When you don’t know what to say in prayer, begin with the words Jesus gave His disciples. Read the Lord’s Prayer slowly, bring the need you can name to the Father, and trust the Holy Spirit’s help with what you cannot. You do not have to compose a polished prayer before you can pray.
That can be difficult to believe if you have heard others pray with ease. Your own words may feel small beside theirs. Or the difficulty may run deeper: you know what hurts, but you cannot see what would put it right. Jesus’ teaching about prayer and Paul’s words about weakness speak to both situations.
Before the words, remember who is listening
In Matthew 6:5–8, Jesus describes people who pray to be noticed and others who expect their many words to make them heard. He directs His disciples into the quiet of a room, away from an audience, and tells them something about their Father:
“your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
Matthew 6:8, Berean Standard Bible (BSB), excerpt
The Father’s knowledge comes before the request. You are not responsible for finding the sentence that will finally make Him understand your need.
Yet Jesus follows this assurance with an invitation to pray. God’s knowledge does not make prayer pointless. It gives us confidence to ask. We come to Him with what He already knows, learning to depend on Him rather than measuring whether our words sound impressive.
If you can, find somewhere you can pray without worrying about being overheard. Begin as simply as this: Father, help me pray. There is no need to wait until you can explain everything.
Let the Lord’s Prayer give you a beginning
Jesus does more than remove the pressure. In Matthew 6:9–13, He gives His disciples a prayer. You can use its words when you have few of your own, or pause at each request and let it guide what you say next.
Start with the opening: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” Jesus teaches us to address God with both trust and reverence. To ask that His name be hallowed is to ask that He be honored as holy. Before trying to solve every difficulty, we turn our attention to the One we are addressing.
Then comes “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This gives us something to ask even when we cannot work out the best outcome. We can tell God what we long for while asking Him to accomplish His good purposes. We do not need to pretend that we already know what those purposes will mean for every detail of our lives.
The prayer then brings us to daily bread. Jesus includes an ordinary, bodily need in the prayer He teaches. You can ask for food, provision, and help with the needs of this day. Your concern does not have to sound grand before you bring it to the Father. Notice, too, the word us. The prayer makes room for the people beside us who also need bread.
As the prayer turns to forgiveness, we bring our sins to God and face our need to forgive others. We ask for mercy with a willingness to extend it. This may be the point where a particular wrong comes to mind and you finally know what to say: confess it plainly, and ask for help to turn away from it.
The final request asks for protection from temptation and deliverance from the evil one. We can ask God to keep us faithful where we know we are weak. By the end of these few verses, Jesus has given us words for worship, need, repentance, and dependence. Return to them when you lose your place.
What if the honest words are painful?
Praying the words of Scripture does not require hiding what troubles you. Psalm 13 begins with a question:
“How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?”
Psalm 13:1, BSB, excerpt
The psalmist speaks of daily sorrow and an enemy who seems to be winning. He asks God to consider him and respond. His words are direct because his need is urgent.
This is a prayer addressed to God from inside distress. If your honest beginning is a question, you can bring that question to Him. You can name the sorrow without inventing an explanation for why it has happened.
Read the whole psalm. Its closing verses turn toward God’s loving devotion and goodness. Let those words give you something to hold on to, without turning the psalm into a deadline for feeling better. Its six verses do not tell us how quickly a grieving person must move from anguish to praise.
When even borrowed words are hard
There are times when knowing a prayer’s words does not settle the difficulty. We may still be unsure what to ask for. Paul includes himself in that 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, excerpt
The surrounding passage describes believers waiting for the redemption of their bodies, groaning as they hope for what they cannot yet see. These are people who have the Spirit and still experience weakness. Struggling to pray is not, by itself, evidence that God has abandoned you.
Paul’s reassurance rests on what the Spirit does. He intercedes for God’s people, and verse 27 says that His intercession is according to God’s will. We may misunderstand what we need; the Spirit does not. Our inability to finish a sentence does not leave Him unable to help.
So you can pause. You can return to one line of the Lord’s Prayer. If you belong to Christ, you can trust the Spirit’s help without having to produce a particular feeling or sound. Paul gives weak believers a promise to rely on, not another performance to manage.
A short prayer when you do not know what to say
You might begin with this original prayer, shaped by the passages above. Change the words to fit what you need to bring to God.
Father in heaven, I need Your help to pray. You know the needs I can name and the ones I cannot understand. Let Your will be done. Give me what I need today. Forgive my sins and help me to forgive others. Keep me from temptation. Holy Spirit, help me in my weakness. Teach me to trust the Father as I come to Him through Jesus. Amen.