What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
There is a particular kind of stuck where you cannot see the next step. You feel bound. You don't know where to turn, you don't know what action to take, and you don't even know where to start. The question pressing on you is honest and heavy: what do you do when you don't know what to do?
Two men faced that question in a place far worse than most of us will ever see. In Acts 16, Paul and Silas were living on mission, proclaiming the word of the Lord, and it landed them in chains. Not a comfortable cell, but the innermost dungeon of a Roman prison, with fetters locked around their ankles. They were seemingly not hurting anyone, and still they ended up bound.
Why Paul and Silas Started With Prayer at Midnight
Here is what stands out about the story. Paul and Silas start at midnight. They do not begin with a plan to escape or a strategy to argue their case. They begin by crying out to God, singing hymns to Him, praying, and lifting up His name. Underneath the worship is a settled confidence that no matter what comes their way, God is sovereign in this. He is going to sustain them. He is going to protect them. He might even free them.
That instinct did not come from nowhere. Jesus taught this kind of dependence to His disciples again and again, because prayer is integral to the life of a believer. The world will put you in situations designed to make you stop being who God has called you to be, and prayer is how you hold your ground. In Luke 18:1, Jesus told His disciples a parable to teach them that they should always pray and never give up.
It helps to be honest about where we live. Many of us are free to worship, and that freedom is worth celebrating. Yet even in places of freedom, people face pressure to stay quiet about their faith, to guard what they say and do not say. In other parts of the world, following Jesus still brings real persecution. A precarious situation is not a possibility reserved for the first century.
The rest of the New Testament keeps returning to the same point. Paul writes in Philippians 4:6-7 that in every situation, by prayer and petition, we are to make our requests known to God, and the peace that passes understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. In Romans 12:12 he urges us to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 the instruction is just two words: pray continually.
What Does the Bible Say About Crying Out to God?
When you read Scripture as a whole, a pattern begins to emerge and repeat. The people of God cry out to Him, and He hears them. He delivers them. He frees them. It happens over and over.
Consider Exodus 2:23-25. Years passed, the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites kept groaning under the slavery of the Egyptians. They cried out to the Lord for help, and their cry rose up to God. He heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He looked down on the people of Israel, and He knew it was time to act.
The same thing happens in Judges 3:9 and Judges 3:15. The people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and He raised up deliverers, Othniel and Ehud, in response to their cry. The psalmist gathers the whole pattern into a single refrain. Four times in Psalm 107, at verses 6, 13, 19, and 28, the words repeat: they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.
The Pattern Holds, Even When We Are the Ones Who Ran
Look closely and the shape of it becomes clear. There is sin among the people, it leads to oppression and some form of chains or slavery, they cry out to the Lord, and He delivers them. That cycle repeats far beyond Israel.
Take Jonah. God invited him to live on mission, to go to Nineveh and speak the gospel to the people there, and Jonah wanted no part of it. He ran the opposite direction. So God sent a great, torrential storm against the boat he was on, and the men aboard realized Jonah was the problem. At his own request, they threw him overboard, and a great fish swallowed him. From inside that fish, in Jonah 2, he prayed to the Lord his God, crying out from the belly of the fish: I called to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me. Then, in Jonah 2:10, the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.
That is worth sitting with, because it shows the pattern working from both directions. Sometimes we end up bound because we are not following God, like Jonah running from his calling. Sometimes we end up bound precisely because we are following Him, like Paul and Silas singing in a dungeon for preaching the gospel. In either case, the response is the same. You cry out to God.
Does God Really Answer When We Cry Out?
The Gospels are full of people who found out. Blind Bartimaeus cried out, and Jesus restored his sight. Peter, walking on the water, began to sink, cried out to Jesus, and Jesus reached out and saved him from going under. The thief on the cross turned to Jesus and asked to be remembered, and Jesus told him that today he would be with Him in Paradise.
The invitation runs all the way through. Romans 10:13 promises that whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. In Jeremiah 33:3 God says, call to Me, cry out to Me, and I will answer you and show you great and hidden things that you have not known.
Why does this pattern show up so many times, in so many different stories? Because it reveals the character and heart of God, His grace, intentionality, mercy, and love. The repetition is not filler. It is God making sure we do not miss who He is.
Where to Turn When You Don't Know What to Do
So we come back to the question we started with. When you are seemingly bound, when you are imprisoned by your circumstances, even in a figurative sense, when you don't know where to turn or what step to take, what do you do when you don't know what to do?
You cry out to God. You pray. That is the answer written across the whole of Scripture, from the Israelites groaning in Egypt to Paul and Silas singing at midnight. God hears. He delivers. And the same God who met all of them is ready to meet you, right where you are, the moment you call on His name.
