Study guide
Scripture is full of people talking to God — bargaining, weeping, confessing, thanking, and praising. This is a curated collection of those prayers, each with a line to help you pray it in your own life.
A prayer for almost every season of the soul — grief and gratitude, fear and repentance, guidance and praise. Each card gives the person who prayed, the passage (tap to read it in the ESV), what the prayer asks, and a line to help you make it your own. Search by name, book, or need.
From the patriarchs to the prophets — the prayers that carried Israel.
Abraham stands before God and bargains for a doomed city, asking mercy for the sake of the few righteous within it.
Pray this when You are interceding for people or a place under judgment, and want to appeal to God’s mercy rather than their deserving.
Sent to find a wife for Isaac, the servant asks God for a specific, unmistakable sign so he will know the right choice.
Pray this when You face a decision and need God to make the way plain.
Afraid of the brother he wronged, Jacob confesses he is unworthy of God’s kindness and holds God to His own promises of protection.
Pray this when You are dreading a hard confrontation or reunion and need to lean on what God has promised.
Moses refuses to go forward without God’s presence and asks to see His glory, longing to truly know the God he serves.
Pray this when You want more of God Himself, not just His help; you refuse to move without His presence.
In bitter grief Hannah pours out her soul for a child, vowing to give the son she asks for back to the Lord.
Pray this when You carry an aching, unanswered longing — infertility, loss, a hope deferred — and need to pour it out honestly.
When God grants her prayer, Hannah exults in the Lord who humbles the proud and lifts the lowly.
Pray this when God has answered a long wait, and you want to give the thanks it deserves.
Told his throne will last forever, David sits before the Lord overwhelmed that God would show such grace to him.
Pray this when You are stunned by an undeserved blessing and want to respond to God’s generosity.
Offered anything he wants, the young king asks not for riches or long life but for an understanding heart to lead God’s people.
Pray this when You’ve been handed responsibility beyond you and need discernment more than success.
Solomon dedicates the temple and pleads that God would hear His people whenever, wherever, they turn back and pray toward Him.
Pray this when You are dedicating a work, a home, or a season to God and asking Him to meet people there.
Facing Assyria’s threats, Hezekiah spreads the enemy’s letter before God and asks for rescue — so that all the earth may know the Lord is God.
Pray this when You face an overwhelming threat and want to lay the very thing you fear before God, for His glory.
Told he will die, Hezekiah turns to the wall, weeps, and asks God to remember his faithful walk; God grants him fifteen more years.
Pray this when You are facing illness or mortality and need to bring your fear and your years honestly to God.
In a single verse Jabez asks God to bless him, enlarge his territory, keep His hand on him, and keep him from harm — and God grants it.
Pray this when You want to ask God, plainly, to bless your work and guard your life.
Surrounded by armies, the king admits he is powerless and does not know what to do — but fixes his eyes on God.
Pray this when You are out of options and don’t know what to do; your only move is to look to God.
Ezra confesses the shared sin of the people, too ashamed to look up, appealing only to God’s grace.
Pray this when You are repenting on behalf of your family, church, or nation for sin you all share.
Nehemiah mourns and fasts over ruined Jerusalem, confesses sin, and asks for success before he approaches the king.
Pray this when You are carrying a heavy burden for a broken situation and are about to make a big ask.
After God answers him out of the whirlwind, Job stops demanding answers and bows before God’s greatness.
Pray this when You have wrestled with God over suffering and are ready to trust Him without the answers you wanted.
David rests in the God who leads, provides, and walks with him even through the valley of the shadow of death.
Pray this when You need comfort and assurance of God’s nearness in fear, grief, or uncertainty.
Broken after his sin, David asks not to be cast away but to be washed clean and given back the joy of salvation.
Pray this when You have failed and need cleansing, mercy, and a restored heart.
Moses contrasts God’s eternity with our brief lives and asks for a heart of wisdom to spend the days we’re given well.
Pray this when You want to live wisely, aware that your time is short and precious.
David marvels that God knows him completely and invites that searching gaze to expose and lead him.
Pray this when You want honest self-examination and to rest in being fully known and still loved.
Downcast and far from God’s house, the psalmist thirsts for God and preaches hope to his own troubled soul.
Pray this when You feel spiritually dry or depressed and need to long your way back toward God.
Sinking and swallowed by his own rebellion, Jonah cries out from the depths, and God hears; salvation belongs to the Lord.
Pray this when You have hit bottom, even by your own fault, and need to cry out from the pit.
Daniel confesses his people’s sin and pleads for mercy on Jerusalem — not because they deserve it, but for the sake of God’s name.
Pray this when You are interceding for your people or nation and appealing to God’s character, not their record.
Though every crop fails and the flocks are gone, the prophet resolves to rejoice in the God of his salvation.
Pray this when You are choosing to trust and even rejoice in God when everything around you is failing.
The prayers of Jesus, His mother, His church, and His apostles.
Jesus gives His disciples a model prayer: hallowing God’s name, seeking His kingdom and will, and asking for bread, forgiveness, and deliverance.
Pray this when You want a trustworthy pattern to shape your daily praying.
In Gethsemane, facing the cross, Jesus asks if the cup might pass, then yields entirely to the Father’s will.
Pray this when You face a path you dread and need to surrender your will to God’s.
Mary magnifies the God who keeps His promises, scatters the proud, and lifts the humble — including her.
Pray this when You want to praise God for His mercy and His faithfulness to His word.
Holding the infant Christ, old Simeon is ready to die in peace, for his eyes have seen God’s salvation.
Pray this when A long-held hope has been fulfilled, or you are facing death with your heart at rest.
Unable even to lift his eyes, the tax collector beats his chest and asks for mercy as a sinner — and goes home justified.
Pray this when You come to God aware of your sin, with nothing to offer but a plea for mercy.
From the cross, Jesus asks the Father to forgive the very people crucifying Him, for they do not know what they do.
Pray this when You are choosing to forgive those who have wronged you, even as it costs you.
On the night He is betrayed, Jesus prays for Himself, for His disciples, and for all who will believe — that they may be one and kept in the Father’s love.
Pray this when You are praying for the unity, protection, and joy of God’s people.
Threatened by the authorities, the believers ask not for safety but for boldness to keep speaking, and the place is shaken.
Pray this when You face opposition for your faith and need courage rather than escape.
As the stones fall, Stephen commits his spirit to Jesus and asks God not to hold the sin against his killers.
Pray this when You are suffering unjustly and want to entrust yourself — and your enemies — to God.
Paul kneels and asks that believers be strengthened within and able to grasp the immeasurable love of Christ.
Pray this when You are praying for real spiritual depth — for yourself or someone you love.
Paul prays that the church’s love would grow with knowledge and discernment, bearing the fruit of righteousness.
Pray this when You are praying for someone’s love and character to mature.
Paul asks that believers be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, walk worthily, bear fruit, and endure with joy.
Pray this when You are praying for guidance, fruitfulness, and staying power — yours or another’s.
The Bible’s last prayer answers Christ’s promise to return with one longing word: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Pray this when You are longing for God to set the world right and want to pray with hope toward His return.
No prayers match that search.