A prayer for discouragement
The prayer
Lord, I have not given up, but today I thought about giving up — and that frightened me.
I have been doing the same thing for so long without seeing any difference at all. If it is bearing fruit where I cannot see, tell me. And if it is not, give me the nerve to change.
I am not asking for enthusiasm. I am asking for stubbornness.
Tomorrow morning, get me up again. Amen.
In short
This is a prayer for the middle of something long, when the willingness runs out before the deadline does. It was written for this site and it is signed. It does not ask for enthusiasm, which nobody can order: it asks for steadiness, and for the clarity to tell persisting from merely being stuck.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 5 min read
When to pray it
In the middle of something long — a course of treatment, a degree, a difficult marriage, a work routine — when the willingness ran out long before the finish line.
Start with a distinction that protects you in both directions. Discouragement is not depression. Calling depression discouragement makes somebody postpone treatment for months believing it is only a lack of willpower; calling discouragement depression sends somebody looking for medication for ordinary tiredness. The rough working test helps: discouragement has an object and lifts when the subject changes. If the flatness covers everything, if it has lasted weeks, if sleep and appetite have shifted, that is something else and it deserves a conversation with a professional.
The prayer asks for stubbornness rather than enthusiasm, and the choice is technical before it is poetic. Enthusiasm is a feeling, and feelings cannot be ordered — asking for one just opens another front of frustration. Steadiness is behaviour, and behaviour is the only thing still available when the willingness is not. Someone who keeps going without wanting to is not doing less than someone who keeps going gladly; they are doing more.
There is a request buried in the middle of the text that usually goes unnoticed, and it is the most important one: the nerve to change, if changing is what this needs. Perseverance is not the same thing as being unable to leave. A prayer that asked only for endurance would push whoever prays it to stay indefinitely inside something that has stopped making sense, and that is not a virtue — it is inertia with a good name. Asking for discernment alongside is what keeps the two apart.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared Written for Faith Flame in 2026
Discouragement is the quietest part of suffering. There is no crisis in it, no diagnosis, nothing to tell anybody: it is the sensation of doing the same thing again and seeing no difference. Nobody asks for help because of it, and that is exactly why it lasts so long.
Scripture records the state in capable and faithful people, which tends to surprise readers expecting heroes. Moses says he cannot carry this people on his own any longer. And David, on a day when his own men were talking about stoning him, is described with a phrase the text never explains: he was strengthened by the Lord his God.
This prayer was written for this site and it is signed. It avoids motivation on purpose. Lines like “God has a plan”, delivered briskly, almost always work as a polite way of closing the conversation, and a discouraged person can tell. What it asks for is far smaller: steadiness for tomorrow morning, and the discernment to notice when steadiness has turned into inertia.
Little-known details
David “was strengthened by the Lord” — and the verb reports something done, not something felt
The renewal promised in 2 Corinthians 4:16 is daily, and that has an awkward implication
What the passages say
6And David was greatly saddened. And the people were willing to stone him, because the soul of every man was bitter over his sons and daughters. But David was strengthened by the Lord his God.
The verse describes the worst possible scenario for a leader and ends with an action rather than a feeling. Notice that there is no sign, no voice and no answer — the text simply records what he did with himself that day.
29It is he who gives strength to the weary, and it is he who increases fortitude and strength in those who are failing.
30Servants will struggle and fail, and young men will fall into infirmity.
31But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will take up wings like eagles. They will run and not struggle. They will walk and not tire.
The passage is remembered for the eagles’ wings and forgotten in its most realistic part: it opens by saying that even young men fail. What is promised is not inexhaustible energy, it is resupply for people who have already run out.
9And so, let us not be deficient in doing good. For in due time, we shall reap without fail.
The harvest is promised on a timetable set by somebody else, not by whoever did the planting. That is what makes the verse usable in the middle of something long: it does not undertake that the result will show up when you want it to.
16For this reason, we are not insufficient. But it is as though our outer man is corrupted, while our inner man is renewed from day to day.
17For though our tribulation is, at the present time, brief and light, it accomplishes in us the weight of a sublime eternal glory, beyond measure.
18And we are contemplating, not the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are temporal, whereas the things that are not seen are eternal.
Paul describes the wearing down on the outside and the renewal on the inside happening at the same time, not one after the other. It is the most honest account of perseverance Scripture offers: nothing suggests the exhaustion stopped while it was going on.