No Prayer is Too Small

It was time for prayer requests from the five-year-olds in my Sunday School class. They eagerly raised their hands and expressed their greatest concerns for the day.

“Pray for my loose tooth, that it’ll come out.”

“Pray for my tooth, that it’ll come in.”

“Pray for my cat who is sick, that God will make her better.”

“Pray for my daddy. He lost his job.”

“Pray for my daddy’s friend who went to prison last week because he did bad things.”

All the requests held equal importance. The children had not learned yet (from misinformed adult) that certain requests are too trivial to take to God.

Have you ever felt that your concerns were too small to bother God with—that they seemed frivolous in comparison to what’s going on in the world? A friend has breast cancer. A parent has dementia. A neighbor’s house burned to the ground. Then there’s world hunger, climate change, and devastating natural disasters around the world. It’s easy to fall into the false trap of thinking that those are the only types of prayers worth mentioning…and the smaller ones we need to keep to ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve cringed at the thought of praying that our finicky washing machine will work today. There’s nothing the devil would like more than for us to feel guilty for asking God to help our child with a math test, selfish for asking God to stretch the paycheck, petty for bothering Him with our child’s cold, or trivial for praying for a parking spot. The enemy is the one who wants us to keep our prayers to ourselves…to consider them too small.

But God doesn’t see any prayer as petty. You are never bothering Him! He wants you to ask! Nothing in His Word quantifies the importance of certain prayers over others. What we do find is that there is no prayer too small; there is no prayer too large.

Paul wrote, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done (Philippians 4:6 nlt). Guess what everything means in the original Greek. It means everything!

So go ahead and pray like a five-year-old! Pray about everything. Pray about anything. God smiles on His children when they do.

Leave a comment with your five-year-old-self prayer request. Don’t categorize your concerns into pressing or petty, serious or frivolous, critical or trivial. Once you leave your request, pray for your sisters!!!

Father God, thank You that no prayer is too small or too big for You to hear. This is the confidence I have in approaching You: that if I ask anything according to Your will, You hear me. And if I know that You hears me—whatever I ask—I know that I have what I asked of You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Two of my favorite prayer resources are Praying for Your Child and Praying for Your Husband from Head to Toe: A 30-Day Guide to Powerful and Effective Scripture-Based Prayer.  If you already have your copy, they would make great gifts for a Mother or Bride-to-Be!