Stop only praying small prayers

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself praying almost exclusively about small things. Prayers about relatively trivial matters like that my work day would run smoothly or that the food I am cooking would taste good and not give me food poisoning (an important prayer to pray…). And while God cares about these things and wants us to always be in conversation with Him about every aspect of our life, if all we pray about is the small things then we are missing out on so much of what He has for us.
I think often the problem we have is our lack of faith. We don’t trust God to do big things, so we don’t ask Him to. There is an interesting conversation Jesus has with the father of a boy with an unclean spirit in Mark 9. The boy is possessed by a spirit that made him mute and would cause him to have seizures. His dad has come to Jesus to ask for healing. He says “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22).
Note the words he uses. “If you can”. How often do we use similar words in our prayers? ‘God if you could…’ Those words reveal something of the heart of the man. He is desperate for a miracle, yet he doesn’t have the faith that it is possible. Jesus gives him a firm rebuke for his lack of faith “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” (Mark 9:23). Elsewhere in Mark we are told “For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). James reminds us that “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:16).
That is how Jesus calls us to pray. Not with an ‘if you can’ attitude but with the mindset that ‘all things are possible with God’. When we come with that attitude we are free to pray with boldness. We can start praying for big things, because we are no longer limited by what seems possible and achievable to us, but are able to look to God, who promises to do far more abundantly than all we could ask or imagine. The world is in desperate need of Christians who will pray big, bold prayers. Christians who will not timidly pray “If you can God, please do this small thing” but who will instead pray “All things are possible with you God, so could you not just move in this huge way, but even exceed my wildest expectations with how you move in power”. What a difference that could make to the world around us if we resolved to be people who stopped only praying small prayers that don’t really matter in the eternal scheme of things and starting praying for big things, people who pray boldly for it to be on earth as it is in heaven, people who will pray with the faith that our God is able to do far more abundantly than all we could ask or imagine and who daily put that to the test by asking Him to work in powerful ways to see His Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.