My helpless friend, your helplessness is the most powerful plea which rises up to the tender father-heart of god. You think that everything is closed to you because you cannot pray. My friend, your helplessness is the very essence of prayer.
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.
Helplessness is unquestionably the first and the surest indication of a praying heart. ... Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray.
Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.