What to Do When Your Prayers Feel Rote

Daily Devotions for Busy Lives · Aug 24, 2026 · 6m · transcript

Every praying Christian goes through stretches where the words feel automatic. You bow your head, and the same phrases come out that always come out, the ones you learned years ago and reach for at meals and at bedtime. Somewhere along the way you stopped hearing them, and you can't remember the last time one of those prayers meant something as you said it. It can start to feel fake, like you're reciting lines to an audience of one.

This episode opens with a small experiment you can try. Pick a simple word, say "door," and repeat it out loud, past 20, past 30 times. Somewhere in there the…