Review of “Painful Knee Happy Heart” by Evangelist Elizabeth Akomolafe

Score: N/A

There are few things more powerful and valuable than prayer—giving you direct access to the Almighty through Christ Jesus. Prayer is a practice that demonstrates and exercises your relationship with God similar to how eating with and spending time with your partner demonstrates and exercises your relationship with them. We've all found prayer to be a valuable part of our lives. Like we said in our review of Flame of Healing by Freda Emmons, prayer is a lot like a cup of coffee in the morning—that little, big something that picks you up and gets you going.

Most of our reviewers would consider us God-loving believers.

With that said, Painful Knee Happy Heart by Evangelist Elizabeth Akomalafe presents a lot of problems to us as a literary work/book. For one, it is incredibly, entirely miscategorized. This is NOT a children's book, nor is it an autobiography. Again, this is not a children's book, regardless of what it says in the subtitle of the book. This is clearly a book for parents containing prayers for their children. Secondly, this can hardly be considered an autobiography. We learn little to nothing about the author herself.

Next, we struggle to think of this as a prayer book. Yes, you could probably craft prayers from the content of this book, but almost all of the “prayers” are actually just absolute statements and affirmations based on Bible verses. Now, it's really cool and commendable that the author actually took the time to research and list the Bible verses that these absolute statements and affirmations are based on, but that doesn't change the fact that, well, they're absolute statements and affirmations.

Some of these absolute statements and affirmations range from simple things like food, shelter, and work to downright bizarre. One of these bizarre prayer requests is that the believer's child not grow up to become a murderer. Yes, really. There's at least one prayer request for the believer's child not grow up to become a lesbian. Yes, really. There's yet another prayer request that the believer's child “not do a laborer's job” and another that they “not do slavery.” Ok...

So, like, we understand that the Bible asked us to pray over all things. This book takes “ALL THINGS” very literally. How much do you have to cover your bases to ensure that your child not grow up to be a murderer, a laborer, or a slave? Parents actually feel the need to pray that their kid not get angry enough to kill anyone that day? That's pretty dang scary.

We have to compare this book directly to Flame of Healing by Fred Emmons because they are similar books in the same genre, but at least Emmons's work was something a believer could somewhat work with. It was a workbook. You had places to write your devotionals, prayers, and responses to certain verses. This book seems to be a book of lists. Lists upon lists upon lists of statements. This book flies by, perhaps only being about 25-40 minutes of reading long despite being 70+ pages.

Now, this book may be worthwhile if you are already a very strong, devout believer who loves doing daily devotionals and studying Bible verses.

You can check this out on Amazon