How to Pray When You Feel Like You Pray the Same Thing Every Day

This article is part of the How to Pray series. Pray Scripture The most formative class I took in seminary was Personal Spiritual Disciplines with Donald Whitney. It was formative not only because he was a great teacher, but also because I was chronically late. Every day, he began class with prayer—praying a psalm, in fact. To select the psalm, he taught us a simple tool. Take the number of the day of the month, and add thirty a few times. For example, let’s say it’s the first of the month. You could pray Psalm 1, Psalm 31, Psalm 61, Psalm 91, or Psalm 121. Tardy students were called on to state the psalms of the day and then choose one to pray. Suffice it to say, I got lots of practice praying the Psalms. Dr. Whitney’s rationale for teaching us to pray the Psalms has often come to mind in my struggles with prayer. He said we tend to “pray the same old things about the same old things.”1 I know this is true in my life, and I wonder if it is in yours as well. Have you ever begun praying, only to draw a blank just moments into it? You want to pray, but the words don’t come. Or you make the same requests day after day after day. Maybe you lack direction or clarity. If you don’t want t...