Do I Have to Kneel and Close My Eyes to Pray

Official answer 2026-08-22

There is no prescribed posture, and people in Scripture used nearly all of them. Kneeling, standing, lying face down, sitting, lying on a bed, inside a fish, on a cross, walking along and speaking. One passage even records a woman praying silently in the temple, her lips moving without sound, and a bystander assuming she was drunk — so even speaking aloud is not required. Is there a format Jesus gave? There is one, the Lord Prayer. But note that he introduced it with pray then like this — the tone of a model, not an incantation. What he says immediately before is worth more: do not heap up empty phrases as the pagans do, thinking they will be heard for their many words. In other words, what Scripture worries about is never that you are insufficiently formal, but that you are performing. So the awkwardness you feel may come precisely from assuming there is a correct answer and fearing you will get it wrong. Remove that assumption and it eases considerably. Practically. Use your own words, in the way you normally speak; forcing a prayer voice is where much of the awkwardness comes from. It can be very short. God, I do not know what to do is a complete prayer. It can be written down; some people think in circles when speaking and clearly when writing. And if you truly cannot start, use something ready-made — the Psalms exist to be prayed, and they contain joy, complaint, and anger, with a psalm matching nearly every state a person can be in. One last thing: prayer is not a performance to be passed but speaking to someone who already knows you.