Almost
every prayer we pray has an ASAP attached to it. Let me introduce a new acronym: ALAT. Quit praying as soon as possible prayers and
start praying as long as it takes prayers! We tend to overestimate what we can
accomplish in two years, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in ten
years! If you dream big without thinking
long you're headed for a head-on collision with disappointment. For the record, it is prayer that helps us
both dream big and think long!
Drawing prayer circles often feels
like a long and boring process. It’s frustrating when you feel like you’ve been
circling forever. You start to wonder if
God really hears, if God really cares.
Sometimes His silence is deafening.
We circle the cancer. We circle our children. We circle the dream. We circle the sin. But it doesn’t seem to be making a
difference. What do you do? My advice: think long.
Circle
for seventy years if you have to! What
else are you going to do? Where else are you going to turn? What other options do you have? Pray through.
We live in a culture that overvalues
fifteen minutes of fame and undervalues lifelong faithfulness. Maybe we have it backwards? Just as our greatest successes often come on
the heels of our greatest failures, our greatest answers to prayer often come
on the heels of our longest prayers. But
if you pray those long and boring prayers, your life will be anything but
boring. The seeds will bear fruit. God will give the increase.
Mark
Batterson-Circle Maker
