Prayer and helplessness are inseparable.  Only he who is helpless can truly pray.

 

Listen to this, you who are often so helpless that you do not know what to do.  At times you do not even know how to pray.  Your mind seems full of sin and impurity.  Your mind is preoccupied with what the Bible calls the world.  God and eternal and holy things seem so distant and foreign to you that you feel that you add sin to sin by desiring to approach God in such a state of mind.  Now and then you must ask yourself the question, "Do I really desire to be set free from the lukewarmness of my heart and my worldly life?  Is not my Christian life always lukewarm and half-hearted for the simple reason that deep down in my heart I desire it that way?"

 

Thus an honest soul struggles against the dishonesty of his own being.  He feels himself so helplessly lost that his prayers freeze on his very lips.

 

Listen, my friend!  Your helplessness is your best prayer.  It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas.  he hears it from the very moment that you are seized with helplessness, and He becomes actively engaged at once in hearing and answering the prayer of your helplessness.

 

(Ole Hallesby)