When I pray it feels like talking to the ceiling, like nobody is there and nobody cares. How do I keep doing it with that feeling?

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.”

David writes as someone crying out day and night without relief, and the psalm opens with abandonment rather than trust. Israel sang it corporately in worship, and Jesus quoted its first line from the cross. That single fact reframes unanswered prayer: the words you would be embarrassed to pray were on his lips at the worst moment in history.

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Paul is writing about a creation in labor and believers who genuinely do not know what to ask for. His picture of prayer assumes incompetence rather than eloquence. The Spirit is described as carrying what you cannot put into words, which means the weight of a prayer does not rest on your ability to feel it or phrase it well.