When prayer feels pointless, it’s also one of the loneliest parts of faith. You’re showing up, saying the words, pouring out your heart to God, but nothing seems to change. You’ve been praying for weeks, months, maybe even years, and you still don’t see any results. The desperation grows, the silence gets louder, and eventually you start wondering: what’s the point?
Maybe you’ve been praying for healing that hasn’t come. Maybe you’re begging God for provision that never seems to arrive. Maybe you’re interceding for someone you love who shows no sign of changing. Or maybe you’re just tired of talking to God about the same things over and over with absolutely nothing to show for it.
Let me say this, just because prayer feels pointless doesn’t mean it actually is. God is hearing every word. Your prayers matter more than you realize. And the times when prayer feels most futile are often the times when continuing to pray matters most.
Let me show you how to keep praying when prayer feels pointless so you can navigate this season without losing faith entirely.
Why Does Prayer Feel Pointless Sometimes?
Before we talk about how to keep going, let’s address why prayer can feel so ineffective.
Prayer can feel pointless for several reasons:
You’re Waiting for God’s Timing (And It’s Taking Forever)
Just because you haven’t seen results doesn’t mean God isn’t working. Sometimes His timing is radically different from yours. Sometimes He’s orchestrating things behind the scenes you can’t see yet. Sometimes the answer is coming, but not in the timeframe you desperately wanted.
“Wait” feels a lot like “ignored” when you’re desperate, but they’re not the same thing.
You’re Experiencing Spiritual Warfare
When you’re under spiritual attack, prayer feels significantly harder. The enemy wants you to believe prayer is pointless, that God doesn’t care, that you’re wasting your time. Those thoughts aren’t truth, they’re spiritual opposition trying to cut you off from your lifeline.
If prayer suddenly feels impossible or futile after being meaningful before, consider that you might be in a season of spiritual battle, not a season of God ignoring you.
You’re Measuring Effectiveness by Your Feelings
Just because prayer doesn’t feel effective doesn’t mean it isn’t working. Sometimes God is moving powerfully in response to your prayers, but you can’t sense it because your emotions, circumstances, or exhaustion are blocking your ability to perceive it.
When prayer feels pointless, it’s often your feelings lying to you, not God being absent.
You’re Receiving an Answer You Don’t Want
Sometimes prayer feels pointless because God is actually answering, He’s just saying “no” or “not that” or “I have something different in mind.” We don’t like those answers, so we keep asking, keep begging, keep pleading, interpreting His clear answer as Him not responding at all.
He’s responding. You just don’t like the response. And that’s one of the hardest prayers to navigate.
(If you’re in a broader season where God feels completely absent, not just silent in specific prayers, my post on What to Do When God Feels Distant addresses that deeper struggle.)
Change What You’re Expecting
One of the most important shifts you can make when prayer feels pointless is adjusting what you’re expecting from prayer in the first place.
Prayer isn’t a vending machine where you insert requests and God dispenses results. Prayer is relationship. And like any relationship, there are seasons of easy connection and seasons of painful silence, times when you see immediate fruit and times when you wonder if anything you’re doing matters at all.
Here’s what prayer actually is:
- Communication with God, not just requests to God
- A practice of aligning your heart with His will
- A way of staying connected even when you don’t see results
- An act of trust that He’s working even when you can’t see it
- A spiritual discipline that shapes you whether or not you get what you asked for
When you release the expectation that prayer should always produce immediate visible results, you can keep praying even when nothing seems to be happening.
Ask yourself:
- Am I praying to get what I want, or to connect with who God is?
- Am I willing to keep praying even if the answer is “no” or “wait”?
- Can I trust that God is at work even when prayer feels pointless?
Changing your expectations doesn’t mean giving up hope for answers. It means building a prayer life that can survive disappointment, delay, and silence.
When Prayer Feels Pointless: Pray Anyway
This is the simplest and hardest advice I can give you: when prayer feels pointless, pray anyway.
I know it feels futile. I know you’re exhausted. I know showing up one more time with nothing to show for it feels like banging your head against a wall. But the times when prayer feels most empty are often the times when continuing to pray is most critical for your faith.
Here’s why praying when it feels pointless matters:
It Builds Faithfulness Over Feelings
When you pray even though you don’t want to, even though you don’t see results, you’re training yourself to be faithful regardless of outcomes. You’re building spiritual resilience that will carry you through every future season of doubt and difficulty.
It Keeps the Door Open
The moment you stop praying is the moment you close the door on God being able to work in that area. When you keep praying, even when it feels pointless, you’re keeping the conversation open for God to move in His timing.
It Changes You (Even When Circumstances Don’t Change)
Even when prayer doesn’t seem to change your situation, it changes you. It softens your heart. It keeps you dependent on God. It reminds you that you need Him. That internal transformation is often more valuable than getting exactly what you asked for.
Do this:
- Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and praying even when you don’t feel like it
- Say short prayers throughout the day instead of forcing long sessions
- Pray out loud so you stay focused and engaged
- Use written prayers or Scripture when you don’t have your own words
You’re not trying to manufacture results or feelings. You’re choosing faithfulness over what you feel. And that choice builds unshakable faith.
(If you need help building consistent spiritual habits when everything feels hard, my post on 5 Bible Study Tips for Beginners includes strategies for showing up even when you don’t want to.)
When Prayer Feels Pointless: Be Brutally Honest With God
One of the biggest mistakes people make when prayer feels pointless is pretending they’re fine when they’re absolutely not.
Stop performing for God. Start being real with God.
God already knows you’re frustrated. He already knows you’re questioning whether prayer does anything at all. He already knows you’re angry, confused, or ready to quit. Pretending otherwise doesn’t bring you closer to Him, honesty does.
Pour out your actual feelings in prayer:
- “God, this feels completely pointless and I don’t know why I’m still doing it.”
- “I don’t understand why nothing is changing no matter how much I pray.”
- “I’m angry that I keep showing up and nothing happens.”
- “I feel like I’m wasting my breath and I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”
This isn’t disrespectful, it’s intimate. It’s the kind of prayer that breaks through religious performance and gets to the heart of real relationship.
Look at how the psalmists prayed:
- “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1)
- “Why do you hide your face and forget our misery?” (Psalm 44:24)
- “I cry out to you, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me” (Job 30:20)
God included these raw, desperate, frustrated prayers in Scripture. He’s not offended by your honesty, He’s inviting it.
Get a journal and write out your honest prayers. Don’t edit yourself. Don’t try to sound spiritual. Just tell God exactly what you’re feeling, even if it’s messy and angry and full of doubt.
Pray Scripture When Prayer Feels Pointless and You Have No Words
When you don’t know what to pray anymore, when your own words have dried up and prayer feels pointless, let the Bible pray for you.
The Psalms especially are full of prayers from people who felt exactly what you’re feeling—unheard, forgotten, desperate, exhausted. When you can’t find your own words, borrow theirs.
Try praying these Psalms out loud when prayer feels pointless:
- Psalm 13 – “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
- Psalm 22 – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me?”
- Psalm 42 – “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?”
- Psalm 77 – “Will the Lord reject forever? Has his unfailing love vanished?”
- Psalm 88 – The darkest psalm, ending without resolution or hope
These aren’t pretty prayers. They’re raw cries from people in the pit who felt like their prayers were bouncing off the ceiling. And God preserved them in Scripture for you to use when you’re in that same pit.
You can also pray other Scripture:
- Pray Jesus’ prayers from the Gospels
- Pray Paul’s prayers for the churches (Ephesians 1, Philippians 1, Colossians 1)
- Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, phrase by phrase, letting each line sink in
When your own words dry up and prayer feels pointless, Scripture gives you language to keep talking to God. And often, praying God’s own words back to Him shifts something in your heart even when circumstances don’t change.
When Prayer Feels Pointless: Add Action to Your Prayers
Sometimes when prayer feels completely ineffective, adding obedient action to your prayers helps you feel less stuck and more engaged.
Prayer isn’t meant to be passive, it’s meant to partner with God’s work. When you combine prayer with obedience, with service, with tangible steps of faith, you often start to see God moving in ways you completely missed when you were only praying and waiting.
Here’s what this looks like:
Pray and Then Do What You Can Do
If you’re praying for a job, also update your resume and apply. If you’re praying for healing in a relationship, also initiate the hard conversation. If you’re praying for financial breakthrough, also make a budget and look for opportunities.
God often answers prayers through the actions He prompts you to take, not through dramatic interventions that require zero effort on your part.
Pray for Others While Waiting for Your Own Answers
When prayer feels pointless for your own situation, pray for someone else. Intercession shifts your focus off your unanswered prayers and reminds you that God is at work even when you can’t see it in your own circumstances.
Serve Someone While You’re Waiting
Sometimes you encounter God’s presence most powerfully when you’re being His hands and feet to someone else. Volunteer. Help a neighbor. Show up for someone struggling. Often, serving others while you wait for your own breakthrough keeps your faith alive when prayer feels pointless.
Remember: Pointless Feelings Don’t Equal Pointless Prayers
Here’s the truth you need to hold onto when prayer feels completely futile: just because prayer feels pointless doesn’t mean it is.
“The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry” (Psalm 34:15). God hears every word. He sees every tear. He knows every desperate plea you’ve whispered when you didn’t think anyone was listening.
Your feelings are lying to you. Your prayers are not pointless.
When prayer feels pointless, it doesn’t mean:
- God isn’t hearing you
- Your prayers don’t matter
- You’re doing something wrong
- God doesn’t care
- You should stop praying
When prayer feels pointless, it might mean:
- God’s answer is “wait” and the timing isn’t right yet
- He’s working on something you can’t see
- He’s saying “no” because He has something better
- He’s building your faith to trust Him without needing proof
- You’re in a season of growth that happens in the waiting, not in the getting
The Israelites cried out to God for 400 years in slavery before He answered with Moses. Hannah prayed for years for a child before God gave her Samuel. The prophets foretold the Messiah for centuries before Jesus came.
God heard every single one of those prayers. And He’s hearing yours too, even when it feels pointless.
What If the Answer Really Is “No”?
First I just want to say, If you’re wrestling with unanswered prayer and need theological depth alongside pastoral care, I highly recommend Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?” by Philip Yancey. It honestly addresses the hardest questions about prayer without giving you shallow answers.
One of the hardest parts of navigating seasons when prayer feels pointless is accepting that sometimes God’s answer is actually “no.”
Not “wait.” Not “I have something better.” Just… no.
And that’s devastating.
When you’ve prayed your heart out for something, healing, restoration, provision, reconciliation, and God says no, it can feel like betrayal. It can make you question whether prayer works at all, whether God is good, whether your faith means anything.
I don’t have a neat answer for this. I can’t explain why God says no to some prayers and yes to others. I can’t tell you why He heals some people and not others, why He intervenes in some situations and seems to stand back in others.
What I can tell you is this: God’s “no” doesn’t mean He doesn’t love you. It doesn’t mean your prayer was pointless or that you didn’t pray hard enough or with enough faith.
Sometimes God says no because He sees the whole picture and knows that what you’re asking for isn’t what you actually need. Sometimes He says no to protect you from something you can’t see. Sometimes He says no for reasons you won’t understand until heaven.
And sometimes, honestly, you just have to live in the tension of not knowing why.
When God’s answer seems to be “no,” you have a choice:
- Will you keep praying anyway?
- Will you trust His character even when you don’t understand His answer?
- Will you let the “no” drive you away from Him or deeper into Him?
This is where real faith is forged, not in the easy yeses, but in the painful nos that you choose to trust anyway.
Keep Praying: Your Prayers Are Never Pointless
Every prayer you pray is laying a foundation. Every conversation with God, even the ones that feel one-side is building relationship. Every time you show up to pray when it feels completely futile, you’re declaring that your faith is bigger than your feelings.
Prayer changes things. But more importantly, prayer changes you. And that transformation is often more valuable than getting the specific answer you wanted in the specific timeframe you demanded.
Keep praying when:
- It feels pointless
- You don’t see results
- You’re tired of asking
- You’re angry at the silence
- Nothing seems to be changing
- You want to give up
Keep praying. Keep showing up. Keep being honest. Keep trusting that God is working even when you can’t see it or feel it.
The breakthrough you’re praying for might be around the corner. Or it might be years away. Or it might look completely different than what you’re asking for.
But your prayers are not pointless. God is listening. And the fact that you keep showing up to talk to Him when it feels futile? That’s faith. Real, gritty, unshakable faith.
And that’s the kind of faith that changes everything.
Next: If you need encouragement that God is still at work even when you can’t see it or feel it, read my next post: Signs God is Working Even When You Can’t See It.