Do you sit down to pray, only to find your mind wandering? You’re not alone! Being bored by prayer is not unique to your spiritual journey. Most Christians struggle with this at points in their walk with God. While normal, it should not be normalized. There is a way to pray that is invigorating, encouraging, and truly empowering—if we’ll give ourselves to it.
In seasons when I’m bored by prayer, I like to step back and ask, What is driving this? It could be theological. It could be neurological. It could be personal. I’ll talk about all of those reasons in this week’s podcast episode, coming Thursday. In identifying the factors behind your boredom, you may find one of the following reasons play a role:
1. Difficulties with focus: I have all the symptoms of inattentive ADHD. I have a rapid, scattered mind, easily distracted by many things. But I’ve learned that focus is a discipline; it’s not innate. I realized this in part because my ability to focus decreased the more I was on social media and my phone, but increased when I deleted apps and put the phone away. Our society doesn’t encourage focus; it encourages fractured thinking. When we pray, we’re fighting uphill against our societal programming. Prayer is hard work sometimes!
2. Unprocessed thoughts: Have you ever started praying, only for random thoughts to pour into your mind? You’re not alone! These could be thoughts like thaw the meat for dinner or intrusive thoughts full of fear and anxiety. I love what Bishop Moore, writing in 1692, said about these thoughts in a sermon he preached to the queen of England:
“When you find these thoughts creeping upon you, be not mightily dejected, as if they were certain tokens of your reprobation. 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 with in the world. 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, endeavour with a meek and sedate temper quietly to bear them.”
3. Request-based prayer model: The Bible tells us to “make our requests known to God”; He delights to hear and answer. But prayer that is just a litany of requests and nothing else doesn’t build intimacy. Imagine if we did this in a real-life human relationship! How fulfilling would that be? Our souls sense this loss. We become discontent in prayer, bored by it, when all we do is make requests. Learning to pray in different ways—adoration, confession, thanksgiving, praise—creates beauty and joy in our conversation with God.
If you want to hear more about how to overcome boredom in prayer, join me on Verity Podcast this Thursday. Also, if you leave us a review on iTunes or YouTube, it helps other people find the podcast. Thank you!
