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(Excerpt from The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears by Mark Batterson.)

One day, I was praying for God's provision when I felt a prompting to pray for a $2 million miracle. The first thing I had to do was decipher whether this prompting was just my own desire to be debt free or whether it was the Holy Spirit who dropped that promise into my heart. It's tough to discern between natural desires and holy desires, but I was about 90 percent sure it was the Holy Spirit who put that promise in my heart. I had no idea how God would do it, but I knew I needed to circle that promise in prayer.

I love the ending of the book of Daniel… In his final vision of the book, he asks the question that all of us want the answer to: "My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?"

Well, God always answers, but it's not always a straight answer. This certainly doesn't mean it's not an honest answer; it just means it's far too complicated, with infinite twists and turns, for our logical left brains to comprehend. …

 "Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end." [See Daniel 12:1-13]

I realize this specifically references the prophecies given to Daniel by the Holy Spirit, but I also believe there is a universal principle in this passage. Our prayers are prophecies, and God Almighty seals them until their designated time. He's never early. He's never late. When the time comes … the prayer will be unsealed and the answer revealed.

Natural World vs. Supernatural Prayers

At some point, our spoken words cease to exist because they are subject to the law of entropy. Our spoken words, aka sound waves, run into friction and run out of energy. 

Our words fade from hearing, but God keeps our prayers.

Our prayers, however, are sealed forever. Our prayers never cease to exist because … the supernatural laws of prayer defy the natural laws of time and space [including the law of entropy].

What God Can Do with Four Words

While it's impossible to trace the pinball path of a single prayer, our prayers somehow exit our four dimensions of space-time in order to get to the God who exists outside of the four space-time dimensions He created when He said, "Let there be light." Our prayers don't dissipate over time; our prayers accumulate through eternity.

According to the Doppler Effect, our universe is still expanding. The significance is this: The four words that God spoke at the beginning of time, "Let there be light," are still creating galaxies at the edge of the universe. If God can do that with four words, what are you worried about? There is nothing He cannot do. After all, He created everything out of nothing.

His words never return void. Neither do your prayers when you pray the word of God and the will of God. The same God who hovered over the chaos at the beginning of time is hovering over your life, and you never know when His answer will reenter the atmosphere of your life. But you can know this: The Lord is watching over His word to perform it…

- Mark Batterson

A thought for the road: The final verse in the book of Daniel reads, "As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance." (Daniel 12:13)

What's one way you can choose to 'go your way till the end'?

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Watch session one of The Circle Maker DVD Group Study

Follow Mark Batterson on Twitter (@MarkBatterson)

 -Adam Forrest, Zondervan

(Images & some styling above are web-exclusive features not included in the text of The Circle Maker… Image attribution: Sound waves | Date = 1878 |Author = Unknown, Scientific American Monthly |Permission = {{PD-old}}, via Wikimedia Commons. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)