Our church is just wrapping up an 8 week series on a book called The Circle Maker. It is all about prayer. I was so excited for this series and bought the book right away, we are even having a small group at our house.
Well the series is 8 weeks old and my son is 9 weeks old – anyone wanna guess how far I got in the book? Ya, not too far. Today I finally made time to sit and read some and I am so glad I did, it is a pretty powerful book.
A few weeks late but finally reading this great book.
Our prayer circles written on our sliding glass door. I love seeing these every day!!
We have seen some amazing things happen, lots of prayers answered and lots of circles still being prayed through. Though I have walked through this series that is now over I am excited to keep it going personally as I finally read the book.
At one of the first weekends our pastor handed out small cards with the circle graphics on it and asked everyone to write down their biggest, boldest prayer – pray big, pray hard. Then the courtyard of our church was transformed by large wooden displays with all of the cards pinned up, probably thousands of them. We were all then invited to wander around and pray over each others prayers.
Some were the normal that you might expect to see, “new job”, “help with debt”. Then some were hard to read, intense cries out for lost children and suffering marriages. Big bold prayers.
Now follow me thru this transition here…
Last year on Memorial Day weekend I had signed up for an ultramarathon by the name of Nanny Goat, it’s a one-mile loop course on a horse ranch out in Riverside. You join a big group of crazy fun runners and go round and round for 24 hours. My husband, not a runner, thought it would be fun to join me and went for it. He shocked himself by walking 32 miles in about 16 hours and loving it – the ultra community is pretty addictive.
So here we were approaching Nanny Goat this year and seeing as I was 8 weeks out from a c-section I was not signed up. Dale kept mentioning it and saying he wanted to do it again, keep in mind the last time he “trained” was at the race last year. So one day when he was out running errands I surprised him and signed him up, he was beyond excited.
Then the idea got planted in his head, he had the crazy idea of wanting to shoot for 50 miles, go big or go home. I jokingly said to him, “well you will be walking lots of prayer circles for sure”. Perfect idea. Our pastor Patrick went out into the courtyard and pulled down (at random) 50 of the prayer circle cards for Dale to take with him. This motivation filled Dale up like you wouldn’t believe, to know that he would be walking with someones heartfelt prayer card each and every mile filled him up to get those 50 miles.
So my husband, the non-runner who doesn’t workout set out on Friday night to camp in a horse barn out in Riverside with a bunch of ultrarunners. Saturday morning at 8am he set out on foot, circle after circle. Sunday morning about 7:30am he finished his 50th mile and 50th prayer card. He is forever changed from this experience and I am so proud of him.
As he came in from each lap he would write down the lap # and then tape the card up on the wall of his stall. That’s a lot of cards!
Ryleigh girl was very excited to go cheer on Daddy Saturday morning.
Have you ever read the Circle Maker Book?
What is the farthest you have ever run?
