Guest Post: Blessed Are the Specific

Note: Enjoy this guest post by Elizabeth Clevenger!

No need for raised eyebrows here. The concept of specifics is a biblical theme. Think of the implications of Christianity. God is a complete, comprehensive, holy being and humans are moral agents, all day, every day, for life. It does not get more specific than that – the possibilities for godly living are continual and many. Christianity is incredibly practical because God is incredibly comprehensive.

God Himself is specific within His nature. Every prophecy spoken by God is fulfilled as promised. Jesus has completely saved those who are His. The Bible is the completely infallible, inerrant, sufficient, and inspired Word of God – every pen stroke is God’s specific communication for the saints’ specific living. 

Victorious, vibrant Christian living, therefore, comes from moving past generic approaches to holiness into the specifics of life and godliness. Regardless of how new Christian living is to you, how entrenched a sin issue is, or how long you may have been saved, identifying the general area of growth and then getting very specific can help you get there.

Where Could You Get More Specific?

What areas of your life might benefit from specific attention?

Be Specifically Encouraged

Christians can sometimes have the dubious skill of being able to hear a profoundly uplifting truth and glumly nodding assent to it, unaffected by the deep comfort they just heard. That is because they are standing a mile away from the specifics – encouragement and truth is blended together in a distant blur. Getting in close and identifying individual truths will produce the blessing of specific encouragement. These might include:

• Choose an attribute of God and consider five implications of that attribute for a particular situation on your mind. Continue with more attributes of God until you are thoroughly encouraged
• Read Ephesians 1-2 out loud with your name in it
• Stop and physically count on your fingers ten things you can be thankful for specific to today
• Look up an encouraging biblical word like love, joy, good, or trust (I would suggest a real concordance or the free Literal Word app) and read all the verses for that word

Be Specifically Trusting and Faith-Filled

God cannot, does not, and will not ever fail. And yet we can so easily tolerate or not even recognize lack of faith or lapses in trust. This can manifest physically through increased heart rate or sleeplessness, socially through avoidance or excessive engagement, mentally with racing thoughts or downward spiraling, and spiritually in resignation, discouragement, depression, skepticism, etc. Killing distrust in specific, concrete ways will be extremely helpful to gain the territory of your heart and mind for Christ and to enjoy the blessings that accompany it. Some specific suggestions:

• Pick the negative emotion you are feeling most strongly and then break it down into specifics such as: When do I feel this way? What do I want? What do I fear? What do I not want? What is true? How should I respond?
• Identify your typical generic sinful response related to faith and trust, and then get specific about what the Bible says: How does the Bible describe this response? What is sinful about it? What does righteousness look like in its place? What does this mean for me today? What Scriptures do I need to meditate on and memorize until they become my heart habits?

Be Confident in What You Believe

Doubt and uncertainty are not necessarily sinful. They indicate you are thoughtful about what you believe, which is a necessary piece to growing in your faith. But it can be dangerous to leave doubts unresolved – they will ultimately weaken your soul. If you have a general doubt or uncertainty about the Bible or theology or anything faith-related, resolve those doubts and uncertainties by identifying exactly what it is that you do not understand and then finding the specific, concrete answers to your questions. It could even be as simple as studying a book of the Bible that you think is irrelevant to you or that you doubt you could understand and apply. Pursue confident belief in specific ways, for those who put their confidence in God will never be put to shame (Psalm 25:3).

Be Specific with the Bible

Most Christians know they need to engage with Scripture. There may be several good ways we are already doing that: attending a Bible-preaching church, going to Sunday school, having daily devotions, even doing some memorization. Those are good but they are still generic. The gifted preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls this a danger to the Christian heart:

The danger… is that we tend to content ourselves with the words [of Scripture], or with some general impression which they make upon us; … we do not realize their significance, and therefore we do not truly appropriate to ourselves the teaching which they are meant to convey. [1]

Consider these very concrete, specific ways to pursue deep Bible study and application:

• Take notes in the sermon and review them later for understanding, prayer, and use
• Ask questions in Sunday school when you don’t understand
• Discipline yourself to use Scripture according to its intended meaning based on its context
• Memorize verses that target specific sins or encouragements needed in your life
• Take any Bible study training offered at your church or ask an older believer to teach you
• Work out application that is pertinent, concrete, and actionable
• Extend the amount of time you spend in the Word or increase the variety of ways you interact with it (read it, pray it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it, etc.)

There are many more areas that could be listed here. Confession, forgiveness, repentance, purity, prayer, praise, honoring parents, loving church members, …. An area of Christianity may come to your mind that pertains to you even more than these. 

If I may offer a very concrete, specific suggestion, I urge you to get killer-specific on the next temptation, sin, or uncertainty that you face today. If I may be even more specific, allow me to suggest a concrete method of doing so:

1. Get a piece of paper and draw a strip mall on it, making several individual stores big enough to write in and give it a big sign on top (printer paper turned horizontal would work well)
2. Write your temptation, sin, or uncertainty in the big sign at the top
3. Now use the individual stores you drew to represent specific ways of attacking the problem and write one way in each store. 
4. Example: If you were afraid or anxious about the future, you might write these (one in each store of your mall): “ask my pastor for resources on this topic,” “share my temptation with two close Christian friends (and name them),” “memorize three verses (and list the references),” and “the next time I am tempted I will ______ (insert a godly response for your ungodly one, such as pray for God to resolve my uncertainty and praise Him for his perfect shepherding of my soul).

As a friend of mine once said: “Christian living is like a strip mall. The name of the strip mall may be fear or worry or people-pleasing. But change happens in the specifics. You have to identify the individual stores to make progress.” Since that conversation, experience has proven her to be abundantly correct, both for destroying sin and for pursuing holiness. Happy shopping, and may you be blessed as you pursue specific living.

[1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965), 163.

Elizabeth Clevenger is a member of Summit Woods Baptist Church in Lee’s Summit, MO. She has a bachelor’s degree in Music Performance and a master’s degree in Biblical Counseling, both from Calvary University. Elizabeth, a certified biblical counselor, enjoys serving her church in the areas of evangelism, music, and counseling, and works on staff at Summit Woods as administrative assistant.

Enjoying this content? Subscribe to receive it directly in your email, once a week.