Confession of Bad Prayer

I have never been great at praying aloud. Sometimes I'm OK. Sometimes my prayers are highly fragmented. My mind fails often when the Spirit is not guiding me. It is hard for you to miss. My mind fails when I don't feel the grace making my prayer more fluid. When I don't feel God subjectively being there even when I know he is, in truth and by faith.

If this happens, my mind gets caught in a thought loop. It searches for what my heart wishes to ask. I don't know why I can't just conjure up some fluff to fill in the gaps. It should be so easy but I just can't. The Lord's prayer as an outline doesn't always help either. I could structure my prayer more but I don't know if it is always necessary.

I don't know if this is good or bad spiritually for me, that I can't pray well at times. I also know I aught to pray sometimes but not always what. Luckily, the Spirit, as an advocate, is praying for me with groanings too deep for words. I know this to be so very true. I have seen answers to prayers that were incoherent and inchoate longings in the back of my mind. They had remained as unformed words and thoughts that I felt and longed for God to answer. They had little tags on them that wished God would them fix. He has occationally answered them to His Glory. I am so very greatful for it. It proves scripture (Romans 8:26) to be so very true. To the point that I am not condemned about the inadequacy of my prayers.

With this said, perhaps God wishes for me to know more scripture verses, so that he can use them in my prayer to link it to his promises. Pray His words back to Him. It sounds absurd but really isn't. Everything that I have read says that this makes for good prayers aloud too. This is sometimes true in my failures in prayer but not always. I know the gist of those scriptures well enough. It should not matter. I don't know what to do with my awkward pauses from time to time. At least not right now. The only words that I can never forget to pray are "Be merciful on me, a sinner. You alone can make me competent."