#STRask - If I’m Uncomfortable with People Seeing Me Pray, Does That Mean I’m Ashamed?

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Questions about whether feeling uncomfortable when people see you pray means you’re ashamed, and advice for a single person who feels like church is pointless since it’s set up for couples and families.   I have no problem talking to people about Jesus and my faith, but I am very uncomfortable with people seeing me pray. Is that wrong, and does it mean I am ashamed? Church seems pointless to me since it’s all set up for couples and families and I don’t have any of that. Do you have any advice for me?

Welcome back to hashtag SDR Ask and hello, Greg. Today we're starting with a question from Jennifer. I have no problem talking to people about Jesus and talking about my faith, but I am very uncomfortable with people seeing me pray. It feels like a very personal thing to me. Is that wrong? Does that mean that I am ashamed? Well, you're the best one to answer the question, Jennifer, if you're ashamed. I don't, think that you would be. You're certainly vocal with other people about your conviction, so I wouldn't think that. Prayer is personal, and there, I mean, Christians pray publicly.

That's a matter of course, and there's a number of reasons for that. One of the reasons is that corporate prayer has a certain energy about it, a certain integrity about it, and it. When I pray with other people, I'm forced to pray more intelligibly. And that's one thing. And praying intelligibly is important. And there just seems to be, you know, I think group prayer has a certain power to it. There's a synergistic power to it. It's, I don't know, the verse people often use mistakenly as wherever two or three are gathered, there I am in your midst, whatever, that's actually not about prayer. It's about church discipline. But nevertheless, apart from that verse, I think there is a synergy involved when people pray together. Now,

if someone is uncomfortable praying out loud for whatever reason, I don't think that's a vice. It certainly doesn't mean you're ashamed, I don't think, but it does seem to be dispositional. It may be that you just feel more comfortable with this intimate element praying by yourself. I don't see any liability to that. If you never prayed with anybody ever, your family members, your spouse, your people that needed prayer for something, can I pray for you for this kind of thing, kind of situation, put your hand on their shoulder and pray, well, that would be a little lot if you never did that. And it might be that you have to kind of push the envelope just a little bit and get out of your comfort zone.

But I don't see any liability in being more private about one's prayer. Do you, Amy? I don't know. Well, it's unclear to me if she is talking about praying in front of people in the sense that you're praying out loud with people. or if you are afraid that say you're out in a public place and you bow your head and you pray and people see you pray. Yeah. Do those two things have different answers from you or do you have different thoughts on them? Yeah, I have a little different thought.

I have, and I've talked about this on my own show, and I think I wrote a piece on it once too, that I make it a point to visibly give thanks for every meal, even in public, even when, in public, even when I'm alone. I want people to see me bow my head and give thanks to God. So in a certain sense, I could say thank you inside my heart, which I do a lot. Sometimes almost with every bite, depending on what I'm eating. But I'll say, oh, thank you, Lord. That's great.

But I make a visible display of it for a very particular reason. For one, I want to thank God. Okay. You could do that without any visible display. but if I make a point of bowing my head and folding my hands and closing my eyes and giving thanks, then there's a little more substance to it than if I'm just firing off a thank you in my head. The second thing is that I want people to see that I'm not ashamed to give thanks to God before in public, in appropriate ways, right?

and the third thing is that I wanted to have a salutary effect on people. I want, and this has happened before, I can think once in the Delta Club in Minneapolis, and another time in the Mexican restaurant at Thousand Oaks that I said, I was praying, and someone came up to me and talked to me, a believer in Minneapolis, and then the Mexican waiter took a knee next to the table, and he said, can you teach me how to do that? Because I want to do that with my own family. And so I said, yeah, it's not hard.

And I talked to him a little bit. But see, I'm having a salutary effect on somebody else. So there are very particular reasons that I pray visibly in public at appropriate times, like a meal time. There was something happened a couple weeks ago where somebody came up to me and said, are you okay? I was just sitting there at my head bowed. But he was probably a Christian. Are you okay? I said, I'm just praying. So, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just praying. So, because there'll be a times, occasions during the day, all kinds of circumstances where you're going to just bow your head

and talk to God. I think that's appropriate. And if you don't want to look like your grandstanding or something, well, then you might do it less obviously. But that's not because of being ashamed. It's just you don't want to leave a bad impression. So sometimes I'm going to look, I'm going to pray visibly because I want to leave a good impression. And other times I'm going to pray more privately because I don't want to leave a bad impression given the nature of the circumstances. And someone's just got to judge that. Now, some people, and maybe Jennifer, just are not comfortable ever praying in public. And I guess in a situation like that, especially if you were Christians and some people are thinking, well, I can't pray as fancy as some other more

articulate person and they're a little self-conscious about that. Okay. I think that maybe you should push the envelope a little bit. I think I agree with that. Greg, just to answer those two questions myself a little bit differently. I think if I suspect she, since she said people seeing me pray, I suspect she's talking about bearing her head somewhere and praying, or maybe even when she's in a group of people bearing her head and praying when other people can see. I think any time we step out and we kind of declare ourselves for Christ in different ways, it's hard, but I think it gets easier. So she says she has no problem talking to people about her faith. And maybe the first time she did that, it wasn't as easy as it got later on as she got more practice.

Because it is true. I think when you pray in public and people see you praying, not out loud, but just quietly, I think it does draw attention to yourself in a different sort of way than if you're already in a conversation and it comes up and you're talking about it. it. Because I think people can see that you really mean it. It's not just an academic exercise. They're seeing that you are actually talking to God right there. And I think there is something very vulnerable about that. And I think it does kind of witness to God in a different way than if you're just talking about him. You know, we were just talking earlier before the show about Guillainon, the former French atheist, now theologian. He's still French, but... He's still French, but he's no longer...

Not an atheist. The French, former atheist, the Parisian, now New Yorker. But, who... Stan, the reason, had a role in his life and his conversion. So he told me about that when I first met him. It was great. But now a very significant theologian, and one of the things that made a big difference to him in his own testimony is that he actually had his eyes on a Christian gal,

and she wasn't interested in him because he was a non-believer, so he figured if he could disabuse her of her Christianity, he'd have a better chance with her. And so he went to church. But he didn't want anybody to see him going to church, you know. So he's just trying to figure this stuff out. But one of the things that impressed him when he went to the service was like, was watching people pray and engage personally in the whole spiritual process of the worship.

because he said, these people really believe they're talking to somebody. And instead of thinking they were nuts, he was actually impressed with that. And then when he went to the New Testament and started reading that, he found something entirely different than what he expected, you know. So that's all part of his testimony. So that goes to the point you're making that there is a certain genuine and appropriate piety. that is appealing and attractive that is manifest when somebody is praying quietly in public. So I would say it's not a surprise that doing something that vulnerable would make you a little bit uncomfortable. So that's why I would encourage you to do it anyway.

And I think it will get easier. And I think you'll find out that maybe it's not as inviting to people talking. to you or I don't know what you're exactly afraid of. But that's one thing you might do is really think about what is it I'm afraid will happen. And think very specifically about are you afraid that people will judge you in certain ways? Because if that is the case, then I think it will be really helpful to do it anyway and to fight back against that. Because we all have that impulse from now and then that we don't want to declare ourselves. as Christians, if we're in a hostile environment or we don't want to invite any sort of conversation

or whatever it is, we all get in those positions every once in a while. So I think we need to fight it. And I think you need to fight it. And I think that would be helpful to you. Now, if you were talking about praying out loud in a group, I think you also, I think it would also be a good idea to find out what it is you're worried about. I think that is a very vulnerable thing to do because you are revealing things about yourself as you're praying to the people around you. So this might be more of a matter of just being an introvert or whatever it is. But I think we can all get better at doing this. So I would find ways to practice in very non-judgmental groups that don't expect you to pray perfectly and just be very simple.

That's fine. Well, maybe you recall, now it's been so many years ago during Melinda's time when we were in before COVID, so we weren't all spread out. We got split up by COVID, and we never got back together as what it bounded to, but now people who work for us live in other states and other countries. So, but we used to sit at this table out here, and then we'd all go around the circle and pray. You know, we'd have the needs that we talk about, whatever. Then we would, every single person took a turn. So even the people that were a little more reticent would have a role to play. Maybe they didn't pray very long.

They prayed simple prayers. But I think it was good for everyone in the context of our body there to express themselves in prayer as part of our community. So I don't necessarily think it's a terrible sign that you would not want to do either of these things. But I do think it would be good if you start to stretch yourselves just a little bit. and try and put yourself in a position where you're uncomfortable a little bit, because that's how we grow. And I think it's a valuable thing to do. You know, I just had this image in my mind. I fly through Minneapolis a lot.

In fact, I'll be flying through there tomorrow. And I was at the end of Terminal G, right there by the doors that go up to the club. And there in a corner was a Muslim man during prayer time, had unrolled his map. and he must have been facing properly east, I guess, but there was a wall in front of him, and he was just quietly doing his prayer time and going through that ritual. And I had mixed feelings about that. One was I was concerned and sorry for his misdirected affections, spiritual affections. But I also was impressed that he would,

be willing to do that in public, off to the corner, whatever, because it showed his, it was a public display of his commitment and his piety to the God of his faith. And I think that it didn't look, even though I know better about these details, I'm not a pluralist, obviously, I was still touched by that display of piety. And I think that when Christians are in a non-showy, way, in an appropriate way, are expressing a genuine, heartfelt piety in their behavior, and one would be bowing your head in prayer, maybe at meals, for example, then I think that has a salutary effect on other people. They see that. And even if they're thinking, boy, that person's brave, well, that is meaningful. Now, what's important, by the way, if I could just add this, that if you're giving thanks, for a meal. When I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, we had a certain prayer, and it was a road prayer, and we rattled it off so fast, it all sounded like one big noise. Okay, Protestants do that, too. They have certain particular things that they say in a sing-songy kind of way, bless this food to our

body, blah, blah, blah, blah, na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-no-ne-no. In Jesus' name amen, and everybody can eat. But it doesn't often doesn't sound to me like it's a genuine appeal, or it's a genuine Thanksgiving. thank anybody else that way. You wouldn't, somebody did you a favor. You wouldn't kind of rattle off something like that to them. There would be some different way that you'd say it. So my encouragement is if you're going to give thanks in public with other people and you're leading a prayer even at your table, please speak from the heart and not throw in a bunch of, you know, religious noise, because I think that's what it amounts to. Just a thought. And also, I have one last thought, and that is...

Wait, then I'll have another thought. Despite the fact that going back to the praying silently in public, despite the fact that that can be something good even for the people around you, we also shouldn't be doing it for that reason. I think we all know that. I think anyone who is having this issue is not going to be tempted to do that just to impress people. Yeah, well, for clarification then, I give thanks at the table because I, I think. I want to give thanks to God. I do it publicly, invisibly, so that when I do give thanks to God, others can see, and hopefully those two other factors are relevant. Right. So you're not changing your usual practice just because you're in public.

No. That's, yeah. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like Daniel opening up his windows and praying. He wasn't doing, he just was continuing to do what he did. Well, he was doing a little more brashly, you know. He was defying the order. But you're right. It was just his standard method manner, but now he's in the face of the emperor, you know. But he continued to do it even though it was a more difficult situation. Yes, he did. But we all have to work at this.

You know, we all have to deal with this idea that people are watching us and feeling like we're going to be judged or whatever it is. So I'm sympathetic to having to get better at something like that. Yeah. Okay, let's go to a question from Jason. I really do not like going to church. Seems pointless to me, and it's all set up for couples and families. I do not have any of that. Any advice?

Well, I guess I'm a bit mystified here when, Jason, in all fairness, when you say it's pointless. I'm thinking, what do I do at church? I don't get to go to my church very often. I'm almost always in somebody else's church, but I enjoy going to the church. when I do get to go to church. But I don't enjoy it. Let me just think how I want to put this. I go there because there's worship that's corporate,

and that can be a really good experience. It isn't always. And, you know, people who listen to my show know that I'm troubled by a lot of what's very unattractive, so-called Christian worship in churches. It's drudgery sometimes. But nevertheless, sometimes they hit a song, they do it right, and it's elevating. I end up worshiping. So I go to church, even if I'm by myself, in a church that has a lot of families in it,

it isn't like I'm looking for a singles church. Excuse me. Sorry, it isn't like I'm looking for a singles church, and I'm single, so let me go to singles. Oh, you guys are married, man. What I got to do with you, man? You got a bunch of kids. I mean, that's kind of, it just cuts me the wrong way.

You know, church is church. It's a bunch of people that are believers. Some of them have married. Some of them have kids, maybe more than most, but still single people belong there. And when you go, you can worship together, and then somebody teaches from the scripture, which means you are being fed. And then there's a third element. So there's this, maybe a fourth, there's this gathering together with the people.

There's the worship element. There's the being taught element. These are all things that you benefit from, presumably. because what you said, what you said, Jace, was, what's the point? Well, there's three points. And here's one other. And this came from my disciple and his wife when I was just a year or two old in the Lord, and I was under their tutelage, and I said, hey, Sunday came as I don't want to church.

I don't think I'm going to get anything out of it. And they both looked at me, and they said, you don't always go to church to get something. Sometimes you go to church to give something. And that's what it means to be part of the body of Christ. You are going there to give to someone else, an encouragement, a friendly handshake, your presence in some way. And that, you know, I had not considered that in my earliest years as a Christian. And so what's the point? Those are all the points, it seems to me, Jason.

So I'm not, maybe you go to a church where you're not getting fed, where the worship is never any good for you. The teaching is not satisfying or fulfilling, not concrete, not biblical or whatever. And it's mostly a family affair. Well, maybe find a different church. But the problem there is a different one. It is, what's the old solid, quit looking for a perfect church. If you found it, they wouldn't let you join. Because they're perfect, right?

That's the joke. Amy didn't get it. So, maybe she didn't think it was funny. The point is that there are lots of, there are lots of points to go. And I don't, I'm a little bit surprised by the question, the way it's worded. What do you think, Amy? Well, it's, it's something I hear from, because being a single person myself, I understand what he's talking about. it's not necessarily the service as much as it is the fellowship.

Now, I would say when I'm in a church, like I am right now, and I'm involved in that church, there's no problem. But this comes out, this has come out, especially like when I've been looking for a church and I go to a bunch of different churches. So my words are actually more for the people who are married than the single people right now, because I don't know if I have advice for him beyond what you said, which is you still go to church. Yeah, and I was speaking more to the pointless remark as opposed to what you're following up with. So I think what can happen is when people do have families, they can easily start to get very insular, either amongst their own family, just their own family, or with other families. And this kind of happens naturally because as your kids are doing things together, you start

to get the families start to bond together and they start to spend time together. And sometimes it can feel like there's no way into that. So I think if you are married and have a family, I would just try to be aware of the single people around you. because another thing that can happen is besides just being, you know, ending up rotating around the other families, you don't, sometimes people won't even talk to a single person. And I don't understand really what's going on with that unless it's more like if they're not the same sex as you, you feel like maybe you can't start up a conversation with them if you're married and they're not married. I'm not sure what's going on. But I hear about these things from my other single friends, and I have another friend who has stopped going to church

because she feels like she can't find a way into anywhere, into the fellowship. So I hear what he's saying, but I would never, ever, ever stop going. You cannot stop going. We need that fellowship. Even if it's not the experience other people are getting for other various reasons, And maybe it'll take you a longer time to make your way into fellowship and into people's lives because there's just a harder way to get in because you don't have that natural connections through other people having children.

But you can't give up. We're not supposed to give up meeting with the saints. And that fellowship is important. We're part of the body. We are an important part of the body. So we can't give up, even if it's more difficult sometimes, and understandably so. It's just that things naturally work out that people who are in the same situation tend to move towards each other. And when they have classes, it's for people who are married or people who are, you know, have children or whatever it is.

So if you have a church and you don't have fellowship groups that invite everyone, then maybe that's something to consider changing. Yeah, I was just thinking about this. It raises another issue. You said they have classes. And a lot of times the classes are group-oriented. Here's the singles class. Here's the young married's class. Here's the, you know, golden years class.

Here's whatever. And I understand the idea of having age groups like that. But one person made the comment that the only time that we are ever together at church as a family is when we're driving to the church and driving away from the church. Because once they get the church, get to the church, they're busted up in all these little groups. And that concerns me, you know. And sometimes there are, you have corporate worship, and then the young people go to their own particular thing. I'm not a pastor.

I don't know the best way to manage all of that. But I do know that not all churches do that. And some churches, like I think John Noyes' church, everybody's together, you know. And then if you want to have extra stuff, okay, that's in addition to the corporate worship and corporate teaching. And then you might have some special thing for special needs. Or maybe during the week, you know, you go to youth group on a particular night. But when you go to church, you don't go to the youth group church, you go to the church, kind of thing. Anyway, there was just another thought that I had about that.

So I hope that helps, Jason, and there are some thoughts for everyone, no matter where you are, to look out for the other people in the body, bring them into your lives, especially those who might be alone. All right. Thank you so much, Jason and Jennifer. We appreciate hearing from you. Send us your question on STR.org or through X with the hashtag STR Ask. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.