I’ve been reading this book – Praying for Your Elephant: Boldly Approaching Jesus with Radical and Audacious Prayer” by Adam Stadtmiller. While, I got this from Amazon, it looks like there is a free downloadable ebook on his website.

The book is about revolutionizing your prayer life. What if we did pray big bold prayers? What if we did pray for that huge elephant? The elephant represents the huge or small things that we are afraid to pray for because we don’t want to appear greedy or ungodly.

However, the author suggests that God wants us to pray boldly to Him. Yes, there is a balance and no, we don’t pray to God thinking he’s a sugar daddy (my word choice, not the author’s) and that He’ll give us everything we want. Our hearts have to be right with God.

Stadtmiller challenges the reader to come up with 10 different areas to pray for. Then, under each area, we are to write down 10 prayers and then pray for them every day. Areas could include: friends, ourselves, finances, family, work, health, the world, our country, etc. As time goes on, God may impress upon our hearts to change certain prayers to be more specific.

Stadtmiller also challenges the reader to put down prayers they are afraid to pray for. Ex: you may want to pray for a new laptop, but you feel like that’s too materialistic or greedy. Stadtmiller would say, put it down! Or, you may want to pray about going on a vacation, but again are too afraid since it seems like a frivolous idea. Put it down!

Don’t limit God. God may just answer that prayer you are afraid to pray for.

My takeaway: I struggle with praying for small things like wanting my son to stop sucking his thumb or money for a vacation. I wonder if it’s ok to pray so. God wants us to pray specifically, but I don’t want to appear “greedy”. This book reminded me that God cares about all areas of our lives. He wants to know what my desires are. He wants me to pray boldly.

I made my own list of 10 areas and have been praying over them for a few weeks now. I don’t quite have 10 prayer requests under each category, but there are at least a few I wrote down. I can’t wait to see how God works through them!