Pain has a way of silencing us. You kneel, open your mouth, and nothing comes. Or worse — words come, but they feel hollow, like you are speaking into an empty room. If you have ever wondered how to pray when you are hurting, you are not alone. The Psalms are full of people who wrestled with the very same question.
This post answers five of the most common questions people ask about prayer in pain — honestly, with Scripture, and with the assurance that God is not frightened by your hurt.
1. Does God Still Hear Me When I Am in Pain?
William Cowper: The Man Who Doubted God Heard Him at All
William Cowper was one of the most gifted hymn writers in the English language. He gave the church There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood and God Moves in a Mysterious Way. He was also a man who spent decades convinced that God had personally and permanently rejected him. He attempted suicide multiple times. He lived under a cloud of depression so severe that he sometimes could not believe his own prayers were reaching heaven.
And yet he kept praying. Not because it felt like anyone was listening — but because Scripture told him someone was.
The Psalmist writes in Psalm 34:18: “The LORD is near to the broken-hearted, and saves those who have a crushed spirit.” God does not withdraw when you are broken. He draws near. Your pain is not a barrier to prayer — it is often the very thing that opens the door. Cowper’s hymns endure to this day precisely because they were forged in darkness, not in comfort. Knowing how to pray when you are hurting sometimes begins with choosing to believe God hears you — even before it feels true.
2. What Do I Say When I Have No Words?
Let the Spirit Speak for You: John Calvin in the Dark
John Calvin is remembered as a theologian of iron precision — the architect of Reformed doctrine, the commentator of almost the entire Bible. What is less known is that Calvin also wrote personally about seasons of spiritual terror so profound he described them as being abandoned by God. He wrote of praying when he had no words, of clinging to promises he could not feel, of groaning before God with nothing formed or articulate to offer.
Calvin called this kind of prayer the most honest kind.
Romans 8:26 tells us: “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings which can’t be uttered.” When you have no words — when all you have is a groan, a tear, or a hollow silence — the Holy Spirit is translating that before the Father. You never stopped praying. Knowing how to pray when you are hurting sometimes means simply arriving before God with empty hands and trusting that He receives what you cannot say.
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3. Is It Okay to Be Angry at God in Prayer?
George Matheson: Rage, Grief, and a Hymn Written in Tears
George Matheson was a Scottish minister who lost his sight in his twenties. When his fiancée discovered he was going blind she left him, unwilling to marry a man who could not see. On the night of his sister’s wedding — a night that brought his own abandonment rushing back — Matheson sat alone and wrote one of the most beloved hymns in Christian history: O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go. He later said it came to him in five minutes, and that it was wrung out of him by acute suffering. It was not a composed prayer. It was a cry.
That cry was received.
Psalm 22 opens with the words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — the same words Jesus prayed from the cross. Honest anguish offered to God is not irreverence. It is trust. It says: I believe you are real enough, close enough, and strong enough to receive this. You are allowed to bring your anger and your grief into the room. God is not fragile. He can hold what you are carrying.
Sit with Psalm 22 on Bible Gateway — notice how it begins in desolation and ends in praise. That same journey is available to you.
4. How Do I Pray When I Am Too Exhausted to Focus?
Borrow Someone Else’s Words: David Brainerd in the Wilderness
David Brainerd was a missionary to Native American communities in the 1740s. He lived alone in the forests of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, far from any church or community, battling tuberculosis and depression that left him bedridden for weeks at a time. His prayer journals — published after his death by Jonathan Edwards — record day after day of exhausted, wordless attempts to pray. He wrote of lying in his tent unable to form a sentence, returning again and again to the same short cries and the same familiar Psalms because they were all he could manage.
Those journals went on to ignite a generation of missionaries, including William Carey, who called them one of the most formative books of his life.
When figuring out how to pray when you are hurting feels beyond you, do what Brainerd did — borrow the words of Scripture. Praying Psalm 23 slowly, even just one line at a time, is a complete prayer. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” These words were written for the exhausted. They carry you when you cannot carry yourself. You do not need to find new words. The Psalms have already said everything that needs saying.
5. What If My Pain Does Not Go Away After I Pray?
Joni Eareckson Tada: Forty Years in a Wheelchair
In 1967, seventeen-year-old Joni Eareckson dove into Chesapeake Bay and hit the bottom. She has been a quadriplegic ever since. In the early years she prayed desperately and repeatedly for healing. She believed. She had others pray over her. The healing did not come. She has spoken honestly about the anger, the grief, and the long, dark wrestle with a God who seemed silent.
And then, slowly, something shifted — not her circumstances, but her understanding of what prayer is for.
Joni came to say that God had given her something better than the healing she asked for. He gave her Himself — more of His presence, more of His Word, more of His sufficiency than she believes she would have known walking. The Apostle Paul prayed three times for his thorn in the flesh to be removed. God’s answer was not healing — it was presence: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Learning how to pray when you are hurting means making room for this hard and holy truth: God may not change your circumstances immediately, but He will never leave you alone inside them.
A Final Word
You do not need to have your faith together to pray. You do not need to be calm, certain, or composed. The invitation of Scripture is simply this: come as you are. Bring the hurt, the anger, the exhaustion, the silence. God has heard harder prayers than yours, and He has never turned anyone away who came to Him broken.
If you are looking for Scripture to pray through tonight, listen to River of Prayer’s Psalm 23 reading — slow, meditative, and made for the moments when how to pray when you are hurting is the only question you have left.
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