Prayer · Question
I never know what to say when I pray. What do I do?
Say one true sentence and stop. That is the answer, and everything below is only support for it. You are not expected to produce a speech; you are expected to say something you actually mean, and if the only true sentence you have this morning is "God, I don't know what to say", then that is your prayer, and it is a real one.
Why the words run out
Most people who say they cannot pray can in fact pray for about fifteen seconds, and then hit a wall. The wall is usually not doubt. It is the suspicion that there is a correct register — a special vocabulary, a certain kind of sentence — and that ordinary speech does not qualify.
Jesus addresses this directly, and the correction is blunt: do not pile up words, because your Father already knows what you need. That cuts both ways. It removes the pressure to perform, and it also removes the idea that a longer prayer is a better one.
So the wall you are hitting is not the end of your prayer. It is the end of the performance. What comes after it is the part that counts.
And when you pray, do not babble on like pagans, for they think that by their many words they will be heard. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
Matthew 6:7-8, BSB
Start with the first true sentence
The most useful question in the morning is not "what should I pray about?" but "what is actually true right now?" I am tired. I am scared about Thursday. I am angry with my brother. I am fine and I feel nothing. Say that.
The Psalms are full of exactly this move — someone begins by telling God the situation, out loud, with the complaint left in. The psalmist pours out the complaint before he asks for anything, and the book keeps that prayer in.
Once the first true sentence is out, a second one usually arrives on its own. If it does not, you have still prayed.
I cry aloud to the LORD; I lift my voice to the LORD for mercy. I pour out my complaint before Him; I reveal my trouble to Him.
Salmo 142:1-2, BSB
Borrow a shape when your own runs out
A blank page is harder than a form. The prayer Jesus gave his disciples has been used as a skeleton for centuries: you say a line, then you stop and put your own morning into it before moving on.
Practically, that gives you five or six prompts instead of one intimidating silence. Who you are talking to. Today's needs. What you got wrong. Who you need to forgive. What you know will pull at you before lunch.
Say it slowly, and pause after each line. A prayer with pauses in it is longer than one without, and you did not have to invent a single word.
So then, this is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
Matthew 6:9-13, BSB
Borrow someone else's words entirely
There is no requirement that the words be original. Reading a psalm out loud and letting it be your voice is one of the oldest ways to pray, and it works particularly well on the mornings when nothing of your own will come.
Try one that starts where you are. If you are at the bottom of something, start at the bottom — there is a psalm that opens from exactly there and does not pretend otherwise.
Read it slowly, change the pronouns if it helps, and stop when a line becomes yours.
Out of the depths I cry to You, O LORD!
Salmo 130:1, BSB
Not knowing how is the normal starting place
The disciples spent their days with Jesus and still asked to be taught how to pray. They did not ask because they were unusually unspiritual. They asked because praying is a learned thing, like any other way of speaking, and nobody is born fluent.
That should take some weight off. If you feel like a beginner, you are in the position the first followers were in, and the request they made is available to you word for word.
Ask to be taught, and then keep practising badly. Badly is how anyone starts.
One day in a place where Jesus had just finished praying, one of His disciples requested, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
Luke 11:1, BSB
When there are no words at all
Some mornings you will have nothing. Not a sentence, not a psalm, not the energy to look one up. Romans describes the Spirit helping in exactly this place — where we do not know what we ought to pray for, and what comes out is not language.
You can sit for a minute with the thing that hurts and call the sitting a prayer. You can say a name. You can breathe. None of that is a lesser version of praying.
And if the wordlessness lasts for weeks, and it comes with not sleeping, not eating, or not wanting to be here, please treat that as its own thing and talk to a doctor or a counsellor. Nothing on this page is medical or pastoral advice, and a devotional is not a substitute for real help.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.
Romans 8:26, BSB
Tomorrow morning: one true sentence, out loud, and then get on with the day. That is the whole answer, and it does not get more advanced than that — it only gets more familiar.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible. Public domain (CC0)
In this category: Prayer