A prayer

A prayer for love

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Pray this when you long to be loved, when loving someone has become hard, or when you cannot quite believe God loves you. These prayers ask rather than promise. They ask for love received, love given and love that lasts, and they rest on passages that begin with God loving first.

Also in this set: 28 Bible Verses About Love25 Bible Passages About Love25 Bible Quotes About LoveWhat Is the Bible Definition of Love?

Prayers by situation

When you are longing to be loved

God, I want to be loved by someone who chooses me, and some nights the wanting is louder than anything else. I am tired of pretending it does not matter. So I bring you the hope and the ache together. If a partner is part of the life ahead of me, guide me toward someone kind and away from anyone who only looks like an answer. If the waiting goes on, keep it from turning into bitterness or a quiet belief that I am less. Fill the days I actually have with real friendship, and let me be known now, not only later.

When you struggle to believe God loves you

God, I can say that you love me. I have sung it and read it. But it does not seem to reach me, and part of me suspects it is meant for other people, better ones. I am not going to manufacture the feeling. I am asking you to let it land, slowly if it must. Where I learned that love has to be earned, unteach me. Show me that you loved first, before I had done anything to deserve it, and let me rest there instead of auditioning.

When someone you have to love is hard to like

God, there is someone in my life I am supposed to love, and right now I can barely stand to be in the same room. You know who. I am not asking you to make me pretend. I am asking for patience I do not have and a kindness that does not keep score. Help me see them as more than the thing that drives me mad. Show me where to hold a boundary and where to let something go. And where I am the difficult one, show me that too.

When a close relationship has gone quiet

God, we used to talk easily, and now we mostly manage logistics. I am not sure when it changed, and I am afraid to say it out loud in case saying it makes it true. Give me the courage to start an honest conversation, and gentleness in how I start it. Help us notice each other again: small kindnesses, real attention, the questions we stopped asking. I cannot mend this alone, and I do not want to. Draw us both back. If we need help from someone wiser, keep us from being too proud to look for it.

When you have been hurt and are afraid to love again

God, the last time I let someone close it cost me more than I can explain. Now I keep people at arm's length and call it wisdom. Some of it is wisdom. Some of it is fear. Help me tell which is which. Heal what was broken, at the pace healing actually takes. Give me discernment about who is safe, and keep me from either rushing back in or bolting every door. I want a heart that can still be opened, without being careless with it again.

When you are worn out from caring for others

God, I love the people I look after, and I am running on empty. Love has started to feel like a list of tasks nobody notices, and I am ashamed of how resentful I get. Carry some of this with me. Show me what I can set down, who I can ask, and where I am doing more than love actually requires. Let me receive care as well as give it. And let what I do today come from love, not only from obligation, even if it is only a little.

When you want to love the people at home better

God, the people closest to me get the most tired version of me. I am patient with strangers and short with the ones I share a kitchen with. I am sorry. Help me speak gently when I am exhausted, listen before I fix, and say the kind thing I usually only think. Make me quicker to apologise and slower to bring up the old record. Let the people under my roof, whoever they are, feel loved by me in ways they can actually notice.

When someone you love has drifted away

God, someone I love has gone distant. It may be by choice or by circumstance, and I am not sure which. I miss them, and I do not know whether reaching out would help or push them further away. Watch over them where I cannot see. Keep my love from turning into pressure or guilt. If there is a door I should knock on, show me, and give me the right words when I do. If I need to wait, help me wait without closing my heart. Let them know, somehow, that they are still loved.

What are you asking for when you pray for love?

A prayer for love can mean several different requests, and it helps to know which one is yours tonight. Some people are asking to be loved, whether by a partner, by friends, or by anyone who would notice if they went quiet for a week. Some are asking to love better: to be less short with the people at home, to stop keeping score with a difficult relative. And some are asking the hardest version, which is to believe that God loves them at all.

The passages on this page speak to all three, though not in the same way. 1 John 4:19 puts God’s love first, before anyone loves anyone. 1 Corinthians 13 describes what love does, written to a church the same letter rebukes for division. Romans 8 insists that nothing in all creation can separate those who are in Christ Jesus from God’s love. Colossians 3 treats love as something put on, like clothes chosen for the day.

Is it all right to pray for a partner?

Yes. Wanting to be loved is not a spiritual failure, and nothing in these passages asks you to pretend the longing away. What a prayer cannot honestly do is guarantee an outcome. None of these passages promises a particular person or a particular timeline. The prayer for when you are longing to be loved asks for two things side by side: guidance toward someone kind, and protection from bitterness if the waiting continues.

Plenty of people carry this hope alongside a quieter fear that being single says something about their worth. It does not. The love of God in Christ that Romans 8 describes is not reserved for anyone’s relationship status.

What if I do not feel loved by God?

That is more common than people tend to admit. A sense of God’s love is often shaped by how love worked growing up: what it cost, and whether it had to be earned. The order in 1 John 4:19 is worth sitting with. Love starts on God’s side, so it does not wait on you feeling it. You can ask to receive it without first producing a sense of it, and the prayer for when you struggle to believe God loves you is written for exactly that.

If the sense of being unloved is heavy and constant, it is worth talking to a pastor or a counsellor as well. Sometimes it is tied up with depression or old hurt that deserves real care, and praying harder alone is not the whole answer.

What if loving people has worn me out?

For many people, love over time becomes mostly tasks: the remembering, the arranging, the checking in that nobody sees. Exhaustion in that work is not proof that you love too little. Colossians 3 describes love worn alongside patience and humility, among people who bear with one another. Read that way, love is a shared practice, not one person holding everyone up. Asking for help, setting something down and letting yourself be cared for are part of loving well, not a retreat from it.

The passages this rests on

Bible translation

  1. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

    1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ESV

    Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

    1 Corinthians 13:4-7 KJV

    Often read at weddings, these lines were written to a church, in a letter that elsewhere confronts quarrelling among its members, which changes how they read. Love here is described mostly by what it does and declines to do. It is patient and kind, it does not boast or hold on to resentment, and it bears and endures. Little of it is described as a feeling. For anyone praying to love a difficult person better, it reads less like a standard to fail and more like things to ask for.

  2. We love because he first loved us.

    1 John 4:19 ESV

    We love him, because he first loved us.

    1 John 4:19 KJV

    The sentence is short, and the emphasis falls on the order: love begins on God's side, and human love is described as a response to it. Read that way, the capacity to love others is not something you have to generate from nothing before God will notice you. For anyone who finds it hard to believe they are loved, it also suggests where to start. The way in is not trying harder to be lovable. It is receiving what was given first.

  3. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

    Romans 8:38-39 ESV

    For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

    Romans 8:38-39 KJV

    Paul gathers what might come between believers and God's love: death and life, angels and rulers, what is present and what is to come, height and depth. Then, as if to leave nothing out, he adds anything else in all creation. The love he names is God's love in Christ Jesus. For someone who fears they have drifted too far, the passage names that fear and refuses it. It does not say nothing hard will happen. It says none of it separates those in Christ from that love.

  4. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

    Colossians 3:12-14 ESV

    Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.

    Colossians 3:12-14 KJV

    Love is something put on here, like clothing. It is chosen and worn alongside compassion, kindness, humility, patience, bearing with one another and forgiving. It is named as what binds the rest together. Read that way, love is a practice before it is a mood, which helps on days when warm feelings are absent. The people addressed are already called chosen and beloved, so the instruction follows the love rather than being the price of it.

If you pray for love and tomorrow the people in your life are just as difficult, or the loneliness is just as loud, nothing has failed. Much of what Scripture calls love is done on ordinary days without the feeling, and asked for again the next morning. Ask again.

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Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version, which is in the public domain. Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.