389: The Antidote to a Boring Prayer Life | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Well, good morning again, everyone. Bet you're wondering what's in this bag. You're gonna have to wait, find out.

For the last few weeks, we have been asking, considering the question together, why don't we pray? And the very title of this sermon series assumes something. It assumes that many of us, if not most of us, identify with that question. We're not offended when we hear it. We don't think, how dare you assume that I don't pray as much as I should.

In fact, for most of us, we hear that question and we think, that's a good question. Why don't I pray? The truth is, if you ask me, Sloop, give me some of the benefits of praying consistently. I could rattle off a dozen off the top of my head and give you biblical references for each one.

You know, in Matthew chapter seven, Jesus says, ask and you'll receive. In John 15, he expands on that, and he said, ask whatever you wish, and I'll give it to you. In Psalm 16, David says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. You want joy? Come to me.

In fact, Jesus says, if anybody's tired, weary, come to me and I will give you rest. Are you stressed out? Do you ever live with anxiety? Paul says in Philippians four, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, present your request to God, and the peace of God, listen to this, which transcends understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Do you want peace that doesn't make sense based on the circumstances of your life? Pray. I could go on and on and on, but here's the thing. I stand before you as someone who is not offended by the question, why don't we pray? Because the truth is, I don't pray as I wish I did.

And whenever there is a divergence between what we profess and what we practice, it is appropriate, even necessary, for us to ask the question, why? Because here's the deal. What we actually believe, true belief, that thing that the Bible calls faith, it will never stay trapped in your brain. It will always leak out into your behavior.

It always does. If you really believe something, you will live as if it's true. And therefore, if we don't pray, then chances are it's because there is a competing narrative, some different belief that is keeping us from doing it.

Over the last few weeks, we've explored a few different possibilities of what those lies that we believe might be. Three weeks ago, we talked about this idea that maybe we just don't think we need it. We like being independent. We don't like clinging. We don't like being needy, and we go through life trying to be self-sufficient. We just live as if we don't need it.

Two weeks ago, Quig and Bonnie preached, and they shared the idea that maybe we just don't think it works. Have you ever tried praying for something and it just nothing happened, so you gave up? Talked about the importance of persevering in prayer.

Last week, Tim explored the possibility that maybe we don't pray because we just don't know how. And Tim gave us some incredibly helpful and practical tips for how we can appropriate the discipline of prayer into our life in a way that sticks and works.

And this week, we're going to be looking at the possibility that maybe we don't pray because deep down, we think it's boring. Have you ever felt like prayer is boring? I heard a great definition for boredom this week. Leo Tolstoy says that boredom is the desire for desires.

Have you ever, in other words, been praying, and you thought to yourself, I wish I was doing something fun, something other than this? Now I'm not gonna ask anybody to raise your hand. I'm not gonna ask you to share this with your neighbor, but I'm gonna ask you to be honest yourself.

I'm gonna ask you a question, and I really want you to answer it in the quietness of your heart. Has prayer become boring to you? Are you bored by it? The answer to that question is yes, then let's just rip the band-aid off and say what we're actually saying, which is this. We believe God is boring.

God Is Not Boring

I want you to imagine that I come up to Melissa, who is my wife, and I say to her, Melissa, you are number one in my life. I love you more than anyone else on the planet. You are my top priority. But here's the thing, when we go on dates, I just find that I wish I was doing something fun. Or, Melissa, anytime that we're together, actually, when it's just you and me, it's just kind of boring.

Uh-oh. See, the message I would be communicating, not just what she would be hearing, but what I would actually be saying is this, Melissa, you are boring. Have we gotten to the place where maybe we have started to believe that God is boring?

Let me give you another example. You know what's in this bag? It's something really good. Okay? Okay. This is, in my right hand, this is raw broccoli, and this is raw kale.

Can I tell you something? It is good for me. But don't you dare try to convince me that it tastes good, and I don't want your recipes. Okay? Because everybody at the first service wanted to give me their recipes to how to make this good. But here's the deal, you can make this taste better, but do you know how you're going to do it? You're going to dump a bunch of unhealthy stuff on it, and you'll make it a little tastier and a lot less healthy.

See, here's the thing about broccoli and kale. I endure it sometimes because it's good for me, but it's boring. It's something to be endured, but certainly not enjoyed. Is it possible that God, though good for us, has become someone that we endure, but we certainly don't expect to enjoy him?

We're gonna look at a psalm, Psalm 63, to be precise. This is a psalm written by David, who the Bible describes as a man after God's own heart. I'm pretty sure David's the only one that the Bible says that about. That is quite a compliment. David is a man of desire. He is a man of passion, and when God sees David, he says, that's what I'm like.

Now, sometimes David aims his desire at the wrong thing, and it gets him into trouble. But when David's passion is aimed at its intended target, at God himself, what we see is a picture of a man who is experiencing God in the way that I believe God wants all of us to experience him.

Let me tell you what we're gonna learn in Psalm 63. The first thing that we're gonna learn is this: every single one of us in this room has a longing that only God can fill. That's number one. You can put that up on the screen. There you go.

Number two, God's fulfillment of that longing is the most satisfying thing we can experience in this life. And number three, how do we experience? Number two, what is the secret to actually experiencing what we said in number two? Let's look at Psalm 63 verse one, and it's gonna take me a second because I lost my bookmark.

Psalm's in the middle. Right? Just kidding, guys. All right. Okay. Psalm 63. Here we go.

David says this,

Oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

What does David say here? He says, my soul thirsts, and my body longs. David is in touch here with what it means to be alive, what it means to be human. To be alive is to be somebody who is longing.

In fact, we created a word when there is an absence of desire fulfillment. We call that boredom. And we made up a word for it because we know that's not how it's supposed to be. David is in touch with what it means to be human, to long for. All of life could be characterized that way. It is a quest for fulfillment, a search for satisfaction.

What's the problem? David says, I happen to live in a world which is a dry and weary land where there is no water. In other words, David is saying, the place that I live does not possess the resources to satisfy the longing that I am experiencing. There might be some things that I reach for to numb what I'm experiencing on the inside or to temporarily cause me to forget it or distract me. But in the end, it will not satisfy, not in a way that lasts.

And so, David rightly identifies this longing as longing for God himself. He says, I long for you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you. That's what I'm actually longing for.

CS Lewis would say it this way. He would say that if we find in ourselves a desire for which the world does not have a corresponding fulfillment, then the only logical explanation is that I was made for a different world. That's what David is saying here, but he says it even more emphatically because he says, my soul longs for you, and my body longs for you. In other words, all of me, every part.

There's not just some spiritual part of me that longs for you. It's my whole being. Here's how I would put it. I think what David is saying here is this: every longing that I have is actually hunger for God disguised as something else.

Did you know that? GK Chesterton is famously credited with the following statement, the man knocking at the brothel door is looking for God. Underneath every desire is hunger for God. It's a longing for God disguised as something else.

And David recognized that. He knows that he has a longing that only God can fill. Now, let me tell you what David is not going to say next. He's not going to say, you have a longing that only God can fill, and therefore, you better eat some broccoli. That's not what he says. Look at verse three. Let's skip ahead. He says, because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name, I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods, with singing lips. My mouth will praise you. Just let this sink in for a second. He says, your love is better than what? Life. It's almost like David can't find the words to describe what his soul experiences when he connects with the one who made it.

Your love is better than life. — Psalm 63:3

It almost feels a little bit over the top, hyperbolic. Now, if you're friends with Andy Fetzer, chances are he's called you out on your hyperbole. Okay? If you're ever with Fetz, and you say something like, I was stuck in traffic today. It was the worst. He will interrupt you. And if you're friends with him, you know this. He'll go, oh, really? It was the worst? That's the worst thing that's ever happened to you, being stuck in traffic? And then he'll go on to share some colorful examples of things that might be a little bit worse than being stuck in traffic.

David, though, here is not being hyperbolic. He's being literal. He's saying his love is better than life. I dare you to put something else forward that trumps it. Sex? Money? Ambition? Power? No. David says, your love is better. Your love is better.

He goes on to say, my soul will be satisfied as with the riches of foods. If you notice in verse one, he said, my soul's thirsty. You would think that he would say, and in your presence, my thirst is quenched. But that's not what he says. Do you know why? Because quenching of the thirst is just getting a need met.

But what David says here is my soul will be satisfied as with rich and fat food. It will taste good. In fact, he says that in another place. Taste and see that the Lord is good. He's meant to be experienced, David said.

Notice too that these aren't prayer requests. He does not say, God, would you help this broccoli to taste like chocolate? No. He's saying, your love is better than life. My soul will be satisfied. These are statements of fact about who God is, not a prayer request for what he hopes to experience.

The Hunger for God

You and I are made with desire. We are made with desire. And the problem is not our desire. It's what we so often point our desire at.

Listen to this quote. We'll put up on the screen. C. S. Lewis says it this way. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink, sex, ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

David said, my soul was made to be satisfied by you. And do know what? He's not the only one that speaks this way. He might be the most prolific. He says things like, in your presence, there is fullness of joy. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

But he's not the only one. And Peter, in 1 Peter 1:8, he says, though you don't see him, you love him, and you are filled with an inexpressible joy. Paul in Philippians three essentially says, nothing compares to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things. He's better than anything.

In fact, he says, for me to live as Christ, it's essentially what David is saying here. Your love is better than life.

You know who else said it? Jesus. In John 15, when he said, remain in me. Do you know what he says at the end of that chapter after he explains what it means to remain in him? He says, I've told you these things so that my joy might be in you and that your joy might be full.

You know, it was good enough for him to say, my joy will be in you if you do this, but he doesn't stop there. He says, if my joy is in you, your joy will be full. Do you know why? Because every longing that you and I have is hunger for God disguised as something else.

He said, let my joy be in you. See, we have a longing that only Christ can fill, and his fulfillment of that longing is the most satisfying thing we can experience in this life.

See, this desire—this pinnacle of desire, God being the pinnacle of our desire—this is not the exception in the Bible. It is the rule. David said it. Peter said it. Paul said it. Jesus said it.

The question is, can I say it? Have you said it? Have you tasted this? What if I was to tell you that in this Psalm, we are going to see the secret to experiencing God like David did? It starts in the first verse, and it just carries throughout.

Let's look again at Psalm 63 verse one. He says, oh, God, my God. Stop there. Here's the first thing that we want to do. If we want to experience God like David did, here's the first thing you can put up on the screen.

Making Space for God

Make space for him in your heart. Did you notice he says, oh God, my God. David was not reaching for a stranger. He was reaching for a friend, someone that he knew.

Has God become your God? Do you know in the Bible, in the New Testament, I think in the Bible, over 700 times, you know what word is used to describe God? Lord.

Only 24 times do we hear the word Savior for Jesus. Not to say that he's not the Savior, he is. But the question is for us, is he your Lord? Because you know what that means? It means he's the king.

There is one seat on the throne of your heart and either you are on it, someone else is on it, or he is on it. Have you come and submitted your life to his? We cannot expect to experience him if we have not first submitted our hearts to him.

Can I tell you something else? I think experiencing God in this way, there's never been a season of history that has been more difficult than the season that we live in. With the dawn of the Internet and the mobile phone, we have been conditioned subconsciously to believe that desire fulfillment should be instantaneous and automatic.

And if we don't experience it right away, we think something's wrong, and we give up. In the palm of our hand, we carry a device that promises to satisfy our loneliness, our lust, our leisure, our longing.

Jesus said, remain in me. In other words, stay plugged in, and you will start to experience me. And we are plugged in, aren't we? But to the wrong thing. We are so connected to the wrong thing.

See, we cannot experience him unless we learn to break and be silent and be still. That is where we meet him. It's in the quiet. We have to make space for him in our heart.

Here's the second thing. It's also in verse one. He says, earnestly, I seek you. That word is actually in the King James translates it early, I seek you. We have to make space for him in our schedule.

If you were to open your calendar, is there anywhere in there that you're expecting to get alone with him? If I never schedule intentional time with Melissa, I mean, our life is chaotic. It's crazy. We just won't do it. And we start to grow apart.

I know this sounds simple, but when you open up your calendar in your phone, have you ever thought about scheduling to making space for him in your calendar? You know, in Mark one, chapter one, verse 38, I think, Jesus, it says, that he woke up while it was still dark, and he went away to a quiet place, and he prayed.

Do you have that rhythm in your life? I think for a lot of us, we're so connected to our phone and distraction and then we try to maybe we'll even put that phone on do not disturb for like five minutes. We try to pray. We don't experience anything. We give up. We feel nothing. We think, man, God just stays relegated to that category of someone to endure but not to enjoy.

We have got to carve out space in our calendar if we expect to experience him.

Here's a third one. Make space for him in our mind. Look at verse six. It says, on my bed, I remember you. I think of you through the watches of the night. It starts, he says, I seek for you early, and then I think of you through the watches of the night.

Have you made space for God in your mind?

I'm gonna give you a few practical ideas for how we can make this a reality. When I was a sophomore in college, I read a book called Practicing His Presence. Has anybody ever heard of that book? Okay. There's a book, a guy named Brother Lawrence. He wrote a—I mean, his life back in the seventeenth century. There's an updated version of his book called Practicing His Presence that includes the life of a guy named Frank Lobach.

And these two men, their whole goal in life was, if God's presence is something that I can experience at any time, then I'm gonna try to experience it all the time. And they tried to turn all of life into a conversation with God, and you can do that too.

Do you know that you and I are constantly having a conversation with ourselves? Practicing his presence is simply inviting God into a conversation that is already happening. When you're sitting with someone, if they say something that offends you, you might go, God, why did that offend me? If you find in yourself a desire that's maybe out of line with what God would have you do, you might say, oh God, you're better.

Help me to remember that you're better because this hunger that I'm experiencing for that thing is actually hunger for you disguised as something else.

Maybe you would even memorize scripture and repeat it over and over again to remember he's with you, he's present. Matthew Henry would say it this way, he who has Christ dwelling in his heart by faith carries an altar with him everywhere that he goes.

Have you ever tried practicing his presence? I'll just tell you briefly. I read this in my sophomore year of college, and I actually tried doing it. I would just walk everywhere that I went. I just tried to just, you know, nothing special. I just tried to keep a conversation going with God.

And I'll never forget one day, I was sitting in Religion 101, and all of a sudden, it was like the heavens broke loose. And I just started experiencing what Peter would have called inexpressible joy. And it was the byproduct of earnestly seeking, of just trying to hold him in my mind, making space for him in my heart.

Here's the last one. We make space for the possibility that this is the truth. Look at what he says in verse eight. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me.

When you cling to something, you hold on tightly to it because you're worried it's gonna slip out of your hands. And we have to cling to him because we live in a world that is begging us to pay attention to something else.

Do you know Jesus actually said this in John chapter eight? He said to the Jews that believed in him, he said, he who holds to my teaching is really my disciple, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

He does not just say, he who hears my word. It's he who holds to it. Because sometimes we need to believe some things that don't feel true.

In Philippians three, Paul is gonna use the word consider three times. I consider that he's better than everything. I consider that other things are rubbish that I might gain Christ. I consider it. I consider it. Sometimes, we have to remind ourselves is what it is true even when it doesn't feel like it.

We make space for the possibility that it's true. We hold on, and eventually, what follows is joy. It breaks into our life.

I wanna make sure that we understand what I'm not advocating for is chasing a feeling. I'm not advocating for emotionalism. We're not promised that we're gonna get a warm feeling every time that we open this up.

What I am saying is this, and I'm saying it unapologetically along with David and Paul and Peter and Jesus. God is meant to be experienced, not just obeyed. He is meant to be enjoyed, not just endured.

You might be here today and think, I'm just not that kind of person. I'm into other things. See, the question is not, is God my type? You know, is God the kind of person or entity for which I have a natural affinity or preference? That is not the question.

The question is, have I postured myself in a way that I can experience him for who he is? Because if I will do that, if I will make space for him in my heart, in my schedule, in my mind, and if I will make space for the possibility that this is true, can I tell you what will happen?

You will begin to experience a love that is better than life. Your soul will be satisfied with rich foods. If we have yet to experience God like that, don't feel shame. See this as an invitation to know that there is more for the taking. And the only thing between you and that experience is you making space. Come and get it.

Conclusion

Let's pray. And as always, if you wanna connect with God by yourself, these curved rails will be for you. And at these straight rails, we would love to have someone pray with you, whatever that request might be.

And as I close in prayer, you can stand as we prepare for worship. Lord, we thank you for the chance to be together. God, would you help this message to be true in my life? And I pray that we would be a congregation of people who don't just talk about you, but we actually experience you. Amen.