My previous team can attest to my recent harping on specificity. Specificity in our words, desires, and especially our prayers. Specificity (beyond being a fun word to say) is an incredible tool we have both as Christians and as people. God’s specificity in creation makes us to be unique people with unique minds, backgrounds, cultures, languages, and hearts. I first began to understand the power of specificity when I was taking improv classes. Characters and scenes benefit HEAVILY from specific choices, and choosing the specific over the vague makes me buy into the reality of the scene, the world, and the character much more quickly. I also laugh more. You just do. Giving your scene partner a name like Dr. Vanessa Von Tiptoe is funnier than Dr. Johnson. It just is. And lately I have seen so much fruit in praying for specific events to take place, for people to receive me in a specific way, and praying for specific things that I want. God is not bored by the details of our prayers. He is not surprised by our selfish hearts and wants and I have been granted so much peace by just admitting exactly what I want to the Lord, because he already knew.
In Romania our housing situation was pretty tough. We shared a small missionary house with less-than-ideal bathrooms and a kitchen without enough space to eat, prepare, or store food. At any given time during the month we could have between 18 and 40 people staying there. My teammate Cassie asked us to pray for a blender at our next host in Bulgaria. My first thought to this prayer request was Cassie. Of all the things we lack right now, why are we praying for a blender (As if God could only grant us a decent toilet or a blender). My second thought was Cassie. In 7 months on the race have you ever seen a blender? How can we possibly expect to see a blender when we haven’t seen one all this time and especially not a necessary item? But my hard heart joined my team in prayer for a blender anyway. And yeah. We arrive at our home in Bulgaria for month 8 and there is a perfectly clean, working blender sitting on the counter in a massive commercial kitchen. Alright Lord, I see you. And we ALSO have a blender at our home in Ethiopia. What?! Though I would trade it in for a working microwave.
But sometimes you ask for the blender and you don’t even get a fridge. Throughout month four I had a very specific prayer about who I wanted on my next team. I prayed and prayed over who would be on my next team. Short prayers, long prayers, intentional prayers, or quick statements as I felt the anxiety creeping up. I had others in prayer with me and felt like I had given God allllll of my heart in my prayer requests. I felt as though I’d done all I could do to convey to him what I wanted and what was going to be best for me and my future service in ministry by being on a team with these specific people (or at least one of them). Boom. Team changes came, I got what I interpreted as the opposite of what I asked for. I saw none of the names I had prayed for on my team list. I wept. I confessed to my new team that it wasn’t the seeing of their names on my paper that made me so emotional, it was what I didn’t see, and I had not prepared myself for that. I had asked for specific people and for some reason he said no. The only rest I could find in that time was that I had given the Lord my full requests. He knew every detail of my desires and he chose differently. I wrestled with his goodness and soveriegnty and plans. But I knew that whatever he had in mind for me was worth this heartbreak, and he was ready and willing to listen to my endless temper tantrums about it, because he knew what lay ahead for me in my new team was better than my own desires. If you’ve kept up with my blogs at any point since February, you’d find that God provided for me in my new team. He surprised me with his goodness once again, and gave me a completely new team of sisters that loved me, challenged me, and made me laugh uncontrollably. In this instance, the specificity of my prayers weren’t necessarily answered with a yes. But he gave my weeping heart peace as he gently showed me Yes, I hear you, I consider your desires, and this time, my way is better.
I could talk about specificity in prayer for hours. But I need to transition to another incredible gift that specificity brings us, and that is feeling known. You feel blessed when a friend buys you coffee, but you feel known when they get you an iced cold brew with vanilla almond milk and a sprinkle of cinnamon. You feel good when someone thanks you for serving them, but you feel seen when they insist on doing the dishes because they know how long you were in the kitchen preparing dinner. I have been challenging my team to pray with specifics, give feedback with specifics, and to speak about each other with specifics. Tangent I will briefly take you on: Christianese and how unknown it makes me feel. Of course it feels nice to be told I ”love really well“ but you could say that about everyone on our 48-person squad. What do you see in me that makes you feel that way; or are you just saying it because it sounds nice? If you can’t think of an example, is this something I do or could I stand to grow in it? End of tangent.
All of that to say, I believe specifics are important. They are important in comedy, in prayer, in relationships, and in effectively communicating what you want. You are not being needy by telling someone exactly what you want or need, especially when they ask you. It is helpful. It is beautiful. And in improv, it is always the better choice.
