How to Pray During Suffering: A Means of Grace

By Crystal Rose Wilson

This article explores how to pray during suffering and how God strengthens His people through grace in trials.

Much has been rightly said about grace as the unmerited favor of God. This is true and foundational: grace is never earned, never deserved, and always freely given by a holy God to undeserving sinners.

Yet I have often observed that in affirming this essential truth, we sometimes truncate the fullness of grace’s meaning. We declare with conviction that grace is God’s favor toward the guilty, but we may fail to grasp that grace is also God’s power at work within the redeemed. It is not only pardon—it is strength. Grace does not merely open the gates of salvation; it supplies the breath for every step of the pilgrim’s journey.

Scripture speaks of grace as a present and active influence, a divine sufficiency ministered to human weakness. “My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord said to Paul, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

From the very beginning, God has tenderly designed prayer for fragile creatures born of dust—a means of grace, appointed by God, through which the soul is nourished and upheld; it is the sacred avenue by which the strength of heaven is imparted to the weary, the confused, and the afflicted.

Prayer does not arise from the self-reliant will but from a heart made tender by the Spirit’s work. It is both a fruit of grace and a channel through which more grace is given—a provision thoughtfully designed to meet the needs of our frail and dependent condition.

The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, dwells within the believer—not as a distant power to be called down or invited in, but as a near and tender presence. He moves with compassion, gently guiding, strengthening, and interceding for the heart with groanings too deep for words.

Prayer, then, is not a solitary ascent but a trinitarian grace. The Father hears, the Son mediates, and the Spirit intercedes. Even in the dark night of the soul, we are carried by a fellowship stronger than all our fears.

In times of trial, prayer flows from a heart made deeply aware of its need for God. It is the expression of dependence—spoken or unspoken—from those who know they have no strength apart from Him. Affliction teaches the soul to lean wholly on the Lord, and in that posture of humble seeking, God meets His people. He does not stand far off, but ministers to them through His presence—upholding, refining, and renewing them according to His steadfast love.

Many saints have found themselves sitting quietly at the edge of the bed in the early hours, heads bowed, hands folded, too weary to shape their prayers but too dependent to let go. It is there that the Spirit teaches reliance, cultivating a deeper trust in God’s faithful presence. Mercy does not delay; the Lord draws near to those trembling souls, sustaining them with grace that never fails.

How to Pray During Suffering: Trusting God’s Grace in Trials

Suffering does not extinguish prayer—it unveils its necessity with sobering clarity. Trials strip away illusion and expose the fragility of human strength, reminding the soul that it was never meant to stand on its own.

Learning how to pray during suffering is not about perfect words, but about coming honestly before the Lord in weakness and faith.

But affliction, in the hands of a sovereign and compassionate God, becomes fertile ground where deeper roots of faith are pressed into the soil of His promises.

In those sacred hours when speech fails and tears become the soul’s only vocabulary, God is not distant. He bends low to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18) and dwells with the contrite in spirit (Isaiah 57:15). “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).

Prayer draws open the trembling heart to receive that nearness—not as a fleeting comfort, but as the abiding presence of the living God. And in that presence, faith is quietly nourished, hope is awakened, and the soul, though weary, is taught again to rest in the everlasting arms.

Prayer is never wasted in the economy of God. It is through prayer that the soul is refined, not only in what it asks, but in who it becomes. Trials do not obstruct this grace—they drive the soul to it.

The furnace of affliction becomes the holy ground where the believer is weaned from lesser hopes and fastened more firmly to Christ. “He gives power to the faint,” Isaiah declares, “and to him who has no might he increases strength” (Isaiah 40:29). That strength does not arise from within—it descends from above, applied through prayer as the Spirit brings the sufficiency of Christ to bear upon the heart.

This grace does not always relieve the pain, but it never fails to meet it. It teaches the sufferer to echo Paul’s confession: “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The believer does not pray merely for escape, but for endurance, for communion. Even the silence of heaven is not absence—it is a summons to trust. In the long waiting and the unanswered plea, the heart is schooled in the holy art of submission, learning to say with Job, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15).

It is the posture of surrender before the throne of providence, where every tear is known, and no groan escapes His notice. The believer comes in the name of the Son, whose intercession never ceases. Christ, our great High Priest, carries His people on His heart and pleads their cause in heaven. “He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

Our petitions, feeble as they may be, are gathered into His perfect advocacy and presented before the Father clothed in divine merit.

And as prayer leads the sufferer into communion with God, it does not end in silence—it rises into praise. The same heart that groans under the burden of affliction is often the one that sings most earnestly of mercy. For those who have been upheld by grace cannot help but bless the Giver of that grace.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Peter writes, “who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). From the depths of weakness emerges a doxology forged not in ease, but in the crucible of divine faithfulness—a tune the saints have long sung, “Great is Thy faithfulness.”

Indeed, many have learned to say with the psalmist, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). Affliction becomes the instrument of instruction. It teaches us where our strength truly lies.

“Not only that,” Paul writes, “but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:3–5).

The weary saint who waits upon the Lord finds in Him an inheritance that does not fade. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:24–26).

And though strength may falter, the heart confesses: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25–26).

Therefore, let the weary saint continue in prayer—not because strength is found within, but because the God of all grace delights to give it. Let her speak, or weep—He knows.

Let him draw near, not in the confidence of eloquence, but in the assurance that the Spirit intercedes. And let all who suffer remember: prayer is not an escape from trial, but the appointed path through which Christ walks with His people. On that path, they will find Him ever faithful, ever near, and always enough.

So then, “Let us draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

For additional resources on prayer please check out our The Discipline and Power of Prayer series. 

Also check out this episode where I discuss the means of grace at our YouTube.

Stay in your Bibles. Be a Berean. Pray for Discernment.