What to pray for

I was praying about various things this morning.

With some things it was easy to know what to ask.

Thus, I am due to give some Bible talks at a camp over the next few days and so I prayed that God would send his Spirit to work through me in faithful preaching and to work in the hearers for effective hearing.

Again I prayed for some unconverted people that I know and the prayer was easy: that God will being them to see their need of Jesus, to know that that can come to Jesus and that he will bring them to Jesus.

Yet again I prayed for my missionary brother: that he will be protected (he is in a dangerous area), that he will be well-used and that he will know contentment and fulfillment.


But then I started praying about some other things. And realised that I didn't know what to ask. And then it occurred to me: I don't need to know what to ask in order to pray about them. For God knows. How easy: I just had to mention the situation and to ask God to do what is best for himself and the people involved.

Why do we make prayer so difficult?