Are you finding it hard to know what to pray all day? Here is how to prevent boredom and repetition when you pause often during the day to talk to God.

Those who decide they want to practice God’s presence by pausing frequently during the day for brief prayers can run into a problem. What do you pray all day? After a while how do you keep from feeling bored and repetitious? How do you maintain this?

The answer is to use the full gamut of prayers described in the Bible. This article lists 12 kinds of prayer you can do briefly.

12 Ways to Pray

1. Express your love and devotion. This is a four-word pause: “Lord, I love you.” Or extend the prayer by telling why you love him. God wants to hear this all the time. He is affectionate and delights to receive your affection. Jesus said the first commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Mark 12:30, italics added).
2. Affirm your trust. Your faith is of ultimate importance to God. He delights in it. So we say things like, “Lord, I trust in you.” “I will not fear.” “You are my provider.” “You are my rock, my shield, my fortress, my deliverer.”
3. Give thanks. Once we adopt a grateful attitude, we find unlimited things large and small for which to thank God. He enjoys hearing every one. He never tires of it, never says, Enough already with thanksgiving.
4. Ask for help. Express your dependence on God, as in “Lord, I need you. Help me do this.” God doesn’t want us to rely on ourselves in anything. Ask for help in every part and project of the day, no matter how small.
5. Dedicate what you have and are doing to the Lord. This is a statement of purpose. “Lord, I am vacuuming the house now for you.” “Lord, I dedicate my body to you and your glory.”
6. Declare faith in God’s promises. In this we go beyond a statement of trust to affirm our belief in specific promises in Scripture about how God acts toward his people. “God will give me victory in this trial.” “The Lord is my healer.” “My God says, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’” “The Lord will supply all my needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” God delights to hear that we believe his Words are true, and he wants us to speak confidence in his words even if we are struggling to feel it in the moment.
7. Praise the Lord. Take pleasure in him. Recount the various aspects of God’s glorious character, nature, and works. We can learn how to do this especially from the Book of Psalms. “You are my God.” “You are my Father.” “I praise you, O God, for you are my Savior, my rock, my king, my helper, my peace, my strength, my comforter, my advocate.” “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, the Mighty One, the Holy One!”

Everything God has done is available to us for praise. “God, I praise you that you parted the Red Sea.” “Jesus, I praise you that death could not hold you in the grave.”

8. Surrender everything. Whether for the first time or the hundredth, give what you value to God. “Lord, I surrender all my money and savings to you. It is yours. I am a steward of it.” “Lord, I surrender my family again today to you. They are yours.” We also surrender jobs, possessions, body, abilities, time periods.
9. Confess and repent of sin. In the course of every day we think and feel, say and do, wrong things. As soon as we realize it, we should confess them to God and ask forgiveness. Then ask him to help us turn from sin and walk uprightly. “Lord, I confess feeling resentment toward my friend just now. Forgive me and help me to love and help her.” We can pray this sincerely in 10 seconds, and if we feel a transgression was so serious that we need to talk more about it with God, we can do so later in the day when we have time.
10. When tempted, ask Jesus to help you overcome. In this case, we are praying before we sin. It is when we most want to sin that we least want to pray, but it is not a sin to be tempted. Even Jesus was tempted. So no matter how strongly we feel the urge to sin, we bring it to God and ask him to keep us from succumbing. Hebrews 2:18 says, “Because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
11. When ill, ask for healing. Whether we are suffering the minor aches, pains, and chronic ailments that beset our bodies, or a serious cold, or a life-threatening disease, God wants us to bring them all to him as often as we feel the need. He ultimately is our healer, while doctors and medicines are means that he chooses to use and bless. But he wants and deserves the glory for all healing, and he wants us to depend ultimately on him for it. So bring every headache, indigestion, or serious disease to him in prayer.
12. When tired or weak, ask for strength. One of the more frequent promises in Scripture is that God is the strength of his people. That means God can give us emotional, physical, and spiritual strength that is not from natural sources, but from the Holy Spirit. It is supernatural. So we pray things like, “Lord, give me emotional strength to have this difficult talk with me employer.”

When you know what to pray

When you use all 12 prayers, you will find you have an unlimited number of brief prayers to fill your day to overflowing, and God’s presence will be real and regular.

If you were to add another kind of prayer to this list, what would it be? Share it below in the comments.