Specific prayer is prayer that is focused and direct, definite and exact. If you want your prayers to be faith filled and effective they must be specific.  For this reason, specific prayers are always better than general prayers.  Therefore, when you pray, think of specific (or definite) things you want to pray about, and then fix your mind on one of those things at a time.

When you think about it, praying specifically is really pretty easy; but I wonder why we don’t very often pray as specifically as we could?

I hope the following discussion will be of some help to you. Here are four reasons why it is better for prayers to be specific rather then general:

1. Specific prayers are more natural. It is normal and natural to ask God to give us exactly what we want and need. Any other way would be odd. We don’t go to a restaurant and say to the waitress, “Bring me some food.” No.  After looking at the menu we would tell her exactly what we want—“a baked potato, green beans, white bread, butter on the side, and a T-bone steak, medium rare.”  So it should be with our prayers to God.  It is the way God has designed us to pray and how He leads us to pray.

2. Specific prayers are more honest and authentic. General prayers tend to gloss over personal needs. But when we aim to pray specifically, we will come to grips with our needs and the needs of others. Likewise, the more we practice praying specifically the more God teaches us about it; that is, He teaches us that in order to pray correctly (specifically) we must search our heart and be willing to admit our needs and weaknesses, and to admit that we need His help.

3. Specific prayers help us express our faith. General prayers aren’t prayers of faith, because there is no definite thing in them to believe God for. People who pray general prayers pray not because they expect God to do any certain thing for them. They pray perhaps to fulfill an obligation, or to help themselves gain some sense of fulfillment.

Specific prayers, on the other hand, do help us to express our faith in God, because we are asking Him to do a definite thing for us or to give us a certain thing; and we trust Him to bring it to pass based on a certain promise of His, or on His good character.

4. Specific prayers are more effective. The mind cannot fasten its desire intently upon many things at the same time. But when desire is focused on one need at a time prayer for each thing is more intense, fervent, faith filled, and therefore more effective.