The prayers we don’t know how to pray

There are seasons when polished words disappear. Perhaps those are the moments when prayer becomes most honest.

There are prayers we know how to pray. They have a beginning, a request and some idea of the answer we hope will come. We pray for somebody to recover, for an opportunity to open, for wisdom before a decision, for protection over our children, for provision when money is tight. We may not know what God will do, but at least we know what we would like Him to do. The prayer has direction. Then there are other moments when we sit down to pray and discover that the difficulty is not finding the right words. The difficulty is that we no longer know what the right prayer would be.

Perhaps the situation has become too complicated for a simple request. A marriage is struggling, and restoration is desperately wanted, but years of hurt cannot be reduced to “Lord, fix this.” A parent is dying, and we want healing while knowing that death will eventually come for all of us. A son or daughter is making choices we cannot control. A business is failing despite everything we have done to save it. Someone we love is suffering, and every available outcome appears to carry some kind of loss. Perhaps we have prayed about the same thing for so long that even our own words have begun to sound tired. We still believe in prayer. We simply do not know what to say anymore.

This can be surprisingly unsettling for Christians because prayer is one of those things we assume we ought to know how to do. We learn the language early. We thank God, confess, intercede, ask for wisdom and finish in Jesus’ name. Churches teach helpful models. Books explain disciplines. Other Christians sometimes seem capable of praying with an ease and fluency that can make the rest of us feel spiritually inarticulate. Some people appear able to turn almost any circumstance into a beautifully structured prayer before the rest of us have worked out what we are feeling.

There is nothing wrong with eloquence. Words can give shape to faith, and the prayers preserved in Scripture contain some of the most beautiful language ever written. But eloquence can also create a misunderstanding: that prayer is successful when we communicate ourselves well. We begin to imagine that a good prayer is coherent, confident and theologically polished, while the confused sentence, the long silence or the same desperate request repeated for the hundredth time somehow represents a lesser form of faith.

Jesus appears remarkably uninterested in that distinction. When He teaches His disciples about prayer, He specifically warns against multiplying words in the belief that quantity or performance makes us more likely to be heard. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him,” He tells them. It is an extraordinary premise for prayer. Before the sentence is formed, God already knows. Before we have correctly identified the problem, He understands it. Before we have decided whether we want Him to change the circumstances or change us within them, He is not waiting impatiently for a better explanation.

If God already knows, prayer cannot primarily be the transfer of information.

That changes things.

Many men are comfortable with communication when it has a purpose. Give us the problem, the relevant facts and the decision required. We can discuss strategy, analyse options and determine what needs to happen next. Even difficult conversations can feel manageable if there is something to solve. Prayer can unconsciously adopt the same structure. We present the situation to God, propose an outcome and ask Him to act. Sometimes we even add the spiritual equivalent of supporting documentation: here is why this would be good, here is who would benefit, here is the biblical principle that appears to support our preferred conclusion.

Then life presents us with something that cannot be solved.

Grief is often like that. So is betrayal. So is watching somebody we love suffer when we are powerless to remove the suffering. There are seasons when the problem is not a lack of information or effort but the existence of a reality we cannot fix. For men who have spent much of their lives developing competence, helplessness can feel particularly intolerable. We want to do something. When there is nothing useful to do, we may at least want to pray something useful.

But perhaps usefulness is the wrong measure.

The Bible’s own prayer book contains remarkably little pressure to sound composed. The Psalms include praise and gratitude, certainly, but also bewilderment, accusation, grief, anger, fear and questions God does not appear embarrassed to preserve in Scripture. “How long, Lord?” is not sophisticated theology, but it is honest prayer. “Why have you forsaken me?” is more confronting still, particularly because those words are later spoken by Jesus from the cross. Biblical prayer gives people permission to bring God not merely the emotions they think they should have, but the ones they actually have.

That distinction matters because Christians can become skilled at editing themselves before God. We know the correct answer, so we sometimes give it before we have acknowledged the real one. We say that God is good while quietly wondering why He allowed something to happen. We say that His timing is perfect while resenting how long we have waited. We tell Him we surrender the outcome while privately negotiating which outcomes would be acceptable. We pray for somebody who hurt us while remaining furious with them. None of these tensions shocks God. He already knows the unedited version.

Honesty in prayer does not mean treating God as though He were merely an audience for whatever emotion happens to be strongest. The Psalms rarely remain trapped inside themselves. Lament speaks honestly and then, often slowly, remembers who God is. Anger is brought into relationship rather than allowed to become the final authority. Fear is named in the presence of something larger than fear. Biblical prayer can therefore be brutally honest without becoming self-indulgent. It tells the truth about circumstances while continuing to address God.

Perhaps that is one of the most important distinctions between prayer and simply thinking about our problems.

Rumination circles inward. Prayer, however confused, turns towards Someone.

This is why silence can itself become a form of prayer. Not every silence is spiritual; sometimes we are simply distracted or exhausted. But there are moments when sitting before God without attempting to manufacture language may be more truthful than forcing ourselves through sentences we no longer mean. We are not waiting until we have something impressive to say. We are allowing ourselves to be present.

For some men, this can feel almost unbearably unproductive. Ten minutes of silence produces no measurable result. Nothing has been completed. There is no insight to record and perhaps no sense of God’s presence to report afterwards. The mind wanders. We remember an email that needs answering. We think about the conversation from yesterday. We wonder whether we are doing prayer incorrectly. Yet perhaps even returning our attention to God for the fifteenth time is itself an act of prayer. We remain.

There are relationships in which presence eventually becomes more important than conversation. Anyone who has sat beside a hospital bed knows this. At first we search for words. We ask questions, make conversation, offer reassurance. Eventually there may be nothing left to say. We sit. The silence is not evidence that the relationship has failed. Quite the opposite. Sometimes only people who are comfortable enough with one another can stop filling the room with language.

Why should our relationship with God always require commentary?

Paul addresses this territory directly in Romans when he writes that “we do not know what we ought to pray for.” It is one of the most reassuring admissions in the New Testament, not least because Paul includes himself. He does not say immature Christians occasionally struggle to pray correctly. He says we do not know. The response is not a better technique but the work of the Holy Spirit, who “intercedes for us through wordless groans.” At precisely the point where human language fails, prayer has not stopped.

That is a profound correction to the idea that prayer depends upon us getting it right.

Sometimes we genuinely do not know what to ask for. We want the job and also fear what it might demand of us. We want the relationship restored but do not know whether restoration is possible or wise. We want somebody healed and also know that our deepest hope is ultimately not avoidance of death at any cost. We want God to remove the difficult season while suspecting that something in us is being formed through it. “Your will be done” can sound like a spiritual escape clause when spoken casually, but prayed honestly it can be one of the most demanding sentences available to us.

Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane reveals the tension without resolving it cheaply. He does not pretend to desire the suffering ahead. “Take this cup from me,” He prays. Then comes surrender: “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Both statements belong in the same prayer. Desire is not denied in order to make surrender sound more spiritual. Jesus tells the Father what He wants and entrusts Himself to the Father when what He wants is not what will happen.

There is a model of mature prayer here that is more robust than pretending not to have preferences. We can ask boldly for what we want. Healing. Reconciliation. The job. The child. The breakthrough. The business to survive. The door to open. There is nothing faithless about specificity. But Christian prayer eventually holds the request with an open hand. We ask without making our continued trust conditional upon receiving the answer we prefer.

That is easy to write and much harder to live.

An unanswered prayer becomes increasingly difficult as time passes because every repetition carries the memory of previous silence. At the beginning there may be energy and expectation. We gather people to pray. We search Scripture. We notice every small development and wonder whether this is the beginning of the answer. Months later, the same prayer can become heavier. Years later, we may barely know how to say it.

There are men who have prayed for a child to return to faith for a decade. Men who have prayed for their marriages while watching distance increase. Men who have asked for freedom from something they continue to struggle against. Men who prayed beside hospital beds and attended funerals anyway. Men who believed a door would open and watched it remain firmly closed.

Christian communities do not always know what to do with these stories. Answered prayers make wonderful testimonies. They have a clear narrative: there was a problem, people prayed, God acted. We should tell those stories. Gratitude deserves expression. But if those are the only stories we tell, we can unintentionally create the impression that faithful prayer reliably produces visible resolution.

Some prayers remain unfinished for a very long time.

Some appear to remain unfinished for a lifetime.

The absence of the answer we wanted does not make prayer pointless, although it may force us to reconsider what we believed prayer was for. If prayer is principally a mechanism for changing circumstances, unanswered prayer becomes a problem that requires explanation. If prayer is also relationship—our continuing movement towards God in every circumstance—then even the unanswered prayer contains something important. We are still bringing the thing to Him. Still trusting Him enough to complain. Still asking. Still grieving. Still returning.

There is faith in returning.

Sometimes we need other people to help us do it. A man who cannot find words may need somebody else to pray them for him. This is one of the quiet gifts of Christian friendship. We often think of praying together as an activity requiring everyone to contribute, but there are seasons when brotherhood means allowing another man to carry the language. He can ask for what we no longer know how to ask. He can remember God’s character when our own view has narrowed. He can sit beside us without explaining the inexplicable.

This requires a different kind of courage from the competence men are often trained to display. It means being able to say, I don’t know how to pray about this anymore.

A good friend does not necessarily respond with an answer. He may simply say, Then I’ll pray with you.

There is a danger here of making prayer sound passive, as though bringing something to God releases us from responsibility. It does not. Sometimes the answer to prayer includes an action we already know we need to take. The apology still needs to be made. Medical advice needs to be sought. The difficult conversation cannot be indefinitely replaced by praying about having it. A financial crisis may require a budget as well as intercession. A struggling marriage may need counselling. Addiction may require professional treatment and accountability. Prayer is not an alternative to responsible action; it is part of how Christians learn to act without pretending that action gives them ultimate control.

There are also times when prayer changes because we change. We begin by asking God to remove something and eventually find ourselves asking for strength to endure it. We begin asking for a particular door to open and later ask for freedom to accept that it has closed. We pray for another person to change and slowly become aware of what needs changing in us. This should not be reduced to the sentimental claim that God always answers by changing the person who prays. Sometimes circumstances do change dramatically. Sometimes they do not. The point is simply that prayer places us in a relationship in which our own desires are allowed to be examined as well as expressed.

Perhaps this is why the Lord’s Prayer begins where it does. Before daily bread, forgiveness or deliverance comes “Our Father.” Identity precedes request. We are speaking to Someone before we are asking for something. The words that follow matter enormously, but the relationship comes first.

There may therefore be value in having very simple prayers available for the seasons when elaborate ones disappear. Help me. Give me wisdom. Have mercy. I trust you; help me where I don’t. Stay close. Show me the next thing. These are not inferior prayers. Some have deep biblical roots. Their brevity can make them more honest because there is nowhere for performance to hide.

And sometimes there may be no sentence at all.

A man sits in his car before walking into the hospital. He closes his eyes and breathes. A father stands outside his child’s bedroom after an argument and has no idea how to repair what was said. A husband lies awake beside his sleeping wife knowing that something between them needs attention but unsure where to begin. A businessman looks at numbers that no longer work. A son sits beside a father who no longer recognises him. Somewhere inside those moments there may be no theological insight, no eloquence and no certainty.

There may simply be, God.

Perhaps that is enough to begin.

We have a tendency to judge prayer by what happens after it. Did circumstances change? Did guidance come? Did peace arrive? Did the thing we requested occur? Those questions are understandable, and Christianity certainly expects God to act. But there may be another measure available to us: did we come?

Did we bring the unedited truth rather than the acceptable version? Did we remain when we would rather have distracted ourselves? Did we allow somebody else to pray when we could not? Did we continue addressing God even when we did not understand Him? Did we place the thing back into His hands after discovering, again, that we could not control it ourselves?

Prayer of that kind may not feel powerful. It may feel weak, repetitive and unfinished.

Perhaps that is appropriate.

Christian faith begins, after all, not with our strength but with our dependence. Prayer is one of the places where that dependence becomes impossible to disguise. We arrive with our plans and words and preferred outcomes, and eventually life brings us to circumstances in which none of them is sufficient.

The words run out.

The solution does not come.

The silence remains.

And still we turn towards God.

Perhaps some of the deepest prayers of our lives will never be remembered for what we said. They will be remembered, if they are remembered at all, for the fact that we kept coming back.

Not because we understood.

Not because we had finally found the right words.

But because beneath all the questions, disappointment and silence, there remained a relationship we were unwilling to abandon.

Sometimes the prayer is the words.

Sometimes the prayer is simply staying.