Pray Big

I want to pray bigger, and better. I want you to, too.

Our prayers tell us a great deal about ourselves, and about our faith. The great nineteenth-century Scottish preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne put it memorably:

What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more.

Our conversation with others declares what is on our minds. But our conversation with God in private reveals what is in our hearts. Listen to someone pray—or listen to yourself pray—and you gain a window into the very center of the being.

To put it another way: the way we use our money and spend our time reveals a great deal about what are our real priorities and what are our real beliefs. And so do our prayers—whether we pray, for whom we pray, and what we pray.

So how about you, as you read this introduction and decide whether to read on (or whether to buy the book in the first place)? How big are your prayers? Do you ask God for anything? And when you do, are you asking him for big things?

So many of us struggle with prayer. Many books have been written on the subject (and now we can add this one to that long list)—and the a reason for that is that prayer doesn’t come easy to most of us, in most seasons. And when we do pray, our prayers often seek to do a deal with God; or they are tentative in their requests because we’re not sure God will come through; or they are, frankly, so self-centered that they bring little pleasure to the Creator and Savior of the world, as he listens to us present our shopping list of worldly requests to him. I want to pray bigger, and better.

I want you to enjoy praying like that too.

--Alistair Begg, Pray Big