4 Reasons Why I Wrote “21 Days to Childlike Prayer: Changing Your World One Specific Prayer at a Time”
Charles Spurgeon was one of the greatest preachers in the history of Christianity. He was known as the “Prince of Preachers.” If you’ve ever read one of his many available sermons from the 1800s, then you can understand why so many are still impressed with his preaching ministry.
But it was prayer that Spurgeon believed gave his gospel-centered ministry such power. That’s why he said, “I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.” Spurgeon knew how God loved to work through prayer to show his power and presence. Spurgeon also knew of the tendencies of Christians, even pastors and leaders, to overlook it. Christians prize eloquence, insight, and activity.
It took many years and challenging seasons for me to finally share Spurgeon’s love for prayer. Since that difficult time, few things have brought me greater joy than praying and helping others learn to pray. These joys led, eventually, to the writing of 21 Days to Childlike Prayer. While I love and am thankful for other great books on prayer, I wrote my book for the following four reasons.
To provide a book on prayer that’s accessible even for new Christians – One of my favorite parts of being a pastor is helping people who have never prayed, learn to pray. Accessibility marked Jesus’ ministry, the Apostles’, Spurgeon’s, and, hopefully, this book. When Jesus taught his disciples about prayer, he pointed them to the relationship between a Father and a child. He didn’t say that they needed to become more spiritually sophisticated to have the prayer life he wanted them to have. They just needed to become more childlike. That’s what this book is all about. And that’s why the chapters are short and written in an accessible manner. I am passionate about helping as many people as possible learn how prayer helps them experience the power and presence of God in their problems and plans.
To provide a book on prayer that challenges seasoned pastors and ministry leaders – As a ministry leader and pastor, I didn’t have much of a prayer life. Many pastors and leaders I’ve known have struggled in similar ways. It’s easy to move through years of ministry without prioritizing prayer. Through a difficult season, I found the prayer life I’d looked for my whole life. I want to help leaders learn the things I learned without going through what I went through. Jesus doesn’t want his church being led by prayerless men and women. While I wrote the book in an accessible way, I believe it is substantive enough to challenge any pastor and ministry leader. I get so excited thinking about more and more pastors and leaders praying their problems and plans with specificity and childlike trust.
To provide a book on prayer that groups of people can read together – Jesus designed prayer to take place personally and in groups. We know that because he starts his teaching on prayer with the plural, “Our” Father. 21 Days to Childlike Prayer includes reflection questions and exercises at the end of each chapter that would serve a group discussion. Some books on prayer call for churches, families, and other groups to pray together. This book is designed to help make those biblical calls a reality. I’m thankful that Harvest House, the publisher of the book, shares this desire. They are offering bulk pricing to help foster group praying (50% off and free shipping for purchases of 15 or more books – email Kathy.Zemper@harvesthousepublishers.com). I hope this book can help unite groups of people’s hearts with God and each other, providing a unique, shared experience that they can walk through together.
To provide a book on prayer that will help Christians bring more glory to God – When people believe in a God capable enough, loving enough, and wise enough, that they push pause on their lives to simply pray, God is glorified. Our prayerful actions communicate that we believe in a powerful, awesome God. When we don’t pray, we communicate the opposite. We communicate that God is irrelevant since he is unable to help us with our problems and plans. When we bring specific requests to God, he is glorified as a God who can really make a difference, in specific ways. When we walk away from our prayer times with him without the burdens we brought into it, God is glorified as a God who really can be trusted. I want God to get the glory that he deserves and uniquely gets from childlike prayer. I’m praying this book increases the glory that God uniquely gets from a praying people.
Today, on the launch of 21 Days to Childlike Prayer, I’m praying that that God would use this book to help his children make prayer a daily, life-giving, burden-relieving, joy-producing reality. I’d love for you to buy a copy. And I’d greatly appreciate it if you would pray at least one prayer on behalf of the book. Ask God to answer at least one specific prayer of each person who reads 21 Days to Childlike Prayer, during their 21 day journey. The book is 21 Days to Childlike Prayer: Changing Your World One Specific Prayer at a Time. Grab a copy here today.
Answers to Specific Prayer: Kidnapped Missionaries in Haiti Praying with Specificity
Last year, the Mawozo gang abducted missionaries, demanding $17 million for their release. By God’s grace, they made it out alive.
As I was reading an article about the events, I couldn’t help but notice how much prayer played a part in their ability to endure and escape.
Weston Showalter, a spokesman for the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, shared what he heard from the missionaries themselves.
He said, “in times when they faced fear and danger during the night, they prayed that God would wake believers around the world and nudge them to pray for them. And that truly did happen. On this side, we hear of people who were awakened at night with a sense of urgency to pray.”
Showalter also communicated the fact that “hostages set up an around-the-clock prayer schedule, each praying for a half-hour during the day and an hour at night.”
The missionaries prayed because they believed in a God big enough to do “whatever he pleases” (Ps. 115:3). This is a beautiful picture of the childlike faith it takes to pray. And the specificity in their prayer lives led to visibility, seeing the invisible God, when they heard of others taking the action, getting up in the middle of the night, that they prayed for. Awesome!
Praying like this also enabled them to focus on representing God’s purposes as God’s children in this moment. Showalter noted, “The missionaries assured the hostage-takers of their love for their souls. They pointed them to Jesus. They hostages spoke to the gang leader on several occasions, boldly reminding him of God, and warning him of God’s eventual judgment if he and the gang members continue in their ways.” This is a beautiful picture of communicating God’s truth and love.
The story also says that the hostages prayed for an opportunity to escape. “On several occasions, they planned to escape, but they had decided if specific things didn’t happen, they would accept that as God’s direction to wait. Twice when they planned to escape, God gave clear signs that this was not the right time. On both occasions, on the very minute they had discussed, the exact thing took place they had requested as a sign. God was at work, but the timing was not right.” Then, on December 15, God provided one, and enabled to walk by many guards. Incredible!
God helped Peter escape because of the prayers of God’s people. It seems he still works these kinds of miracles today.
The Vague Prayer Syndrome: What It Is and What To Do About It
The older I get, the harder it is for me to come up with a Christmas list, birthday list, and a Father’s Day list. I’m not sure why it’s so hard. Maybe it’s because I buy what I want? Could be that I know that it hurts the budget? Maybe it’s because I don’t want to make sure I ask for the best possible thing and I don’t feel like I have time to really think it through? I’m not sure. But it’s a challenge for me. And from talking with others, it’s a challenge for them.
You know who this isn’t a challenge for? Kids. When it is time for them to come up with a “gift list,” they have no problem at all. They know exactly what they want. They have no regard for the budget. None! They don’t think about whether or not it is “wise” for them to use their limited number of “presents” on that circled option in the magazine they keep showing you. Children know how to ask for stuff and they know how to ask with specificity.
Part of embracing a childlike identity involves embracing specificity. It means that we learn to get specific with prayer requests. And as easy as that sounds, I’ve found in my life and the lives of those I’ve helped learn to pray, that it is difficult. It takes a good deal of work to help people pray with specificity.
Why? Because most people suffer from what I call, the “Vague Prayer Syndrome.” The “Vague Prayer Syndrome” is where you only pray vague prayers. Those vague prayers are so vague that you would never really know if they were answered by God in any meaningful way. These prayers are general prayers that don’t create any expectancy for an answer or any excitement when they are answered.
As someone who still battles the “Vague Prayer Syndrome,” I know what it sounds like—“God be with us today…” Or, “Bless this food…” The great news is that God answered those requests with a “yes!” How do I know? Because he promised us in Scripture that he would “be with us” and “bless us.”
Do you ever pray prayers like this? Do you only pray like this?
It’s perfectly fine, of course, to pray these prayers. But when you learn to get specific with your prayer requests, God becomes real in your heart and life in a way that he never would without that specificity. And when he becomes real in your life, when you get a glimpse of him working specifically in your life, it changes you. Fearful people experience peace. Bored people find purpose. Frustrated people find patience. Empty people get filled. People reach goals that are beyond their abilities to bring about.
I’ve seen it over and over in my life and in the lives of the people around me. That’s why we say, “Specificity leads to visibility.” When we get specific, the invisible God becomes visible in our lives in a way that he wouldn’t without that specific request. How do you see the invisible God? Get specific with your requests.
Instead of just saying, “Make today go great,” say, “Cause someone to encourage me by the end of the day.” Or, in regards to that staffing effort at work, say, “provide a new employee this week that we know is the one.” Here are some other examples:
God, will you send someone to encourage me today?
God, will you make my encounter with ___________ encouraging tonight?
God, will you cause my parents speak to me more kindly in the mornings this week?
God, will you make my boss affirm my work on this project this week?
God, will you make this physical ailment go away by Thursday?
When God answers those requests, you see God working in your life in ways that lift your heart out of the mess of the world. You start to really believe you have a Father in heaven that cares about you and your problems and plans. You start to awaken the childlike faith your heart was made for.
This is exactly what you see throughout the Bible. When you read the Psalms, you see them specifically praying that God would deliver them from specific fears, help them overcome a specific enemy, revive their soul, and more. The Israelites prayed for a specific deliverance from Egyptian oppression when they were slaves in Egypt. They prayed specifically for God to save them when they had their backs up against the Red Sea and an Egyptian military coming after them. Daniel specifically asked for deliverance from the Lion’s Den. Jonah prayed specifically for God to get him out of that fish’s stomach. Nehemiah prayed that God would help him build a specific wall. And the list could certainly go on. In all of these situations, they knew if God answered those prayers. And because they were specific with their prayers, when the invisible God answered their prayers, they “saw” him in a way that they wouldn’t have without that specificity. Their specificity led to visibility.
The same is true for us. When you are bold enough to pray specific prayers, you give God an opportunity to become visible—real—in your life, in a way he wouldn’t without that specificity.
Ask God to work in specific ways, by specific times, and watch him work. Will he always give you a yes? Of course, not. But many times he will. And when he does, you’ll find that your sense of his presence in your life is greater than any prayer request he grants.
This post includes content from my forthcoming book, 21 Days to Childlike Prayer: Changing Your World One Specific Prayer at a Time (pub. Jan. 18, 2022).