Hey, if your prayers are boring you, how do you think the Almighty feels?

In the introduction to his book on prayer, “Invading the Privacy of God,” Cecil Murphey begins, “Prayer bores me and I sometimes wonder why I’m doing it.”

“There! I said it in print,” he continues.

For years Murphey admits he has vacillated between excitement and boredom in his prayer life. He writes, “I’ve read dozens (literally!) of books on the subject; learned four different methods for praying the Lord’s Prayer; embraced techniques for praying the Psalms; recited the Jesus Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner’) for nearly an hour at a time; taken lessons on meditation techniques; praised my way out of despair; sung hymns of petition; and like a lot of others, I’ve used the Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (ACTS) method of prayer.”

And did all that work for him? “Yes — sometimes and for a while.”

At the best of times, Murphey has “felt such a closeness to Jesus Christ that it seemed I could actually feel a hand wrap itself around mine.” And at other times, “I’ve fallen asleep on my knees, or I’ve prayed for four minutes that felt like two hours.”

At first, he confesses, he rebuked himself for being bored during prayer. He chided himself to “get past the boredom, press on!”

The best solution he has found to the problem of being bored while praying was to use different methods in his prayers. After all, Murphey says, “there is no one method of prayer. We can approach God in many ways.”

I agree completely.

The times when I’ve felt bored while praying, I have confessed what seems so elementary as to be silly: it’s my problem and not God’s. I mean, imagine walking into the control-central of Heaven where the Ruler of the Universe sits enthroned — and being bored. (Okay, I can imagine some teenagers pulling it off. But we’re talking about normal people.)

The problem is mine.

There’s something else troubling about being bored while praying: the Lord is insulted. I base that on His conversation with the bored-out-of-their-minds-worshipers of Malachi’s day. This Old Testament prophet confronted the people of the Lord about their lax behavior in worship. Notice several aspects of their behavior (found throughout the four chapters of this little prophetic book) —

–they were bored by the Lord Himself. God says: “You profane (my Name) in that you say, ‘The table of the Lord is defiled; and its fruit, its food, is contemptible.’ You also say, ‘Oh, what a weariness!’ And you sneer at it, says the Lord of hosts.”

–they brought terrible offerings. “You bring the stolen, the lame, and the sick….should I accept this from your hand? Says the Lord?”

–they then blamed God for not accepting their offerings. God answered, “The Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously.”

–they wearied the Lord (bored Him!) with their words. “Yet you say, ‘In what way have we wearied Him?’ In that you say, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and He delights in them,’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?'”

I belabored this point to emphasize that God is not pleased with our being bored in worship and does not want to be bored Himself with us! There’s something unnatural and unfit about such.

If God is the greatest Power in the universe — and surely He is — then for one to be “plugged in” to that Power is to be energized, lit up, revved up, recharged.

The bottom line, then, is this: the times we find ourselves bored in the midst of our prayers, let us take that as a clue of one or two things. Either we’re not doing it right or God and our spirit are sending us a message that variety in our prayers would be a good thing.

So, how does one go about putting variety in his prayers? Here are ten suggestions. You’ll think of a dozen more.

1. Get up and go for a walk while praying. Pray while vacuuming the floor or doing the dishes or chopping some wood.

2. Get a piece of paper and write out your prayer.

3. Call a good friend and ask him/her to pray with you (as well as for you) at that moment.

4. Pull a book on prayer off your library shelf and read a chapter or two. Usually, you’ll get several ideas of how to enlarge and deepen and sharpen and vary your prayers.

5. Have the Book of Common Prayer handy. Open it to the section on general prayers and let the old masters show you how to pray.

6. Tell God a good story or a joke you heard and enjoyed. Ask if He’s heard a good one lately.

7. Send up a prayer for the meanest person you know, the biggest celebrity, the current Hollywood rage, someone who is on the front of today’s newspaper, and your next door neighbor.

8. Pray a “time-release” prayer for your children and grandchildren: for the choices they will make 10 years from now, 20 years, and beyond — schools, spouses, jobs, churches, best friends, everything.

9. Ask the Lord to surprise you today with some blessing or opportunity you would never thought of asking for.

10. Read something in the Bible, then pray it. Read something else and pray it. Keep at it. (Be careful of the Psalms, however. You might be calling down plagues on your enemies!)

Duke University’s Stanley Hauerwas published a book of prayers he offers in classrooms at the beginning of each session. (He says he finally consented to do so when his grandson Joel Adam Hauerwas was born, some 11 years ago, as a special gift to him.) I mention this because the prayers he prayed (and wrote and published) are exactly the kind that spur my own prayer life, that jolt me out of my “religious-mindset” in order to get real in my own prayer.

Here is Dr. Hauerwas’ prayer he calls “God’s Joke on the World.”

“Funny Lord, how we love this life you have given us. Of course, we get tired, bored, worn down by the stupidity that surrounds us. But then that stupid person does something, says something that is wonderful, funny, insightful! How we hate for that to happen. But, thank God, you have given us one another, ensuring we will never be able to get our lives in order. Order finally is no fun, and you are intent on forcing us to see the humor of your kingdom. I mean really, Lord, the Jews! But there you have it. You insist on being known through such a funny people. And now us — part of your joke on the world. Make us your laughter. Make us laugh, and in the laughter may the world be so enthralled by your entertaining presence that we lose the fear that fuels our violence. Funny Lord, how we love this life you have given us. Amen.”

Anyone smiling? I am.

What a wonderful Lord we have. So merciful and gracious. How could we ever be bored with such a Lord?