3 Things You Need to Know if You Don’t Feel Worthy to Pray

Have you ever felt like you aren’t good enough to pray? Like you haven’t read your Bible enough or have sinned too many times for God to listen to your prayers?

I feel you. I’ve struggled with not feeling good enough to pray for my entire life. Thankfully, I’ve learned a few essential truths along the way. Now I want to share them with you!

A Perfectionist’s Struggle with Prayer

If you are anything like me, there have been many seasons in your life where you don’t feel good enough to pray. You find yourself thinking that since you haven’t prayed enough on the good days, you can’t pray on the bad ones. What kind of faithful Christian does that? (Hint: a human one.)

You haven’t read the Bible enough, so you feel guilty for praying. How could God consider your prayer a sincere one if you haven’t read the Bible every day?

You’ve messed up, so you feel like the only prayer you can pray is one that asks for forgiveness. Nothing more. Nothing less. You might feel like you can’t even ask for forgiveness because you’ve sinned too many times.

These are the thoughts that often keep you and me from praying like we should, but they are actually proof that we need to pray more. Why? Because prayer is the most powerful weapon we have. That means it can break through our apathy!

3 Things You Need to Know if You Don’t Feel Worthy to Pray

First and foremost, through Jesus’s death on the cross, He gave us the authority to draw near to God without slaughtering our imperfections first. We have the opportunity to communicate with God. We just have to give ourselves permission to believe it. How exciting is that?

Now let’s discuss this a little bit more. Are you ready? Let’s go!

1. You are washed by the blood of Jesus.

Most of the time, we don’t feel good enough to pray because we feel like we have sinned too many times. Even though Satan is an advocate of sin, he also loves to convince us that our sins are unforgivable.

Here’s what John had to say about this topic. (Yeah, he said it better than I ever could.)

If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

1 John 1:6-10 (NKJV)

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation [atonement] for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

1 John 2:1-2 (NKJV)

It’s not a bad thing to recognize your sin as sinful (that’s what you’re supposed to do), but once you ask for forgiveness, you must embrace the cleansing of Christ. Don’t live in shame from your past mistakes when God has already given you grace. Remember, His grace is bigger and stronger than your sins.

2. God wants you to pray!

God’s desire is for all people to bring their hearts and souls to Him in prayer. He doesn’t want us to plan out the perfect words or pretend to be perfect humans. He just wants us to draw near to Him and seek His ways.

Whether we believe it or not, God has deemed us good enough to pray. We don’t have to talk like robots or scholars. We can just be us—the people God created in His image.

3. Prayer isn’t as complicated as you may think it is.

At the root of it all, I believe this is our biggest issue with prayer. We forget that we must simply pray. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as we make it. We don’t even have to figure out how to pray! Jesus has already laid it out for us.

“…For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Matthew 6:8-13 (NKJV)

Prayer is a time to praise God and ask for His will to be done in everything. It’s a time to pray for our needs to be met, recognizing that only God knows our true needs.

Prayer is a time to ask for forgiveness. It’s also a time to ask Him to teach us how to forgive others. It’s a time to pray for deliverance out of the grasp of the evil one. It’s a time to align ourselves with God, His will for us, and His desires for the world.

Prayer takes determination and time—which can be hard to come by in a busy world—but it doesn’t have to be as complicated as we make it.

The point of prayer is to simply talk to God. Through drawing near to Him, we are perfected and renewed. Prayer helps our feelings, worries, doubts, and fears realign with God. When we try to fix those things apart from God, they will always feel misaligned.

Stop Waiting to Pray

So let’s start praying today. Let’s ask God to help us in the areas we’re lacking in. Let’s ask Him to guide us. It’s time to bring all our ugly and press into God’s amazing character. That’s where restoration happens.

It’s time to start being vulnerable with God and stop trying to sugar-coat our feelings. If we don’t feel good enough to pray, let’s ask God to help us feel worthy. We can’t hide anything from God, so we need to stop pretending like we can.

God is our King, but He can also be our best friend. We can always go to Him. He understands our feelings. He’s simply waiting on us to bring them to Him.

The moral of the story is that when we focus on our imperfections, we’ll never feel good enough to pray. However, when we focus on God’s magnificence, we start to see ourselves the way He sees us.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other post about praying when the future is frightening, or join my newsletter to get updates about new content!