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Book Review: PRAYING FOR YOUR ELEPHANT: Boldly Approaching Jesus with Radical and Audacious Prayer

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Praying For Your Elephant

The following is a review, written by Holly Carr, on the book, Praying for Your Elephant by Adam Stadtmiller

Are Your Prayers Radical?

How radical are your prayers? How daring are you? What holds you back? Does the verse from James 4:2 that rebukes the people for not asking or asking with wrong motives, make you squirm just a bit? If you’re ready to move beyond simplistic and “safe” prayers, then this book is for you!

Praying for Your Elephant

Adam Stadtmiller writes a challenging book on the subject of prayer while also treating the reader to stories of answered prayer (yes, he actually prayed for an elephant) from his own life as well as from others.  This is not the “name it, claim it” genre, but rather he challenges us to pray about EVERYTHING, and then as you see God answer yes or no or wait, you get to know your Father better.

Imagine that your father is the richest man in the world but you never get past asking for a meager allowance. You never ask for a car, a house, or the money to start a foundation to help bring water to impoverished people? Wouldn’t that be sillly?

Is Your God too Small? Are Your Prayers of Little Account?

And yet we serve the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and yet we often find ourselves asking things like, “please be with us” (forgetting that He promised He would never leave or forsake) or “help so and so to be ok”. Have you ever considered asking Him to end abortion? GIve you the courage to share your faith with a friend? Grow your church to overflowing? Transform your town? Why not?

100 Prayer Requests

The reader will be challenged in the very beginning of the book to draw up a list of 100 prayer requests (yes, 100, but me of little faith started with just 50). He gives you headings like the following: Family, Work, Friends, The World, and Elephants. And that is just to get you started. As you continue reading you will become more and more encouraged to think bigger, pray bigger.

In my own personal experience, I listed 50 things, 10 under each of the categories listed. Then I began to pray. 

Sometimes I prayed specifically (praying for that many things can be very time consuming), and other times I laid out the list and said, “Here Lord. Have your will and show me your heart.” That was a year ago and while most of my “elephants” (these are the really big things like the end of abortion and peace between political parties) are still there, those other things that I dared to pray about were answered and I am getting ready to start a new list! 

So, How About You?

If your prayer life needs a boost, check out Praying for Your Elephant, by Adam Stadtmiller. 

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