Debunking The Circle Maker - Part 2

Fighting for the Faith

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Debunking the Circle Maker - Part 3

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Yeah, do you feel like your prayer life is running in circles now that you've read The Circle Maker? Well, there's a reason for that, and that's because, well, what

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Mark Batterson teaches in The Circle Maker, well, it's not biblical. It's not what the Bible teaches regarding Christian prayer.

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It's built off of, well, a legend called the legend of Honey the Circle Maker, but the problem is this.

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We're not supposed to go beyond what is written in the Word of God. No story, no matter who it's about, even if it's about somebody who believes in the same

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God you do, rises to the level of God's Word, and God's Word is the only true judge of what is and what isn't

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Christian prayer. Now, yesterday in our segment on this book, The Circle Maker, we had, well,

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Mark Batterson tell us that we were just one prayer away from having a dream fulfilled and stuff like that, and he actually made the claim that, well, if you don't pray bold prayers,

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God is offended by, well, non -bold prayers. But nowhere in the Bible does it teach that.

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Now, I wanted to continue today, and this is part two of chapter two of The Circle Maker, at least the things that I think need to be commented on, because it's clear to demonstrate, easy to demonstrate, that this is something different than what

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Scripture teaches. So here again is Mark Batterson. It is absolutely imperative at the outset that you come to terms with this simple, yet life -changing truth.

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God is for you. If you don't believe that, then you'll pray small, timid prayers.

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If you do believe it, then you'll pray big, audacious prayers. Okay. So you just need to come to this simple fact that God is for you, and if you know that God's for you, you're going to pray big, audacious prayers.

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And yet, Jesus taught his disciples, who knew that Jesus was for them, by the way, to pray,

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Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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Things like that. But here's the problem, is that this is kind of an interesting blanket statement that doesn't have the appropriate gospel caveat to it.

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Let me give you a passage to consider in this, okay? Romans 8, verse 1.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Okay? So, wait a second. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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What about if you're not in Christ Jesus? Well, I'm glad that you asked, because the gospel of John chapter 3 answers that question for us, okay?

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And here's what it says, whoever believes, this is John chapter 3, verse 36, whoever believes in the

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Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

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So, here's the idea. Whoa, whoa, wait a second, okay?

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What do you mean, God is for me? What exactly does that sentence mean? What is the cash value of it?

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Okay? Because there's some stuff biblically we need to hash out. Let me read a little bit more from Romans, though.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

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For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the

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Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the

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Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, to set the mind on the

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Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

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It's hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot.

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Those who are in the flesh cannot please

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God. Got it? So, I hear this slogan being kicked around,

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God is for you. Now, it's kind of a ripped out of context statement.

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It's become a slogan, but it's part of an overall bigger picture. If God is for us, who can be against us?

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Who's the us though? Those who have been brought to repentant faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.

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If you are not in Christ, the wrath of God remains on you. If you are not in Christ, if you do not have saving faith and have not been regenerated through the preaching of law and gospel, sin and grace, repentance and the forgiveness of sins, then

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God is not for you. You remain under God's condemnation. He's for you in this sense, that Christ has died for your sins.

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So, here we got a problem here. Immediately, we've got these weird things being preached and taught out there, and my question is, are the people who are hearing this, have they even been brought to faith and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins?

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Have they been brought to repentance and contrition for their transgressions against God and His holy law?

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If we're going to talk about God being for us, we have got to talk about it in the context of the gospel, and not make these broad, blanket, sweeping statements that really twist and change the gospel message.

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Does that make sense? We continue. In one way or another, your small, timid prayers or big, audacious prayers will change the trajectory of your life and turn you into two totally different people.

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Let me back this up and hear it in context again, because again, he's making these assertions without any biblical text.

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Listen again. In one way or another, your small, timid prayers or big, audacious prayers will change the trajectory of your life and turn you into two totally different people.

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Think of it like the movie Back to the Future. You remember the movies Back to the Future, the first one.

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They go back in time to the 1950s, and something occurs that completely changes the entire trajectory of human history, and they have to undo it.

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They've got to fix it. That's kind of the same argument here. Here you are.

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You're at this important moment in your history, in your life's movie story. Are you going to pray big, audacious prayers or are you going to pray small, timid prayers?

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Whichever one you choose is going to radically alter the destiny of your life.

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You think back to that line in Back to the Future, you're my density. Where in the

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Bible are we told, listen, you need to pray audaciously.

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You need to pray big, bold prayers and not timid prayers. Where are

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Christians chastised by the apostles or the prophets or Moses?

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Where are they chastised for their small, timid prayers? And where are they told, you better pray big prayers or God is offended?

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Answer, nowhere in Scripture does it say this. This is not a

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Christian teaching. This is not a biblical teaching. This is an assertion being made by a human.

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This has its origin in the mind of Mark Batterson and not in the revealed will of God, which would have its origin then in God's mind.

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Nowhere in Scripture are Christians chastised for praying timid prayers and told, it's going to radically change the trajectory of your life.

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Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me play that again. Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future.

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Prayers are prophecies. This is a confusion. This is a confusion of biblical categories, number one.

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Where in the Bible does it say that a prayer is a prophecy? Where does it teach it either directly or as a correct inference?

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A prayer is a prophecy. No, a prayer is a petition.

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We petition God. God is King. Christ is King. So nowhere in Scripture does it say, your prayer is a prophecy and it's a predictor of what your future is going to be.

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So, I mean, right out of the shoot, if you buy the premises, if you buy into what he's saying, then with each successive chapter, you get farther and farther and farther and farther away from what

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God has revealed regarding prayer in Scripture. This is not

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Christian doctrine. This is something completely different. Who you become is determined by how you pray.

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Really? Who you become is determined by how you pray? Again, no verses say this.

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Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

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Well, you know, my prayer life consists a lot of the

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Lord's Prayer. I mean, what does that mean regarding my transcript? I mean, and it's the same transcript that Christians have been praying for two millennia.

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Oh no, what does that mean? Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me.

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Lead us not into temptation. Give us this day our daily bread. You know, stuff like that. I mean, that's how

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Jesus taught us to pray. So here we've got Batterson making these assertions. Your prayer life is a prophecy and what you pray becomes the transcript of what's going to happen in your future.

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The Bible nowhere says this. It doesn't teach it anywhere and I got to keep hashing this out.

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Where is he getting any of this? Now, I'm going to come back to a point that I was making earlier in the week regarding traditions of men.

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If you have your Bible, go to the Gospel of Mark chapter 7. I'm going to start at verse 1. Mark chapter 7 verse 1.

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I want you to pay close attention to this interchange between Jesus and the Pharisees.

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The Pharisees were very religious and they believed that they were justified by their keeping of the law.

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And as a result of it, they believed that they could keep the law. So they thought they made it harder, but actually they made it easier by adding their own laws around God's law.

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But watch this interplay. Now, when the Pharisees gathered to Him, Jesus, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of the disciples ate with their hands that were defiled, that is, that they were unwashed.

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For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders.

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And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups, the washing of pots and copper vessels, and dining couches.

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And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?

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Now I'm going to stop right there. Is there a biblical passage that commands and binds the conscience of all those who believe in Yahweh that they must wash their hands before they eat?

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Does it say that their hands are defiled unless they wash their hands before they eat?

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Answer, no. Now, I understand that there's a lot of moms out there listening going, oh, you're just,

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Chris, come on, I just have got my son finally washing his hands before I eat dinner.

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Yeah, I'm sorry, the fourth commandment comes into play there. You just need to tell your kid that God says, honor your father and your mother.

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So regardless of whether or not it's a biblical command, it's a command in your household, get what I'm saying? Anyway, the point is this.

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Here we've got a religious tradition, okay? And Jesus is being called into question by the

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Pharisees because the apostles, well, His disciples at this point, they hadn't washed their hands, okay?

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Yet there's no biblical command in Scripture that would bind human consciences regarding whether or not they wash their hands before they eat.

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I recommend it strongly, okay? But your hands aren't unholy and defiled in the eyes of God if you don't wash your hands, okay?

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So here's Jesus' response to the Pharisees. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

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In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

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You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And Jesus then went on to say, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your own tradition.

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For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, hey, if a man tells his father or mother whatever you would have gained from me is now corban, that means it's given to God, well then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do, okay?

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So here's the idea, in vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

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So now we come back to the circle maker, okay? So the category is this, traditions of men being taught as commandments, but nowhere is it taught in God's word, that's one category, and then the real commandments of God.

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So if you're going to really learn how to pray as a Christian, where do you go?

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The circle maker or do you go to scripture? The reason I ask the question is because the entire circle maker has as its foundation a

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Jewish legend, not God's word. And listen to these statements again, where Mark Batterson is basically binding your conscience saying

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God's not going to bless you unless this is what you do in your mindset because all of a sudden he's got a brand new revelation regarding prayer.

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Is this the commandment of God or is this the tradition of men? Listen again.

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Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future.

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Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

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In the pages that follow, you'll encounter modern -day circle makers who will inspire you to dream big, pray hard, and think long.

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The golf pro who prayed around the golf course he now runs will inspire you to dream bigger dreams.

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The government employee who beat out 1 ,200 other applicants and landed the dream job he had applied for 12 years in a row.

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Does this sound like the health and wealth prosperity gospel light? It should. Challenge you to hold on to the promise

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God has put in your heart. The parents who prayed for their son and their son's future spouse for 22 years and two weeks will inspire you to pray beyond yourself.

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And the time -defying answer to an evangelist's prayer for a Capitol Hill movie theater in 1960 will inspire you to think long and pray hard.

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Now, weird. He didn't say, we're going to take a hard look at passage

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X, Y, or Z from God's word. This is all the traditions of men.

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This is not biblical teaching or God's commandments regarding prayer. In fact,

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I mean, a clearer case of creating the traditions of men could not be demonstrated.

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I mean, this is a clear example of that. In fact, Batterson has far more in common with the Pharisees than he does with historic biblical

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Christianity. And therein lies the problem. The only source that we're to go to regarding how to pray as Christians is

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God's word, not the traditions of men, not inspiring stories.

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Now, does God want us to pray for all of the circumstances in our life? Of course, of course, you can pray to God for small things.

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You can even do so timidly. Why? Because your great God and Savior is not up in heaven, crossing his arms, demanding of you that you have a particular level of audacity and brashness when you approach his throne room.

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Quite the opposite. We humbly petition our great

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God and Savior, even timidly, knowing that he created us and that sometimes the very things that we ask for in prayer are not, well, for our benefit, understanding that we pray according to his will and not ours, that we understand that sometimes the things that we pray for are not good.

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And so you must say no. You understand what I'm saying? So we approach God with the right level of fear, with the correct level of biblical timidity and humbleness, knowing that he is

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God and we are his creatures and he loves us. And when we come to him in faith and we pray for something as simple as our daily bread, we know that he hears us because this is how

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Jesus taught us to pray. Mark Batterson, apparently his God is just upset and insulted if your prayers are small and timid and don't you understand your prayers are prophecies and they're a blueprint for your life.

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And if you don't have a big audacious blueprint, well, you're just going to suffer in mediocrity and a boring, bland life.

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Hogwash. His teaching isn't biblical. He's teaching as doctrine, the commandments of men.

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I think we can safely say that Isaiah the prophet also prophesied against Mark Batterson.

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All right, we're up on our second break. We'll cover more of the circle maker in the episodes ahead.

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If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of fighting for the faith, you can do so. My email address, talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com.

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You can ask me, my friend on Facebook, it's facebook .com forward slash pirate Christian. You can follow me on Twitter. My name there at pirate

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Christian. We'll be right back. We don't need to rethink