Category: 21 Days to Childlike Prayer

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.

Good parents don’t wait until their kids ask for help to do good things for them, especially if they are going through a hard time. Whether it is a kid who didn’t make the team, had a friend leave them, or some other heartbreaking event that every kid goes through, parents want to help their kids get through those times. They want to make things better. Some parents get a gift, others take the family out for ice cream, but all good parents work to help their kids regardless if their kids ask for it.

The same is true of our heavenly Father. He is always “working all things for our good” (Rom 8:28), whether we ask him to in specific ways each day or not. No one can separate us from his love, regardless of whether we prayed that or not (Rom 8:39).

These truths are important to keep in mind as we start to pray our problems, plans, and bible passages. Because I’ve found that there have been times where I have started to believe the lie that “if I don’t ask for it, it won’t happen.” I know that sounds silly, but I’ve had it happen to me over and over again.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, occasionally my burden relieving prayer life turns into a burden producing prayer life. I begin to think that I have to give voice to the prayer, whether verbally or in my head, or God won’t do above and beyond all I can imagine or think. I’ve found myself wondering if God might punish me for not praying enough or for finding the right words at the right time. Without realizing it, every once in a while, my childlike prayer life turns into performance theatre—something Jesus said he’s not interested in.

In those moments, I have to remind myself that the Bible teaches that God’s work doesn’t depend on our words. That God doesn’t need great prayers to do great things. In those moments, when I get off track, I have to remember who I’m praying to matters way more than how well I’m praying—especially in the difficult times.

One of the first places I saw this in Scripture was in Psalm 5. At the very beginning of this Psalm, King David says, “Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. ² Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray” (Ps 5:1).

Notice what David asks the Lord to consider. He says consider his “groaning” or “sighing.” David goes on to ask God to give attention to the “sound of my cry.” What does David want God to consider and give attention to? Not his perfectly formed prayers. No, he wants him to consider his wordless tears, deep breaths, the sounds that he makes in his difficult times.

David is not in a good situation. He isn’t happy about his life. Yet, he has a childlike impulse that leads him both to come to God for help and to interpret his wordless ways.

Then, David goes on to say, he’ll “watch.” He is expectant. He is hopeful. He believes God will do something with his situations even when he doesn’t know what to ask for.

Are you weighed down by something today?

You can “pray your problem” by simply “sighing” and “groaning” in God’s presence.

Remember, Jesus told his disciples that prayer doesn’t exist to inform God, it exists to engage us with the presence of God. As we’ve seen, Jesus says, “⁷ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:7-8).

Jesus let’s them know that their heavenly Father is already working on what is best for his children. Prayer isn’t about informing an uninformed God, it’s about engaging our unengaged hearts.Prayer is about changing our perspective so that we see the world like God does.

Some have used these words by Jesus as a reason not to pray. They think, “If God already knows, what’s the point?” But think about it. Jesus, the God-man, is the greatest teacher ever. He knows what he’s doing. He didn’t tell us this right before he taught us how to pray to destroy our motivation. Jesus wants this to convict and comfort us. He’s letting us know that this is a real relationship God’s using prayer to invite us into.

And God doesn’t just show us this reality here. It’s all over the Bible. The Psalms are filled with people “crying out” to God in prayer. We’re not told what exactly people are praying in many difficult situations. For instance, Hannah was childless and desperately wanted a child. Her prayer time was so filled with tears and emotions that a priest accused her of being drunk (1 Sam 1:12-14). The Apostle Paul talked to the Roman Christians about times when “we do not know what to pray” (Rom 8:26).

When you live life prayerfully in a broken world you will come across times where you can’t find the words. Charles Spurgeon was a pastor who knew great success and great difficulty. He walked with many people through the “valley of the shadow of death,” as a man of prayer. But he knew there were times when people couldn’t find the words. But after studying God’s word he wanted people to know that “groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.”

So when you can’t find the words, remember, God is already working on what’s best for you.

This post includes content from my book, 21 Days to Childlike Prayer: Changing Your World One Specific Prayer at a Time.

Ouch! I’m telling!” Judah, my youngest son, complained.

As expected, immediately, I heard him making his way to me in the kitchen, where I was going through the mail. With tears just about to run down his cheeks, Judah told me all about the great injustice he endured.

Having just returned home from work, I was a bit tired. So, I said to him, “I’ll take care of it.” With that, his countenance changed, and he joyfully walked right back where he’d come from. I overheard him self-righteously say to his sibling, “Dad said, ‘He’ll take care of it.’”

He didn’t, of course, know “how” or even “when” I would take care of it. Frankly, he didn’t know “if” I would take care of it at all. He simply knew “who” would take care of it. Because he knew who would take care of his problem, he walked out of that conversation without the burden he brought into it.

That burden-relieving, peace-producing, change-you-right-where-you-are-from-the-inside-out kind of interaction only happens when there is an unshakable trust in the one to whom you just presented your problem. That’s childlike trust.

Our interactions with God are supposed to happen that way. That’s what it looks like to “cast your burden on the Lord” (1 Pet. 5:7; Ps. 55:22). In prayer, our childlike faith leads us to the Father with our burden, and our childlike trust enables us to leave the conversation without it. Childlike trust is wrapped up in the “your will be done” part of the Lord’s Prayer. Our prayers are requests for what we think are best. Childlike trust says, “I trust you to do what is best with my request.”

Remember, Jesus says we are talking with the God of the heavens who created all things, sustains all things, works his mysterious, sovereign will for the good of those who love him, raises up kingdoms, flattens kingdoms, raised the dead, defeated death, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, enabled men to survive Babylon’s flames, shut the mouths of Daniel’s lions, just to name a few things. Not a bad resume! He knows all things, loves perfectly, and is incredibly gracious. While we can know him truly, we’ll never know him completely. He is an amazing God!

Sometimes we forget the One to whom we are talking. Often times, somewhere in our conversation with the great and gracious God, we start to feel like we know what’s best for us, regardless of the situation. That’s why it is so important to remember who God is. If God is great enough to answer your prayers and those of everyone else praying to him, he is great enough to have a better way that you don’t understand.

Childlike trust rests on the power, love, and wisdom of God. Because he is all-powerful, I don’t have to worry about something stopping him from doing what is best for me. Because he loves his children with an unending love, I can be assured that he will always do what’s best for me. Because he’s all-wise, I know he always takes the best way. Childlike trust rests in his revealed character, not in the knowledge of his secret plans. 

That’s why it is so important to think about the words that we often use to end our prayers—“in Jesus’ name.” We don’t say this because we have to. Jesus didn’t end his prayer in Matthew 6 in that way. He said at the beginning of his now famous prayer, to pray “like” this (Matt 6:9). His teaching wasn’t primarily concerned with the order of the wording, but with the elements of the prayer. Yet we do this because, in other passages, he talks to his disciples about asking “in his name” (Jn. 14).

It is important that we pray “in Jesus’ name.” We should not treat his name like a secret password. Instead, we should be reminded of the powerful, gospel truth that we can come to God “in Jesus’ name” because of Jesus’ death in our place on the cross. Because of the cross, we should never question his love. Because of the empty tomb, we should never question his power. And because of the whole plan, we should never question his wisdom. No one thought that anything good could come from Jesus’ death on the day of his death. Little did anyone know that Jesus would make the seemingly worst day into the best day with the best news ever.

Do you trust God like a child? Do you trust him enough to be thankful for his “no’s” to your requests because you know that every “no” is a “yes” to something better?

When you do, you’ve learned the secret to experiencing a deep inner peace in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances. That inner peace doesn’t just change your daily life; it has a powerful impact on the world around you—an impact we all desperately need.

This post includes content from my book, 21 Days to Childlike Prayer: Changing Your World One Specific Prayer at a Time.