Praying Without Words

I have often heard people lament, "I don't know how to pray, I just don't know what to say."?  Perhaps you feel that way yourself.  While the words just seem to roll off the tongue of others, your tongue just seems to roll up in your mouth refusing to allow even a syllable to slide down to tip, let alone an entire sentence to leap into the airways giving voice to your concerns or praise.

So what do you do when you just don't know the words to say or the construct in which to put them?  How does one pray without words, without knowing what to say?  Just say that!  What?  Just begin to praying admitting you don't have the words, that you don't know what to say.

When you sincerely want to communicate with God, you don't have to put together a well planned, liturgically accurate, grammatical masterpiece.  You only need to come before God with the desire to communicate, to open the heart flow between you and our Father.  It isn't what you say, it's why you want to say it.  Sometimes, as Randy Travis put it in song, "You say it best when you say nothing at all."

God understands our inabilities, he made us.  When we are unable to pray, "...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans" (Rom 8:26).  When we can't, He can.  When our words stick to our tongues like glue, the Father retrieves them: "And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God" (v. 27).

The other day, I was talking to a young man who had just lost his bride of four years.  He was in terrible pain, I didn't know anything to say that could take away his pain or even really help in the moment so I just admitted my inability, relying on the Spirit to help communicate my care and concern.  The young man replied to me, "It helps just to have someone to talk to, someone to listen to me.  I appreciate it more than you can know."

I didn't know what words to use or how to put them, but God did.  In that conversation, the Spirit was at work between us and what I felt was of little help turned out to communicate between my heart and his enough so that as we ended our conversation, he said to me, "I would really like it if you would just check in on me again, if we could talk some more."  I assured him I would. Be in contact this week.  And do you know what?  I have no idea what I will say.  But God does.

Prayer is a conversation with God.  Just like between the young man and myself.  We need to communicate with God not because we have words to say but because there is something to communicate.  Let God be in charge of the words, just come to him in the spirit of prayer, just come with the desire to open communication between His heart and yours.  He will make it so.  Jus' Say'n.