Book Review: Pray Big

Alistair Begg's little book, Pray Big: Learn to Pray Like an Apostle, is chock-full of encouragement and inspiration for praying. If you have read my blog at all before, you will know I am a huge fan of importunate prayers. These are the kind of prayers that feel impossible, but for God's vast omnipotence. We have seen God answer prayers that seemed outlandish and overwhelming. He can accomplish what we cannot. We never have to fear that we have asked God for too much!

At first, I listened to this book on my library's Hoopla account. This was such a blessing because it is narrated by the author himself, with his delightful Scottish lilt. How I would love to hear Begg preach in person! For now, I settle for clips I find on Facebook. As I listened, I wanted to pause and take notes, but I was walking on the treadmill. Instead, I snagged a paperback copy from my local church library and took notes after listening.

Begg encourages the reader to pray with great scope and purpose. We don't want to merely bring God our shopping list of needs and requests. We pray out of dependence and out of strong trust in God's almighty abilities to intervene. We must recognize our great need of Him. We cannot fix problems in our lives on our own (I felt this deeply in our walk with an addict). Begg gives 5 qualities Paul prays for the Ephesians: focus, hope, riches (not wealth, but a spiritual inheritance), power, and love.

We need to see what we really have. He writes, "Too often, as Christians we live like someone who has been given a full-board ticket on a cruise ship, and who sits on their deckchair eating crackers and drinking water because they haven't realized that all the food is free with their ticket." Paul reminds the Ephesians that they have been given "every spiritual blessing." A bit further on, Begg writes, "There is nothing you can ask for, or think of asking for, about which he does not say, I am able to do better than that." 

Begg peppers these pages with lines from famous hymns. This was such a blessing. His words inspire my praying. I loved this line: "Small prayers betray a suspicion that we have a small God." But by bigger, Begg is not encouraging things like health, wealth, and happiness (your general wish list), but rather "to be filled with his fullness, to be able to grasp the unknowable love of Christ, to live for the treasures of your future inheritance. We must pray for our own sake, for the sake of others, and for His [God's] sake. May my prayers be big, bold, and importunate, revealing trust in a big God.