It’s a tough thing to not know what to say. And it happens to all of us.

Sometimes it happens in the midst of a conversation when one party says something strange or controversial or even upsetting and then there’s that awkward silence as everyone looks down and shuffles their feet and starts sweating a little bit. Because no one knows what to say next.

Or when you are one on one with another person and they have just divulged some piece of news that is extreme in some way – maybe extremely joyful or extremely upsetting – and you find yourself with your jaw hanging open. You are dumbstruck and you don’t know what to say next.

Or another example – you are talking with someone who clearly is an expert in some area that you know nothing about. They go on and on about things you neither know nor care too much about, and then smile at you looking for some direction as to where to take the conversation, and you’ve got nothing. Once again, you don’t know what to say.

And then there is prayer. Prayer is often a moment in which we don’t know what to say. Oh sure – there are the perfunctory prayer remarks, the filler language – but then there are times when the hurt is too great. The suffering is too much. The decision is too overwhelming. And you’ve prayed and prayed and prayed until it feels like you are prayed out. In the face of upheaval and disaster, you find yourself at a loss in prayer. The words won’t come and you simply sit in silence. Because you don’t know what to say any more. What happens then? What happens when you know you ought to pray, and you believe in the power of prayer, and yet you don’t have the words any more? Let me suggest two sources of comfort in those moments that are so big and weighty that our words fail us in prayer:

1. The psalms.

For centuries the psalms have been the devotional text of believers. You read through the psalms and you find equal extremes of joy and sorrow, of gratitude and lament – often in the same psalm. You find a shockingly honest articulation of the innermost thoughts, desires, and feelings of believers in the God of Abraham. You find complaints, anger, bitterness, calls for understanding – you find it all there. In the Bible. And that is a comforting thing for two reasons.

First of all, it’s comforting to know that we aren’t the only – or even the first – people to feel the way we feel. Suffering and sorrow is part of the human experience, and those emotions are certainly part of the faith experience. The simple fact that those words are there, in the inspired Word of God, help us breather a little easier because we know that these feelings are permissible. Not only permissible, but God is welcoming to them and will receive them from an honest.

But secondly, the psalms are comforting because they give us safe language for our sadness, anger, and lament. They help us know what to say when we don’t know what to say. They give voice to what we are feeling so deeply, and let us know that we can pray along with the psalmist of the past at the throne of grace.

2. The Spirit.

And then there’s the Holy Spirit of God, another source of comfort when we don’t know what to pray. When we pray, we might be confused about what the right outcome of a situation is. We, in our limited knowledge, tainted emotion, and short-sighted vision might think we know exactly what a given outcome of a situation ought to be, and yet we might be dead wrong. So we might be confused about what exactly to pray for. We can be certain, though, that the Holy Spirit is not. He knows the will of God, and He is interceding for us not according to our desires, but according to that will:

“In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:26-27).

How wonderfully comforting that is! How beautiful it is to feel your own limitations and double-mindedness, to be mired in your own confusion, and yet to know that the Spirit is your divine translator. While we might stumble around doing the best we can in prayer and know we fall woefully short, we can rest in the fact that the Holy Spirit never does.

Christian, if you are hurting so deeply, if you are worrying so mightily, if your sadness is so heavy that you don’t even know what or how to pray any more – take heart. Turn to the Word. Trust in the Spirit. And believe in the God of grace who will meet you in your need.