It’s been a few months since 21 Days to Childlike Prayer was released. Since that time, I have had people reach out to me and share their stories of specific answers to prayer. God has used each story to grow my childlike faith and childlike trust. I love hearing stories of specific answers to prayer.
But I’ve also had a number of people reach out to me to get some help learning how to pray with specificity. “What kinds of things can I ask for?” The answer, in short, is that you can ask for anything. Any decent dad wants to hear and help their kids with all of their lives, not just “religious” areas. Our heavenly Father does as well. If a problem or plan is weighing on you, cast that burden on the Lord, “he cares for you” (1 Pet 5:7). If it’s not what’s best for you, then he won’t give you what you ask for.
To help encourage specificity in your prayer life, I want to share a few stories I’ve heard from various readers. As you’ll see, these specific prayers aren’t always for “big” things.
A daughter asks her mom to pray for “tights” to arrive before they had to leave for a trip
She’d been looking for the Amazon delivery truck all day long. The tights she ordered had to arrive before the end of the day or she’d have to head out on the trip without them. As it got closer and closer to time to leave, the daughter asked, “Mom, will you pray that the tights get here before we have to leave?” Just as they stopped to pray, in the middle of the prayer, they heard the Amazon truck pull up. Sure enough, the tights arrived just in time. The daughter was so excited!
A couple asks God to change their employers mind, allowing them to work from home in another city
His boss wasn’t happy with the commute he was making to the office. In a post-covid world, the guy felt like working from home was okay. The boss was okay with it, sort of. There was a low level tension. They loved the job and didn’t want to move. In the middle of a 21 Days of Childlike Prayer initiative at his church, the guy started praying for the boss and the organization to change their minds and genuinely support his desire to work from home, before the 21 Days of Childlike Prayer was over. Sure enough, in the middle of the 21 Days of Childlike Prayer, God answered their prayer. He could continue to work from home. They were thrilled!
A woman prays for clarity on whether to continue a home business or not by the end of the day
She loved cooking for people and the extra income she brought in from cooking certainly was nice. But it seemed like it was becoming too much. The stress was impacting her health. So, as she was making her way through the 21 Days of Childlike Prayer, she asked God to show her by the end of the next day whether she should continue or not. She wasn’t sure how he would do that, but she thought it would be incredibly helpful. Much to her surprise, the next day, a sweet lady who loved her cooking, reached out to her and told her how much she loved her cooking. She also told her that what she was doing might be illegal. She said that she probably needed to get certain licenses in order to do what she’s doing. This advice was exactly the kind of clarity that she was looking for. She shut down the business. And she did it with joy because of the specific answer to prayer.
These three, brief stories of specific answers to prayer are meant to encourage you to get specific with your prayers. What would you like to see God do? By when? Specificity leads to visibility. When you get specific, you give the invisible God an opportunity to become visible in your life in a way that he wouldn’t without that specific prayer. None of these stories come from people who would consider themselves “all-star” Christians. Just ordinary Christians, with ordinary problems and plans, that have blood-bought access to an extraordinary God.
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