What to Do When You Don’t Feel Like Praying

Nobody talks about this much. You will hear plenty about the importance of prayer and about all the different ways to pray, but you don’t hear as much about what to do when you sit down to pray and nothing comes out.

It is not crisis or walking away from God. It is just flat and dry. You know you should. You want to want to. The words don’t come, and the whole thing feels like you are talking to a ceiling.

If you have been there, you know what I mean, and if you are there right now, that is not a sign something is wrong with you. It might be a sign that God wants to do something different in the way you have been approaching Him.

The Pressure We Put on Prayer

A lot of us were taught, directly or indirectly, that prayer is supposed to feel a certain way. Warm and emotional, like something is happening. When it doesn’t feel that way, we assume we are doing it wrong, or that we are too far from God for it to work.

That pressure is real, and it keeps a lot of people from praying at all. If you cannot find words and you want someone to pray with you in the meantime, you can send a prayer request and someone here will carry it with you.

In Romans 8:26, Paul says, “And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (ASV).

We know not how to pray as we ought. Paul is describing the normal human experience of prayer. There are moments when we don’t know how to do it, and the Holy Spirit steps in and does the praying for us. The design includes that.

The feeling of not knowing how to pray is something God already anticipated and made provision for. That changes the whole thing.

Start With What Is True

When you don’t feel like praying, the worst thing you can do is try to manufacture something that isn’t there. Showing up with performed enthusiasm you don’t have is performance, and God is not looking for that.

What He has always responded to is honesty.

The Psalms are full of it. Psalm 13:1 opens with, “How long, O Jehovah? wilt thou forget me for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (ASV). That is someone telling God where they are, and it is in the Bible. God kept it.

If you don’t feel like praying, tell Him that. “God, I don’t even know what to say right now. I’m dry, and I’m tired of going through the motions.” That is a prayer, and it might be the most honest one you have prayed in months.

Honesty puts you in actual contact with God instead of putting forward a version of yourself you think He would prefer to hear from.

Give Yourself Permission to Be Simple

One of the reasons prayer starts to feel like a burden is that we make it more complicated than it needs to be. We think we need the right words and the right amount of time before God will hear it.

But Jesus’ own model prayer in Matthew 6, the Lord’s Prayer, takes less than thirty seconds to say out loud. It covers who God is and what we need, which is most of what prayer is anyway.

You do not need a long prayer or a structured one. Some mornings the most real thing you can offer is His name and a few minutes of sitting with Him without any agenda.

That counts, and it might count more than the elaborate prayers you put together when you feel like you are supposed to be spiritual, because at least it is real.

Use Someone Else’s Words When Yours Are Gone

When I don’t have words of my own, I borrow someone else’s.

The Psalms were written for this. They cover every human emotion and they are already addressed to God. When you cannot find your own words, reading a Psalm out loud is praying. You are using David’s words or Asaph’s words to say what you cannot quite say yourself, and that is valid.

The same is true for a written prayer or a hymn. The words do not have to originate with you for them to be genuine. What makes prayer real is that you mean it.

If you are looking for a place to start, the Faith for the Week devotionals on The Bridge are built for this kind of moment, brief and honest.

Don’t Wait Until You Feel Ready

Waiting until you feel like praying before you pray has a problem built into it. The feeling tends to come after you have already started.

Forcing yourself through something miserable is not the point. Connection with God works more like a relationship you keep showing up for, even on the days when showing up takes more than you feel like you have.

James 4:8 says, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (ASV). The drawing near comes first, and the closeness meets you there.

Some of the most meaningful moments I have had with God started with me sitting down and saying “I don’t have anything today.” That honesty opened something, because I showed up.

Prayer doesn’t require you to feel spiritual or have the right words. It just requires you to turn toward God with whatever you have.

Some days that is a lot, and some days it is almost nothing. He is not grading on volume, and He has been waiting for you to look up.

If you want to go deeper in your prayer life, the Bible studies on this site are a good place to start.