When You Can’t Pray

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” — Romans 8:26 (KJV)

Lots of Christians feel like they are bad at prayer. Your mind wanders. You don’t know what to say. You feel nothing. Sometimes you skip it because you think, “What’s the point if my heart isn’t in it?”

Sibbes understood this completely. He imagines someone complaining that they cannot pray: “O I am troubled with so many distracting thoughts, and never more than now.” His answer is a question: has God put into your heart a desire to pray? Then he will hear the desires of his own Spirit in you.

“God can pick sense out of a confused prayer. These desires cry louder in his ears, than thy sins.”

Sometimes, Sibbes says, a Christian is so confused they can say nothing except what a child says: “O Father.” And that is enough. A small child crying “Dad!” doesn’t need to explain everything for their father to come running.

Will a holy God really accept such a weak prayer? Sibbes answers: “Yes, he will accept that which is his own, and pardon that which is ours.” What is God’s in your prayer, the desire for him that his Spirit gave you, he accepts. What is yours, the wandering and weakness, he forgives.

He also points out that James says the great prophet Elijah “was a man subject to like passions as we are.” God didn’t answer Elijah because he was perfect, but because he prayed.

What about days when you just don’t feel like praying or reading the Bible? Sibbes says we should keep at it, because often the good feelings come after we start, not before:

“Feeling and freeness of spirit is oft reserved until duty be discharged: reward followeth work.”

He compares it to rowing against the tide, or sailing a ship: “the hand must be to the stern, and the eye to the star.” Do the little you can, and look up to God for help.

But Sibbes is also wise about rest. When your body is worn out, he says, “there may be a cessation till strength be repaired.” Sometimes the most spiritual thing to do is sleep. God is not a harsh master who wants you to grind yourself down.

And he encourages us with this: “by prayer we learn to pray.” It gets easier with practice. Pray as you are able.

One thing to do this week: set a short, regular time to pray this week, even five minutes. When you don’t know what to say, just say, “Father,” and sit quietly. Trust Sibbes’s words: God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.