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167 | Why Do I Feel Bored in Prayer?
5.6k Plays7 days ago
Why does prayer feel boring sometimes? If you've ever struggled to stay focused during prayer, felt distracted, or wondered why some Christians seem so enriched by prayer while you feel disconnected, this episode will bring clarity and hope. Phylicia explores four key reasons why prayer can feel boring—and what to do about it: spiritual warfare (the enemy doesn't want you praying), overstimulation (we're unused to silence and stillness), request-based vs. relationship-based prayer, and duty-based habits that lack intimacy. Scripture shows us that showing up consistently creates the intimacy we're looking for—discipline leads to joy, and action precedes feeling.
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Transcript
Introduction and Focus on God
00:00:00
Speaker
I just have to think that God deserves this. My little offering to him is just my full attention. If I'm like, well, my to-do list is more important than my phone or Instagram or whatever, i really think we need to reckon with our inability to sit with God.
Verity Podcast and Prayer Series Overview
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome back to Verity Podcast, friends. I'm Felicia Misenheimer, your host, founder of Every Woman a Theologian, the ministry attached to Verity Podcast. We are in the middle of our prayer series, answering questions that you submitted to us about the nature of prayer, how to pray, how to make prayer a habit. And this is Episode 7, Why Am Bored
Boredom in Prayer: Causes and Solutions
00:00:44
Speaker
Prayer? Why Bored by Prayer?
00:00:47
Speaker
If you have ever been bored when praying or struggled to stay awake or struggled to focus during prayer, you are not alone. This is a very common struggle. And I would argue that every Christian walks through a period of boredom in their prayer life at some point in their Christian walk. So why is it that some Christians seem so enriched and empowered by prayer and others seem to be so bored? Well, so often what this reveals is an underlying theology behind prayer. Our understanding of what prayer does, what it's able to do, what God has asked of us really plays a role in how attentive we are to it.
00:01:28
Speaker
If you think about the things that you love to pay attention to, the things that just are riveting and and keep you tuned in, they're things that you find interesting, intriguing, or that you think are extremely beneficial to you, are accomplishing a purpose. But if you feel like something is purposeless, it's it's not that interesting, it's not taking you anywhere or impacting anyone or anything, it's really hard to stay engaged with that practice. especially if it requires discipline and
Spiritual Warfare and Prayer
00:02:00
Speaker
consistency.
00:02:00
Speaker
And so when it comes to our prayer life, not only are all of these things true, we have to remember there's also that that factor of spiritual warfare that is happening when we are praying because we are engaging in the spiritual realm when we pray. So with all of these things in mind, I want to look at some reasons why we struggle with prayer and what we can do to move out of that season into a prayer life that is truly intimacy with God. and And we truly see the Lord working through the things that we are praying for
00:02:39
Speaker
When I was making the notes for this episode, I thought of four main reasons why we feel bored by prayer. This episode in particular is going to have a little less scripture in it because I'm really focusing in on the habit of prayer and the practical implications of this. We still will look at what scripture says about prayer because it does talk about it quite but but Does the Bible just outright say prayer is boring at times?
Historical and Scriptural Prayer Practices
00:03:07
Speaker
No, it doesn't. um In fact, we kind of see the opposite. We see that people show up to prayer consistently, regardless of how they feel. And in the Old Testament times, there were set prayers.
00:03:20
Speaker
times of day for prayer. They were 9 or morning, noon, and then 3 p.m. after noon. And these times of prayer, you could go to the temple or the tabernacle to pray, or you could stop wherever you were and and you could pray. um We see it in the book of Daniel, Daniel is praying morning, noon, and night facing Jerusalem. And this is something that gets him in trouble with the governing leaders because he was told he he couldn't do that. So there are times of prayer that were facilitated by not only by um Jewish worship, but also in the church. So very quickly in the early church and then in the monastic tradition, there were set times of day for prayer.
Sincerity and Discipline in Prayer
00:04:05
Speaker
typically 6 a.m., 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m. And so we'll talk about this when we get to the episode on scripted prayers and why they can be very very beneficial to your prayer life. But I wanted to mention this here because I think that
00:04:22
Speaker
One of the things we struggle with in evangelicalism, so non-liturgical Christianity, especially in America, we think that if I don't feel like praying, then I shouldn't pray because it's not sincere.
00:04:39
Speaker
And this, really, this attitude causes havoc in so many areas of our lives. Somehow we've come to believe that if I don't innately feel like doing something, then it's not actually ah a an honest effort or it's not actually coming from the heart. And what we've forgotten that most people throughout, you know, before,
00:05:06
Speaker
1960 knew is that going through the motions, the discipline of something can lead, often does lead to the enjoyment of that thing.
00:05:18
Speaker
So we don't get the feeling before doing something. We do something And the feeling follows. So this is kind of a framework I want to look at when it comes to prayer, because since many of my listeners are in the evangelical church, the non-liturgical church, I really want to pinpoint this this issue, because I think that this is underlying a lot of our struggle with prayer. We're coming to prayer with this idea that if I don't feel like it, if I don't feel engaged with it, then I just shouldn't do it because I'm insincere towards the Lord. And what the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the early church show us is that people were praying regularly, even if they didn't feel like it.
00:06:03
Speaker
They were praying because it was the right thing to do, because God commanded it, because it was modeled. It was modeled by Jesus. They were doing it because this is what it looks like to be a Christian.
00:06:16
Speaker
A Christian is a praying person. So they would pray the Psalms. They would pray prayers written by other people. They would pray simple prayers. It didn't have to be complicated. It didn't have to be emotion-driven. And because they showed up to it repeatedly, eventually it became a habit.
Addressing Distractions and Modern Challenges
00:06:35
Speaker
And then the natural part, the intimacy part of prayer was born out of that.
00:06:39
Speaker
I think we need to get back to that. And I'm going to, like I said, talk more about that in a future episode about scripted prayers. But I think when it comes to boredom and prayer, the first thing we need to recognize is that if we're coming to prayer, hoping that we'll feel a certain way first, we're coming to prayer with the wrong posture.
00:06:57
Speaker
So one of the four reasons that we feel bored by prayer, theologically, number one, theologically, um because it's spiritual war, the enemy doesn't want you praying. The enemy does not want you engaging with God. He does not want you lifting people up before the Lord. He does not want you lifting up your anxieties to the Lord. He just doesn't want you to pray. So there is an element of spiritual warfare here. Even though it's not the whole problem, there's an element of it because anything that can be used to distract your phone, especially all of that to pull you away from being a praying Christian
00:07:32
Speaker
is going to accomplish the enemy's purpose, which is to create prayerless Christians. Why is this such a big deal? Because prayer is your lifeline to the Lord. You have the Holy Spirit dwelling with you, but you will not be as quick to recognize his voice, as quick to know what to pray for, who to pray for, um to recognize his answers if you're not praying.
00:07:56
Speaker
prayerless Christians are often the most distanced from God or distanced from the virtues of the Christian life because they don't have that deep connection with the Lord. not questioning their salvation. It doesn't mean you're not saved if you haven't been in a habit of praying, but if you're feeling distanced from the Lord, ask yourself, have I been disciplining myself to pray?
00:08:20
Speaker
Because out of that comes intimacy. So theologically, it's a spiritual warfare issue. Neurologically, um i think that one of the reasons, a big reason that we're bored by prayer is because we're so overstimulated and we're unused to silence and stillness.
00:08:38
Speaker
In his book, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster talks about two spiritual disciplines that we really kind of ignore. Most people are familiar with prayer, Bible study, fasting, celebration, but they're not familiar with silence and stillness. And these things are necessary to hear God, especially in today's society. We are just absolutely deluged with information all day long from every which way. You want to watch a quick tutorial on YouTube, you're going to get a bajillion ads about a bajillion things. You want to hop on social media to see what your friends are up to You're going to see 800 different posts and news stories and influencers flying by as you do that. You want to pick up a newspaper, even a paper newspaper. You're going to see so many things in there that can be distracting. We have so much stimulation coming in and we're so unused to silence, so unused to stillness that when we sit down to pray,
00:09:35
Speaker
It's extremely counterintuitive. it's It's flying in the face of everything that that we know is part of a normal life. And so we get fidgety after like five minutes, seven minutes. And we struggle with sitting there and talking to God because what is this empty space that's around us?
Adaptation and Personalization in Prayer
00:09:56
Speaker
Spiritually, i think that we struggle with prayer because we've not made it a regular practice. And I already talked about this one, so I won't deep dive this. But when we don't discipline ourselves to a regular practice of prayer, and listen, I i am the worst of sinners in this regard. I fall into this. I go through stages in my prayer life where I have to discipline myself more. And other times when um i am more disciplined, it it can go up and down and it will over the course of your life.
00:10:25
Speaker
But what we should always have in the back of our mind is there's a place to return to, a discipline to return to. And i love the times of prayer for this reason, morning, noon, and afternoon or evening as set times of prayer because it jogs my memory to start back in that discipline.
00:10:45
Speaker
And lastly, personally, so we've talked about being bored by prayer. What are the reasons theologically, neurologically, and spiritually, but personally, I think sometimes we're bored by prayer because we need to change our methodology. We are going through the motions of prayer and we've always done it a certain way and we needed to shake it up a little bit.
00:11:06
Speaker
I took a 500 level prayer course when I was getting my religion degree in university. And when I signed up for this class, I was like, i have no nothing about this, but i would love to learn more of like the theology of prayer. And I thought...
00:11:22
Speaker
I thought that we were going to be like studying what prayer was in the Bible. That is not what this class was. And it was a long class. It was like two and a half hours in the evening, the end of the day. I'm not an evening person. So it was really poor choice for me to put it in the at the end of the day for a class. And so I thought I'll try to pay attention as we're reading through this textbook.
00:11:46
Speaker
But my professor was not into textbooks. He was like, we're going to actually pray. Like, that's what we're going to be doing. And so he showed us these different types and styles of prayer, things that I had really never seen.
00:12:01
Speaker
And they weren't they weren't all that different from each other, but they were definitely pulling me out of my comfort zone. So maybe having one person lead prayer over the group, public prayer,
00:12:13
Speaker
Um, another time doing something called popcorn prayer where, you know, people are praying quietly, but then as they are led by the Lord, they'll pray and, um, say just like a short prayer, like two lines, um, extemporaneously. So around the room, people would just pray as they felt led. Um,
00:12:35
Speaker
praying in small groups. Now the the context of this was a class, so it was public prayer versus private prayer, but we talked about private prayer too in that class. And what it really did was show me that i was falling into this very rigid request-based model for my prayer life. And that is why i was so dissatisfied and felt so bored.
00:12:57
Speaker
So those are the four like baseline like I would say buckets of reasons that we fall into boredom and prayer. But now I want to kind of dive a little deeper into some of these things. um i I kind of took those four and made it into five points that I want to talk more about in regard to why we're bored by prayer and what we can do about it, practically speaking.
00:13:22
Speaker
So I'm going to introduce the struggle, and then we're going to talk about some really practical solutions for getting beyond this. As you know, I usually like to base my episodes on a scripture passage and work from there, but we've done that for the last six episodes. So we're going to do a little practical one this time because I think that we can take what scripture has taught us about prayer so far and we can ask ourselves, all right, what do I do with that? Like, what can I do?
Overcoming Focus Difficulties in Prayer
00:13:47
Speaker
well How can I discipline myself to begin to see a difference in my prayer life? So let's start with the the big one, the core issue with boredom and prayer. That is difficulties with focus.
00:13:59
Speaker
And I'm going to tell you the main solution to this. It's very simple, but in today's world, it's hard to do. Put away your phone. And I mean, it cannot be sitting next to you. It cannot be face down on the coffee table.
00:14:13
Speaker
Get it out of the room. I sent an email recently to our email subscribers. And in that email, I shared a study that was done about the impact of having a phone present.
00:14:26
Speaker
And there's actually a syndrome named for this. It's called phantom vibration syndrome, and it's caused by phone addiction.
00:14:38
Speaker
It's caused by being so attached to your phone that you actually think your phone is vibrating when it's not. And having your phone present with you when you're doing Bible study is, or doing prayer time, it's going to pull you away.
00:14:53
Speaker
it It is. It's It's going to pull at you. You're going to want to check it. It's better to just have it out of the room so you can give your full attention to what you're doing. And if you have believed the lie that you have to have it with you at all times,
00:15:10
Speaker
I would encourage you watch like a historical TV show, not during your prayer time, but another time. And just, or think back if you're my age to your childhood in the nineties, we literally just lived our lives without our phones. We lived our lives without phones because they were attached to the wall in the kitchen. You couldn't take it with you. And we were fine.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I think that we've really bought into something that is wild. I have too. That's like, well, I just, I need it with me at all times in case something happens. 95% of the time, nothing happens. And if something did happen, people would find me the same way they did for, don't know,
00:15:55
Speaker
8,000 plus years of history. So I think that this is one of those things that if if you're struggling with leaving your phone in another room or locking it in a drawer during your prayer time, there's actually a bigger underlying issue of phone addiction that needs to be dealt with. And this is a great first step to say, you know, what I'm going to spend 15, 20 minutes praying reading my Bible, and I'm going to leave my phone in another room. And if you start to get twitchy in that time, you could know, oh wow, this is this is an area that I really need this growth. And this is going to help me with focusing.
00:16:32
Speaker
Now, Difficulties with focus can also come with being ADHD. I have all the signs of inattentive ADHD. I have all the check boxes, all the symptoms of it. And so does my mind race and want to pick up a bajillion things when I'm praying?
00:16:47
Speaker
100%. Do i immediately start thinking about dinner and think about, you know, what I need to do for homeschool and how the laundry needs to be started and how I need to get that deadline? Yes. I think about all that stuff. It's very hard for me to focus. And this is a big reason why I switched to handwriting my prayers, writing out my prayers, because I found that when I would just pray in my head, I could not keep focused on task. Now, in addition to writing my prayers, I also keep a planner or a notebook handy that I can just write down what pops in my head so that I don't have to think about it.
00:17:22
Speaker
Thaw steaks for dinner. Okay. Wrote it down and I'm right back where I was. I just have to think that God deserves this. He deserves this attention.
00:17:33
Speaker
20 minutes? 20 minutes is not that much. and that's i and And that's my little offering to him is just my full attention for 20 minutes. And if if I'm like, well, my to-do list is more important or my phone or Instagram or whatever...
00:17:48
Speaker
I really think that we as an American society, at least, need to reckon with our inability to sit with God.
00:17:59
Speaker
And we need to be willing to sit with the discomfort of of someone saying, this is not okay. we We as a society, we don't want to feel shame like, oh, I'm messing up. I'm doing something wrong. So we never want to be corrected. And so I'm correcting myself alongside you in saying it's not normal to not be able to focus for 20 minutes.
00:18:23
Speaker
It's not normal human behavior. It's become normal because of our society, and we can actually take back what our Christian forefathers and foremothers had, the discipline that they had. We can actually engage with that.
00:18:38
Speaker
And hey, they struggled too. You could read their diaries and read what they wrote about distraction and not wanting to pay attention. And you'll see that they too struggled, but nowadays it's even worse. And so we have to find the practical methods that help us to do this.
00:18:54
Speaker
So handwriting my prayers, having a sticky note handy, but also prayer walking is so helpful for me with focus because I'm moving my body. So I do this on the treadmill because our winters last forever here. But I also prayer walk outside when the weather's nice. And that has been an amazing way for me to, by moving my body, my brain is working. I'm able to focus. I have nothing to distract me around me.
00:19:17
Speaker
And that helps so much. If you have kids, I've done this while wearing a baby in a carrier, pushing kids in the stroller, again, on the treadmill. and And I sometimes I do it out loud. I'm praying out loud because saying it out loud keeps my mind focused as well. So there are a lot of ways that you can do this. But ultimately, you have to be ready to say, i want to focus on God.
Handling Intrusive Thoughts During Prayer
00:19:42
Speaker
I want to cultivate a strong prayer life. And it's not easy.
00:19:48
Speaker
It's net no habit when you're forming it is easy. It can be really hard. And so we have to be willing to say, I'm going to work at this, even though it's hard for my brain or it's hard for my personality. And I'm going to find the methodology that actually functions for my personality, whatever that may be.
00:20:07
Speaker
The next one is unprocessed thoughts. So here I have a couple verses that that I really love on this. Psalm 39, 12 says, hear my prayer o lord give ear to my cry hold not your peace at my tears for i am a sojojoner with you a guest like all my fathers so This is a prayer of lament telling the Lord what's going on inside.
00:20:30
Speaker
similarly psalm six in my distress i called upon the lord to my god i cried for help from his temple he heard my voice and my cry to him reached his ears What both of these psalms particularly show us is that the thoughts that come into our heads when we're praying, intrusive thoughts, random thoughts, even upsetting thoughts, or we like sinful seeming thoughts, these things can be brought to the Lord and turn to prayers.
00:21:00
Speaker
And i I hear from a lot of Christians who fear that when they're praying, and have these like thoughts that are just completely um wicked or awful. And they think it's them. They're like, that's it's me. It's my fault. like I don't understand why this is happening to me.
00:21:15
Speaker
um These are intrusive thoughts. And sometimes you'll have thoughts that are just unprocessed that you haven't dealt with. And suddenly, and in your prayer time, they're surfacing. You can simply give those to the Lord. You don't have to sit there and take on shame and accusation.
00:21:31
Speaker
for having a thought pass through your mind, you take it and you give it to the Lord. Say, Lord, I don't know where that came from. i don't know why it's there, but you know what? It's yours now. And your blood covers me. Righteousness covers me. This is not who I am. This is just a random thought. I'm giving it to you.
00:21:50
Speaker
And by processing these thoughts with the Lord, you're actually almost in this constant exchange of whether it's the enemy or whether it's your brain. People have different opinions on things like this. Maybe it's both. You can take it from either direction and you can just hand it to the Lord and say, I'm not keeping this.
00:22:09
Speaker
I'll take it and just keep giving it to you. I'm not keeping this. It's yours. Philippians 4 says, Do not be anxious about anything. Anything. But in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
00:22:24
Speaker
Here's the promise when you do this. The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Do you want peace that goes beyond your understanding, your rationality? A peace that actually goes over top, like comes over, covers over all rational neurological brain activity. It it transcends it. It's above it. It's beyond it.
00:22:52
Speaker
It's beyond anything psychology can accomplish. This piece will guard your heart and your mind. So it will guard your emotions and it will guard your thoughts.
00:23:03
Speaker
How do you get that kind of peace? You get it from taking every anxious thought and handing it to the Lord by prayer, petition, and thanksgiving. So prayer is that ongoing conversation. Petition is the request and Thanksgiving is acknowledging God's answers. This is important. The Thanksgiving part can't be left out, especially if you're praying through unprocessed thoughts that are very anxious. If you never stop to acknowledge the ways that God is answering you, the ways he's blessed you, you are going to stay in a constant cycle of these thoughts, thinking that there's no way out. There's no way God's answering me.
00:23:41
Speaker
Spend as much time giving your anxious thoughts to God, As you do in thanksgiving to God, in adoration of God, you will see a shift in your prayer life because thanksgiving and saying, God, thank you for how you have provided for me today.
00:23:57
Speaker
Thank you that I have food on the table. Thank you that I have enough money for gas today. You know, these things where you're recognizing how God has rescued you, recognizing his provision, recognizing his presence will then empower you to trust him in the future.
00:24:13
Speaker
with the things that are out of your control. Now, some of you may have um intrusive thoughts related to sinfulness. And I want to address this very briefly um because when you're praying, you may have thoughts that come in overt focus on sinfulness. So some call this religious OCD or um religious melancholy is what it was called several hundred years ago.
00:24:39
Speaker
And what's so interesting about this is that it's not a new struggle at all. In 1692, Bishop Robert Moore preached a sermon on religious melancholy, on having these thoughts of, ah you know, sinfulness, might over focus on your sinfulness um when you were praying or when you were um trying to rest.
00:25:00
Speaker
And he preached a sermon to the queen on this topic. And I want to read you this quote from his sermons. When you find these thoughts creeping upon you, be not mightily dejected, as if they were certain tokens of your reprobation.
00:25:17
Speaker
For so far as they depend upon the indisposition of the body, which for the most part they chiefly do. I take them no more to be marks of the divine displeasure than sickness or losses or any other calamity you may meet within the world.
00:25:32
Speaker
When these troublesome thoughts begin to stir, do not fall into any violent passion which will abate the courage and shatter the resolutions of your soul. But having first commended your miserable case to the tender care and compassions of your heavenly Father, who will not let you be afflicted above measure, endeavor with a meek and sedate temper quietly to bear them.
00:25:53
Speaker
So here's what he's saying. In the first line, he says, when these thoughts are creeping upon you, do not be mightily dejected as if they were certain tokens of your reprobation. What he's saying is don't let these thoughts tell you that this is evidence of your separation from God.
00:26:10
Speaker
Don't let these thoughts tell you to doubt your salvation. Then he says, as far as they depend upon the indisposition of the body, which for the most part they chiefly do, he's saying that this is not as much a spiritual battle as it is a physical one. He's saying this is coming primarily from the body.
00:26:27
Speaker
it's not It's not evidence of lack of faith or um a lack of spiritual maturity. it's Simply, your brain.
00:26:38
Speaker
Which he was saying long before they knew that that's what the brain could do. So he says, I take them no more to be marks of divine displeasure than sickness or losses. He's saying that these things do not make God mad.
00:26:51
Speaker
Having these thoughts does not anger God any more than getting sick or losing someone does. They're just thoughts. And so when they happen, he says, do not fall into a violent passion. So don't get excited about them or think that they control you or that they are reflecting on you. But simply have courage, resolve in your soul, and commend your case to the care and compassions of your heavenly father.
00:27:19
Speaker
This lines up with what we just read in Philippians 4. When these thoughts come in when you're praying, you can hand them back to the Lord and trust yourself to his care and his compassion.
Emotion vs. Truth in Prayer Practices
00:27:31
Speaker
Okay, another reason we're bored with prayer, and this kind of is connected to the first one, difficulties with focus, is a constant influx of information. So all this information constantly coming at us through the news, through influencers, for social media, and we honestly are so overwhelmed by it that when we sit down to pray, it's hard for us to stay focused, or we get overwhelmed by how many things there are to pray for. Isaiah 26.3 says this,
00:27:55
Speaker
You keep him or her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because she trusts in you. The peace of God that we saw back here in Philippians 4 is spoken of here in Isaiah 26. If you want your mind to have peace, you keep it fixed on the truths of who God is and what he's doing.
00:28:18
Speaker
Your trust is based on your knowledge. So you have to have the knowledge in order to have the trust. And when you trust him, when you continue to walk through the prayer relationship with God, even when you don't feel like it, the peace of God is protecting you.
00:28:36
Speaker
It keeps you in perfect peace. This is not something you can achieve by, you know, getting the right emotion or feeling. And I think, again, evangelicalism in America, at least, is very emotion driven.
00:28:51
Speaker
Which is so interesting because the calling card of evangelicalism is it's word-based. It's based on the Bible. We're people of the book. That is true in theory, but in practicality, and when it comes to spiritual disciplines, many evangelicals are emotion-driven. Which is, again, why when we don't feel like praying, we don't pray. And when we don't feel faithful, we don't have faith.
00:29:16
Speaker
That's what we tell ourselves anyway. That if I don't feel like I have faith, then I don't have faith. But our emotions, while part of how we image God, do not dictate the truth. So you have to go back to the truth and say, am I going to focus on this constant influx of information that claims to be the truth, claims to be omnipotent, all-powerful, omnipresent, all the things, says that I can be that, or am I going to trust the truth of God and allow that to dictate my peace?
Diversifying and Deepening Prayer
00:29:46
Speaker
It may mean that you cut yourself off. And i often quote Richard Foster when he says you should not consume more news than you can pray for. So if you're consuming news and you're not praying for what you're consuming, then i would say cut it off at three news stories.
00:30:02
Speaker
You can pray for three news stories. But if you are consuming more than that and you're not praying for those people and your nation and the other nations that are involved, then most likely it's not producing good fruit.
00:30:15
Speaker
Psalm 139.17 says, How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them. So God's thoughts, his his thoughts, not our thoughts, are precious. They're beautiful and they're vast. There's many of them, but they're not overwhelming because his spirit is in them.
00:30:34
Speaker
Is that your experience of the information that you're consuming? Okay, the fourth reason that we are bored with prayer, the fourth problem that we we run into is the request-based prayer model.
00:30:46
Speaker
Now, we just read in Philippians 4 that we should bring all of our anxious thoughts and petitions to the Lord. So obviously, I'm a fan. i think that bringing requests to the Lord is so important. Just yesterday, I was praying while walking on the treadmill, and I was praying through the requests of friends in my life because i are a lot of them, and I needed to be praying for them.
00:31:06
Speaker
And so that was a great time for me to do that. But you don't want your prayer life to only be requests because if that's the case, you're only ever asking and there's not intimacy with God.
00:31:18
Speaker
If you imagine this as a human relationship, so let's say you're dating somebody and every time you're with them, they're just asking you for things, just asking you to do something or to hear hear from them about something.
00:31:36
Speaker
That relationship would increasingly become one-sided. And you would probably be dissatisfied. Now, in our relationship with God, it's different than a human relationship. So we obviously are going to have a God who can accomplish what we ask and who wants to hear what we ask. But when it's only ever praying requests, yes, that gets boring.
00:32:00
Speaker
So try different types of prayer. Try adoration prayer. Try confession. This is important. ah Confession should be a part of our prayer life. Confessing our sins to the Lord so that we could experience His mercy.
00:32:15
Speaker
Thanksgiving, thanking God for what He's done. And then intercession, praying for others. Do you pray for others or do you only pray for your own requests? These are all important parts of a prayer life. And part of the prayers that we read from Christians throughout history to know how to pray. And when Jesus gave the Lord's prayer in the gospels as the model for prayer, he wasn't saying you just recite this prayer. He was saying these lines represent a way to pray. So when in doubt, you can go back to the Lord's prayer. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That is a form of adoration prayer.
00:32:53
Speaker
Lord, your name is holy. I'm recognizing your holiness. Our Father or who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, be thy name. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
00:33:06
Speaker
What does that mean? That means that I'm asking the Lord to do his will in my life the same way his will is being worked throughout the world and in the heavens.
00:33:16
Speaker
I'm submitting myself to him. I'm coming with a ah posture of humility. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So here I'm confessing. I'm confessing my sin, but I'm also recognizing the the places that I have held unforgiveness and bitterness, and I'm confessing that as well. And I'm choosing forgiveness when I pray this prayer.
00:33:39
Speaker
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil So asking the Lord to protect us from the temptations that are inevitably going to come. and to deliver us from the hardships and difficulties. So here we've moved into more of request-based prayer.
00:33:57
Speaker
And then for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. So we switch back into adoration prayer at the end. So this model of prayer gives us a vision for what what prayer can look like and moving away from just the request-based model, which we see in the Lord's prayer.
Balancing Duty and Intimacy in Prayer
00:34:14
Speaker
That's only a small portion of what the whole prayer is about.
00:34:17
Speaker
All right, the very last thing that makes prayer boring that we can get away from is being duty-based rather than intimacy-driven. Praying because you have to, not because you want to. So for some who are listening to this, you need to pray out of discipline and the emotions will catch up.
00:34:37
Speaker
But others of us are really good at praying out of discipline, but we don't engage our emotions at all. So people have different sorts of struggles. Depending on your personality, depending on your your your own way of engaging with your faith, people come to faith with their own experiences and and their own perspectives. And so if you are more duty-based and you're like, oh, check the box, moving on, would just encourage you to ask, is there a way you could change your prayer routine to be more intimacy-driven?
00:35:10
Speaker
If you are reading your Bible, getting this knowledge about God, and then suddenly you're like, okay, pray quick prayer, moving on. What could you do to change it up so that your prayer life is more focused on your relationship with God?
00:35:23
Speaker
What would that look like? That might mean that you are you are working on handwriting your prayers. It could be that you choose to do adoration prayer just for a whole day.
00:35:35
Speaker
And you save your requests for another time. I've heard of people putting requests in a jar and just drawing one every day. They felt overwhelmed by how many requests they had. So they just grabbed the the um name out of the jar and that's who they prayed for all day. And then they put them back in the jar and they mixed it up and they grabbed another one the next day. We like to keep our Christmas cards on our dining room table and pick up a Christmas card and pray for somebody that way every every day, switch to somebody new. And that's for the intercession part, but for more intimacy-driven prayer, confession's a huge part of that.
00:36:09
Speaker
Confession prayer, telling the Lord, this is what I've done. I've heard people say, well, because of what Christ did on the cross, we don't need to confess our sins to the Lord anymore because Jesus forgave them.
00:36:21
Speaker
And I don't know where people are finding this in scripture. Yes, Jesus did die on the cross for our sin. We don't have to go through and find every tiny little sin and make sure it's confessed to make sure that Christ's blood applies to it. We can actually allow the spirit to bring to mind what we need to verbalize.
00:36:39
Speaker
But that in itself is important to actually have the conversation with the Lord. Lord, is there any wicked way in me? Bring it to light. Cleanse my heart. And this deepens our intimacy with God because we're listening to him. The act of bringing our sins into the open with him for forgiveness and ideally confessing them in a group setting leads you to finding the depth of intimacy that comes with experiencing God's mercy. So if you're really struggling with being duty-based, think about what ways you could you could integrate the other practices of prayer so that it is more intimacy-driven.
00:37:19
Speaker
I hope this episode was helpful to you wherever you are at in your walk with the Lord, wherever you're at in your prayer life, and this gave you some really practical insights for how you can work towards a prayer life that is vibrant and alive, and it will take time. But remember, discipline leads to joy. It leads to those emotional parts of our walk with God, but neither should we treat prayer as a checklist. And that tension is accomplished When we simply show up to prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to lead us, we start with what scripture says about God and we allow that to be the basis of what we pray.
00:37:59
Speaker
So no matter what's going on, theologically, neurologically, spiritually, or personally, you don't have to be bored by prayer. You can actually find a prayer life that is empowering, encouraging, and invigorating no matter where you are in your journey.
Podcast Feedback and Announcements
00:38:15
Speaker
If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you subscribe in iTunes or on YouTube. You can comment. I read through all the comments and I reply to them as soon as I can. And of course, you can also email us at felicia at feliciamasonheimer.com with any questions about this prayer series or with a question to be answered in the final episode of the series, which is Q&A.
00:38:37
Speaker
Our prayer-themed shop launch with Every Woman a Theologian is coming on March 12th. So don't miss it. Our email subscribers will be the first to receive announcement of that sale. So if you're not in our email list, be sure to join it. The link to our newsletter is in the description on the video or in the show notes if you're listening to this in a podcast app. Thank you for watching or listening, and I'll see you next time on Verity Podcast.