Should we pray aloud or silently?

Question 11053.

Praying aloud feels natural to some believers and excruciating to others, and I have met plenty of Christians who quietly assume they are doing it wrong whichever way they lean. Somebody who was raised in a tradition of audible prayer can feel that silent prayer is half hearted, while somebody who prays best in the quiet of their own head can feel exposed the moment a room falls silent and eyes turn towards them.

The good news is that Scripture models both, freely and without apology, and it never once ranks them. What it does care about is the heart behind the words, and that concern cuts across the whole question of volume.

Scripture is full of audible prayer

The Psalms are shot through with the language of crying out. David speaks of lifting his voice, of calling aloud, of his groaning being heard. Whole chapters of the Old Testament record prayers that were plainly spoken in the hearing of others, and Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple was delivered before the entire assembly.

In the New Testament, Jesus prays out loud at the tomb of Lazarus and says openly that he does so for the sake of the crowd standing there, so that they might believe. The early church in Acts prays audibly together, and when the building shakes it is after they have lifted their voices together to God.

So praying aloud has an unimpeachable pedigree. It is the ordinary language of corporate worship, and any church that never hears its members pray audibly has lost something the New Testament plainly assumes. You can read the account of that shared prayer at Acts 4:24 to 31.

Scripture is equally full of silent prayer

Then there is Hannah. She stood in the house of the LORD and prayed so quietly that only her lips moved, and the priest Eli concluded she was drunk. She was not. She was pouring out her soul before the LORD, and her prayer was heard and granted. The account is at 1 Samuel 1:13.

Nehemiah prayed silently in the middle of a conversation with the king of Persia, in the split second between being asked a question and answering it. Nobody heard a word of it, and the outcome reshaped a city’s walls.

Jesus also instructed his disciples to go into their room, shut the door, and pray to their Father who is in secret. That is not a prohibition on praying aloud. It is a warning against praying for the benefit of an audience, and a man alone behind a closed door may pray out loud or in silence as he pleases.

The heart is what God actually reads

Since God knows our thoughts before we form them, no prayer needs to be spoken for him to receive it. He is not waiting on sound waves. The whole of Psalm 139:4 turns on this, that before a word is on our tongue the LORD knows it altogether.

That single truth settles the anxiety for a great many people. If you have ever worried that a prayer thought and not spoken somehow did not count, you can lay that down. It counted the moment your heart turned towards him.

It also removes any grounds for spiritual snobbery in the other direction. The believer who prays fluently and audibly is not thereby closer to God than the believer who cannot get the words out. Fluency is a gift of temperament and practice, not a measure of grace.

There is a pastoral edge to this that matters a great deal. I have sat with believers so ill, or so exhausted, or so overwhelmed by grief that speech was beyond them. They could not have prayed aloud if their lives depended on it, and they were terrified that this meant they had lost contact with God. They had not. The groan of a heart that cannot form a sentence is heard as clearly as the finest public prayer ever offered.

Why praying aloud still helps us

Having said that, I would encourage most Christians to do more of it rather than less, and the reason is practical rather than theological. Silent prayer wanders. Anyone who has knelt down to pray and surfaced eleven minutes later having mentally reorganised the garage knows exactly what I mean.

Speaking harnesses the mind. It forces you to finish sentences, to be specific, to notice when you are asking for something you had not really thought through. Praying aloud when you are on your own, even in a whisper, has a discipline to it that thinking prayers rarely achieves.

There is a further benefit. Praying aloud lets you hear your own theology. Sometimes a request comes out of your mouth and you realise immediately that you do not actually believe what you have just said, or that you have been treating God as a resource rather than a Father. That is a useful thing to discover.

Praying aloud with other people

Corporate prayer requires audible prayer by definition, because we cannot say amen to something we did not hear. Paul makes exactly this point about the gathered church, that a person cannot say amen to your thanksgiving if they do not know what you are saying.

This is where nerves bite hardest. Many believers dread being asked to pray in a group, and I want to say plainly that the fear is common and is not a sin. It usually comes from a fear of people rather than a lack of love for God, which is worth naming honestly because it is the fear of people that needs dealing with.

My advice to the nervous is to pray short. Two sentences prayed sincerely are worth more to a prayer meeting than four minutes of eloquence, and nobody in the room is grading you. If you are still finding it hard, begin by praying aloud when you are alone in the car, where the only listener is God and the traffic.

Where posture and volume fit in

Scripture records prayer standing, kneeling, lying face down, sitting, walking, and with hands lifted. There is no prescribed posture and no prescribed volume, which tells us God is remarkably relaxed about the mechanics. What he is not relaxed about is pretence.

Volume is not fervency either. Elijah’s contest on Carmel is instructive here, because the prophets of Baal shouted themselves hoarse and cut themselves, and nothing happened. Elijah prayed a short and measured prayer and fire fell. Noise is not the currency of heaven.

So choose whatever helps you actually pray. If praying aloud keeps you present, do that. If the quiet is where your heart opens, do that. I have written about the related question of how long we should pray, and the same principle applies to both.

It is also worth saying that the two are not rivals within a single sitting. Most of my own praying moves between the two without any conscious decision, a spoken sentence here, a long silence there, then a word again. Treating praying aloud and silent prayer as competing methods is a category mistake. They are two settings on the same instrument.

A word about praying in the Spirit

Some readers will be wondering where praying in the Spirit fits, particularly those from continuationist backgrounds. I hold that the gifts remain, and I would not want to flatten what Scripture says, but praying in the Spirit in Ephesians is far broader than any one manifestation.

It describes praying in dependence on the Spirit’s help and in line with his purposes, whether that prayer is loud or silent, in a meeting or in a hospital corridor at three in the morning. I have set this out more fully in what praying in the Spirit means.

Whatever your position on the gifts, that dependence is not optional. Left to ourselves we do not know what to pray for as we ought, and the Spirit’s help is given to the fluent and the tongue tied alike.

So, now what?

Try praying aloud tomorrow morning when you are on your own, even if it feels self conscious at first. Give it a fortnight before you judge it. Most people find that the wandering mind settles considerably once the mouth is engaged, and that their requests become sharper and more honest.

If you are part of a church where prayer meetings happen, go, and be willing to pray two sentences. The reason many prayer meetings are dominated by three or four voices is not that everyone else has nothing to say. It is that nobody told them a short prayer is a real prayer.

And stop grading yourself. Your Father is not comparing your praying to anyone else’s. What would change in your walk with him if you simply talked to him tomorrow, out loud, in your own ordinary words?

“But Hannah answered, No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD.”

1 Samuel 1:15, ESV