I do not believe God gets bored. For humans, however, sameness lowers our desires, whereas variety stokes our fire. At a display, variety makes us want to linger longer. At a banquet, variety stimulates our appetite. At an art gallery, variety boosts creativity and pushes one to new frontiers. Likewise, variety adds new dimensions to prayer, increases one’s longing for more, and kills blandness and boredom. So you can expect not rules and regulations in this series of webpages but encouragements to expand your repertoire of prayer methods.

We will, however, investigate whether any seemingly harmless prayer habits could have unexpected downsides.

Western Christianity Versus Biblical Christianity

In western Christianity we often gain the impression that the ideal posture for prayer is to bow one’s head and close one’s eyes. This is in such stark contrast to the Bible that when Jesus wished to convey how exceptionally despondent and guilt-ridden the tax collector in his parable was, he said that this man “would not even look up to heaven” when praying (Luke 18:13). For this to be meaningful to Jesus’ hearers, praying while looking upwards must have been the norm in his day. Jesus himself regularly prayed with his head lifted and his eyes open (Mark 6:41 [ = Matthew 14:19; Luke 9:16] Mark 7:34; John 11:41;17:1).

This practice is not limited to New Testament times. Bowed knees might show loving reverence, but in Scripture a bowed head is different. In the Word of God, looking down while praying is usually associated with the shame and grief of not being right with God because of sin.

Ezra 9:6  . . . “O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. . . .”

Psalm 123:1 I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven.

Amazingly, there is no reference in the entire Bible to praying with one’s eyes closed.

Obviously, the commendable idea behind a bowed head and closed eyes is to remove distractions and hence aid concentration. In some churches the posture is encouraged to give privacy to people who might respond to a call for salvation. As an occasional practice, this posture is fine but if it becomes the prominent way in which we pray, it might have unintended side effects.

Even on a blind date, people open their eyes! As a novelty, someone might go on a date blindfolded but to do it regularly would definitely detract from the experience. Whereas darkness and gloom depress a person, light brightens one’s spirits.

The Psychology of Prayer?

There is a powerful psychological phenomenon that today is known as conditioning but I’m sure it was intuitively understood long before the rise of modern psychology. Later we’ll see how thoroughly biblical this matter is, but for now we’ll limit ourselves just to human knowledge. Just one of the ways it manifests itself in everyday life is the process mentioned earlier by which devoted husbands keep training themselves to feel attracted to their aging wives.

In a ground-breaking experiment, a bell was rung before giving a dog food. This was repeated many times until the bell was so strongly linked in the dog’s mind with food that the mere sound of the bell would cause the dog to salivate. A vast range of further experiments with animals and people have confirmed that if, through repeated association, something neutral becomes linked to something that produces fear, relaxation, sexual excitement or whatever, then that neutral thing will of itself begin to generate whatever feeling it is regularly associated with.

Prayer is relatively neutral in that it has the potential to produce a wide range of different emotions. So if, through repeated association, prayer becomes linked in our minds with something that produces a particular mood or feeling, then prayer of itself will begin to generate that mood or feeling within us. Much of this webpage is about how we could be unwittingly training (conditioning) ourselves to find prayer dull, and how we can reverse this.

I think for most of us there is already a firmly established link between a bright sunny day and fun, excitement and high spirits. Blackness, on the other hand, tends to produce a more somber mood. The connection is so firmly wired in the human psyche that it is part of everyday speech. “Dark times” are depressing or distressing, whereas someone said to have a “bright” personality is cheerful. “You light up my life” means you make me happy. Perhaps you can think of other examples.

Given this strong link between brightness and happiness/excitement, it would seem harder to keep associating the thought of prayer with excitement and eager anticipation if prayer is linked in our minds with the blackness of closed eyes.

Is it mere coincidence that the Bible never speaks of closing one’s eyes in prayer? I’m not laying down any law. I myself sometimes close my eyes in prayer. Perhaps, for you, closing your eyes conjures feelings of peace. That’s not exactly exciting but it could be quite welcome in times of stress. What especially concerns me, however, is my suspicion that a bowed head or slumped posture generates nothing but despondency. (We’ll see later how research has confirmed that facial expression has a direct effect on our feelings. I suspect this applies to other bodily positions as well.)

1 Timothy 2:8 I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer . . .

More frequently than is often realized, the Bible speaks of praying with raised hands (More). King Solomon even lifted his arms when kneeling:

1 Kings 8:54 When Solomon had finished all these prayers and supplications to the LORD, he rose from before the altar of the LORD, where he had been kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven.

Since it is awkward to raise one’s arms while keeping the rest of one’s body bowed down, the very act of raising the hands tends to lift the head.

So in both Testaments, to pray bowed down or prostrate was out of the norm. Such a posture was usually a response to crushing negative emotions such as grief or fear. We’ve noted that bowed knees are in a different category, since one can kneel with the hands or head raised.

Scripture records very special instances when people had such overwhelming encounters with the holy Lord that they fell on their face like weeds flattened by a hurricane. The Almighty seemed to draw no delight in this, however. Even in these extreme situations, when people had so little strength that it would have been much easier to leave them prostrate on the ground, time after time, the Lord insisted on them not remaining face down but standing to their feet to converse with him (Scriptures).

The relationship between a bowed head and depression is so strong that we use such expressions as, “downcast” (ie. looking down), “hang your head in shame,” “keep your chin up,” and so on. The Psalmist called his God “the lifter up of my head” (Psalm 3:3 – literal translation).

Rejoice?

For some peculiar, non-biblical reason, many of us find ourselves haunted by the impression that acting as if we are in mourning shows God respect. The very first step in respecting God, however, is obedience. What chance have we of reverencing God if we don’t worship him the way he asks us to? Not only is the New Testament crammed with such exhortations as, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4), the Old Testament is also filled with it:

Nehemiah 8:10  . . . This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.

This is worth reading again. Like some other Scriptures, it implies that acting joyful is a key element of holiness. Let’s examine some more revelation from God:

Deuteronomy 28:47-48 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. . . .

Deuteronomy 12:18  . . . you are to rejoice before the LORD your God in everything you put your hand to.

Psalms 100:2 Worship the LORD with gladness

Psalms 71:23 My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you . . .

Psalms 149:2 Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the people of Zion be glad in their King.

We tend to suppose that rejoicing in the Lord must be the spontaneous reaction of our spirits to being supernaturally touched by the King of glory. Scripture has a very different view. It says rejoicing in the Lord is our deliberate act of obedience to God’s command that we must rejoice. Yes, we are commanded of God to manufacture it. This obedience is truly being spiritual. If by a sheer act of will you regularly force yourself to act joyful, it will increasingly become a habit, with the result that it will become easier and feel more natural.

Most of us reject the Bible’s teaching on this matter and stubbornly cling to the worldly view that rejoicing, gladness and genuine love cannot be produced: they just happen. We suppose that any conscious effort to generate such feelings would be fake and displeasing to God. The truth is very different. God commands us to rejoice in him, delight in him, serve him with gladness and love him with all our mind, strength, effort and emotions.

Habakkuk 3:17-18 Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Since Habakkuk lived in an agricultural society, here’s how we could paraphrase this man of God: Though I’m facing economic ruin – maybe even starvation – and though everywhere I look I see disaster and a new reason for misery, I will compel myself to rejoice and be joyful in the Lord. Biblical rejoicing is not some unthinking response to pleasantness but a deliberate decision to act joyful despite everything within us screaming for self-pity and continued misery.

We have been brought up in a society that is so out of step with biblical thinking that for almost all of us it actually feels fake to do what thrills God’s heart – getting excited about God when our natural feelings are dead or even pulling us into despondency.

In reality, the Lord is unimpressed by any feelings we have that are not a deliberate act on our part. Feelings that spontaneously erupt within us are like hiccups. They prove nothing. They bring us no more glory and God no more joy than us having indigestion.

Smile!

Lovers can have serious moments when engrossed in deep conversation, but usually they smile often when talking with each other. How often do you smile when praying?

A young woman in a church choir was reprimanded for smiling while singing of the God she adores. Would she be chided for smiling in the same church on her wedding day? Doesn’t Scripture say we should love God more than we love any human? If a bride had an atrocious headache, wouldn’t she smile for the sake of the camera? Is God more important than a camera?

“Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing,” says Scripture (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17, KJV). What sort of rejoicing produces a solemn face?

Research has confirmed that forcing oneself to smile broadly for two minutes reliably alters one’s mood. (Grimacing has also been shown to alter mood – in the opposite direction.) According to researchers, not only are there psychological reasons, there are actually physiological reasons why, even if one feels miserable, the mere act of smiling lift one’s spirits (More).

“So what?” you may ask. We are looking at everything that might contribute to prayer becoming a dreary duty rather than the highlight of your day. We have looked at several factors such as a bowed posture and closed eyes that, taken individually, are minor. I believe they combine, however, into something so significant that if all these slightly negative things are regularly associated with prayer it is almost inevitable that prayer will slowly slump from sheer delight to mere duty. And one of the things that will help you warm toward God is to deliberately smile when praying and while mediating upon his love and goodness.

Research into the effect of forcing oneself to smile fits a major theme of this webpage by confirming that acting joyful can actually produce joyful feelings. We are divinely ordained to be masters of our emotions. We don’t have to wait for feelings to hit us; we can seize the initiative and act joyful and loving, and eventually feelings will begin to follow our lead. I will mention smiling several times in this webpage. If smiling seems too much effort, however, or the suggestion is a little unconventional, then feel free to be ultra-conservative and stick to the Bible. It does not mention smiling. It only speaks of praising and rejoicing and expressing delight in the Lord by such means as jumping, dancing, using cymbals and uttering blood-curdling, ear-piecing shouts. The shout regularly referred to in the Psalms (Psalm 100:1 in the King James Version translates it “a joyful noise”) as the way to enter into God’s presence and delight in God is the very word used elsewhere in Scripture for a deafening battle cry designed to instill fear in the enemy. Maybe smiling is not so bad after all.

Get Ready for a Miracle

The command to rejoice in the Lord is close to being told to get excited about God. How can we do that when we don’t feel like it? Of course, Scripture often commands us to do things we don’t feel like doing. We might not feel like blessing those who curse us, giving to the poor, or giving up our favorite sin. Not to feel like doing something is hardly a legitimate excuse. Nevertheless, the question remains: how can we genuinely rejoice when we feel miserable?

To rejoice might seem impossible but we can at least make a move in that direction and act the part. All God requires is that we do our level best. No matter how hollow it might feel, any attempt to feel positively toward God is crammed with meaning when done as an expression of love for God. It’s part of the clumsy human effort that positions us for a supernatural wave. Or would you prefer that expressed more biblically? Every attempt to stir up positive feelings toward God is an act of faith and obedience like the Israelites trudging around and around Jericho. It seems nothing but a tiresome waste of effort – until God suddenly turns up (Joshua 6:1-20). It’s like leprous Naaman unable to heal himself but able to dip seven times in the muddy Jordan (2 Kings 5:10-14). He grumbled about it, but eventually decided to give it a go. It’s like the widow and her son facing starvation asked to share their last meal with Elijah (1 Kings 17:12-16). It’s like the ten lepers seeking a priest to declare them clean when they still had leprosy (Luke 17:12-14). It’s a loving act of faith-filled obedience like tired, discouraged Peter saying, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). We could keep drawing from Scripture’s deep pool of examples, but let’s finish with this: doing what we can to feel positively toward God is like Abraham and Sarah, year after year trying again and again and again to have a baby; never knowing when their miracle baby would be conceived.

No matter how pathetic it seems, when in obedience to God you do the little you can do to arouse positive feelings toward God, you are setting yourself up for a miracle.

Luke 6:22-23 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy . . . (Emphasis mine).

Psalms 150:44 praise him with tambourine and dancing . . .

Psalms 98:4 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music

When we feel down, there is only so much that we can do, but we can jump, we can shout, we can sing with gusto. I know that isn’t your personality. It’s as beneath you as washing over and over and over in a dirty river. But will you give it a go, like Naaman? To try to act excited about God when you don’t feel excited makes no more sense than Joshua’s army dragging themselves around a fortified city. But is this nonsensical act your invitation to be part of a miracle?

If you refuse to rejoice the biblical way, at least you can make yourself grin from ear to ear, no matter how artificial it seems. You can put on some praise music and join in. You can recall your blessings and thank God with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. Of course you don’t feel like it! To do only things you feel like doing is to serve yourself, not God. That would be sentencing yourself to mediocrity. Since God is utterly loving and unselfish, when he asks us to do anything, it’s not to burden us; it’s because it ends up helping us.

When we read, “Rejoice in the Lord always . . .” we want to protest, “You don’t know what I’m going through!” But before we get too many protests out, we bite our tongue as the realization hits that those words were penned from prison by the man who regularly suffered deprivations and disasters and beatings and whippings and stonings like few people in all of history.

“Rejoice in the Lord always” is not psychobabble; it is the holy Word of God. It is not rejoicing in blessings or in life in general, it is rejoicing in the Lord. This point is so significant that the Word of God uses the expression “rejoice in the Lord” (or very similar) over and over and over (details). It is deliberately linking – or, in the language of psychologists, “pairing” – the thought of God with positive feelings. It isn’t doing it a few times and then giving up, or moving on to something else; it is building it into the strongest of habits. It is doing it always.

Perhaps you’ve seen the old Christian sticker, “Smile, God loves you!” Why not, even if only for a minute or so, literally think those words and wear the matching smile several times a day? I’m not being flippant. I’m not denying that you could be in excruciating pain and as much distress as the apostle Paul. I’m not talking about doing it for appearances’ sake or to be positive, but as your possibly feeble yet sincere attempt to privately express to God your delight that his personal love for you is real, even when it doesn’t feel real. If you smile for no other reason but your determination to do the little you can to warm to God at a time when he feels distant from you, then not only is your attempt not fake, it blesses the heart of the One who loves you.

If rejoicing in the Lord is virtually equivalent to getting excited about God, so are biblical references to delighting in the Lord. We can conclude from Scripture that deliberately getting excited about God is one of God’s favorite ways of us loving him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Another vital way is by deliberately cultivating warm, loving thoughts toward God. What matters is not so much how successful we are at achieving this, but how much we try. The mere fact that we try moves God and sets us up for supernatural encounters.

Lover’s Delight

Rejoicing and delighting in God are favorite topics in the Bible and both words are intimately connected in Scripture with being deeply in love. A tiny sample of Scriptures should suffice to prove the link with human romance:

Isaiah 62:5  . . . as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

Song of Solomon 4:10 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice!

Song of Solomon 1:4  . . . We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. How right they are to adore you!

Ezekiel 24:16,18 “Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. . . .” So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. . . . (Emphasis mine.)

The command to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is so all-embracing that it must encompass all forms of non-sexual love, including being in love with God. It is significant, then, that we are commanded both to be in love with God and also to delight/rejoice in him. The biblical emphasis on deliberately cultivating these emotions is so strong as to be inescapable and yet it is so contrary to western thinking as to seem almost bizarre. We think if love is genuine, feelings will be automatic and that to command them is ridiculous. In fact, if feelings don’t come we almost blame God for it. In contrast, the Lord thinks that if our love is genuine we will deliberately stir up these feelings and do whatever it takes to keep them on the boil. He is moved, not by our actual feelings, but by how much we try to generate within us feelings for him that are worthy of him.

Whereas God insists that trying to have positive feelings toward him is our responsibility, most of us presume it is God’s responsibility. While we’re waiting for God to do something to get us excited about him, he’s waiting for us.

They would never word it this way, but it is not uncommon for people to consider themselves sincere Bible believers and yet stubbornly insist that on this issue they are right and the Bible is wrong. Not surprisingly, their spiritual progress grinds to a halt. A total mind shift is the only way out of this stalemate. We can dig our heels in as much as we like, demanding that God prove his love by giving us feelings, but it will get us nowhere. God insists we prove our love by working on our own feelings.

Streams in the Desert

Bitter tears might be the opposite of smiling but there are other types of tears that are fully compatible with rejoicing. There are tears of joy and there are healing tears that mysteriously soften the heart.

If, for no apparent reason, your eyes leak when you are in the presence of God, you might find it perplexing or even embarrassing but something beautiful, though mysterious, is happening. Like Jesus, who so often wept, let the tears flow.

Prayer and Sensory Enjoyment

Is God in love with you? Does he romance you with flowers and chocolates and beautiful meals? Absolutely. He is the One from whom all good things flow. Every flower you have ever seen, every chocolate you have ever tasted is from him, along with every sunset, every rainbow, every smile and every cozy feeling. But have you just indulged yourself or do you allow his loving gifts to you warm your heart toward him? Like a mother who does everything for her darling child and is usually taken for granted, so is God.

There are love notes on every tree and every hill, but do we bother to read them?

Open eyes can lift our spirits not only by removing the gloom of darkness but also by allowing us to gaze upon beauty. When couples go on a date, they usually choose beautiful surroundings. This is no accident. Even when they know their relationship has a lot going for it, they want to add still more to make it truly momentous.

Do you, at least occasionally, deliberately choose beautiful surroundings in which to pray? Nature is God’s artistry. Drinking in the beauty, admiring God’s skill and sharing the experience with him will not only draw you closer to God, it will deepen your enjoyment of nature. The same is true of all God’s gifts – food, music, rest, friends, your achievements, and so on. Savor them with him and your enjoyment of them will multiply and your bonding with God will deepen. (Although you are already spiritually one with God, there are other levels, such as the experiential and emotional, in which your bonding can deepen.)

Thanking God because we feel guilty if we don’t thank him is neither a recipe for enjoyment nor for deepening our bond with God. Instead of taking God’s gifts for granted or slavishly enduring some ritual of thanks, why not cherish his gifts, giving thanks out of genuine appreciation? Why not delight in the tiniest of God’s blessings? Could it be that the person who is grateful even for little will be given much? Aren’t you more motivated to give to someone who consistently shows delight and thankfulness when receiving your gifts? It is good to ease into the habit of every time we enjoy something, immediately thinking of God and appreciating his gifts to us.

Enjoying a meal honors the chef, enjoying a painting honors the artist and enjoying a gift honors the giver. Even more so, enjoying any good thing honors the One who is the Source of all good things and who gave us sight and all our other senses with which to delight in the wholesome pleasures he lavishes on us.

Acts 14:17 Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.

Psalms 145:9, 15-16 The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made. . . . The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.

1 Timothy 6:17 . . . God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Psalm 103:2,5 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits  . . . who satisfies your desires with good things

There are spiritual benefits in regularly combining enjoyment with a consciousness that the pleasure comes from God.

When we are in trouble, it is both right and natural to look to our best friend, the almighty Lord, for help. It is most unfair to God, however, if we are more likely to think of him when in distress than when enjoying the beautiful and delightful things that flow from his love and creative genius. It is sadly possible to become too self-focused to even notice precious gifts from our loving Lord. What would be even more damaging than taking our bountiful Lord for granted, however, is if we end up unintentionally associating God in our minds not so much with anything desirable as with unpleasantness – distressing things that remind us of God because they remind us of the need to pray. A habit of tending to think of God less often or less intensely when we are enjoying something than when life is unpleasant would establish an emotional connection in our psyche between God and unpleasantness. As surely as the dog referred to earlier was trained to associate a ringing bell with mouth-watering food, we would have trained ourselves to associate God with unpleasant feelings. Despite it being unintentional, we would end up with a negative emotional response to the very thought of God. The way to avoid this is to seize the initiative. Stop leaving this matter to chance and letting yourself be a victim of things you do not want. End laziness and deliberately train yourself to have warm thoughts toward God whenever you are enjoying even the smallest of wholesome pleasures – and keep training yourself until it becomes an automatic response to pleasure.

Dating God

Go on a date with God. Select a wholesome pleasure and share it with the Lover of your soul. Whatever pleasure you choose, it should not, of course, be anything morally questionable or remotely sexual outside the sanctity of marriage. The ideal activity for a date with God is one that is not mentally demanding but allows your mind to wander. You might, for instance, go for a walk along the beach with God – just you and One who made the sea and the sand and the sun and the shells. You might have an ice-cream with God. If it’s your type of fun, go shopping with him.

You might be feeling chatty on your date. If neither of you say much, however, that’s fine. Just savor the pleasure and delight in the realization that the nice feeling flowing through you is a manifestation of your Creator’s personal love for you. While seeking to maximize your enjoyment of the experience, dwell on the love behind his gift to you that you are currently enjoying. As you savor this expression of divine love, let the awareness grow that you are the focus of God’s love. Let your heart well up with thankfulness and tell the King of kings how wonderful he is and how much you love him.

Or go somewhere nice with a friend. Enjoy your friendship as a gift from God. As you sit or walk or drive together, try taking it in turns praying audibly with your friend, thanking God for your time together and for your friendship, and praying for each other’s needs and dreams.

My suggestion about going on a date with God might seem bizarre to you, but it is consistent with the spirit of such Scriptures as:

1 Corinthians 10:30-31 If I take part in the meal with thankfulness  . . . So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

Deuteronomy 26:11 And you and the Levites and the aliens among you shall rejoice in all the good things the LORD your God has given to you and your household.

(Amazingly, the second Scripture appears in the context of tithing.)

Pamper both yourself and the relationship that will last for eternity by regularly dating God in this way for the rest of your life.

An exciting possibility is that in between dates we can have countless mini-dates that will do wonders for our relationship with God. We can paint in our imaginations a beautiful scene or remember a pleasant experience and savor the feelings, while thanking our magnificent, mind bogglingly generous Lord who “who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17). We can do this even on occasions that are so hectic that we can spare only 15 seconds at a time.

Softening One’s Heart toward God

Earlier in this series of pages I told of Ruth, who from birth had felt bitter rejection from those closest to her and how this produced an expectation of rejection that led to her feeling unloved by her husband and even her children. Inevitably, this carried over into her relationship with God, causing her to be unable to feel God’s love, even though she commendably served her Lord.

Ruth’s inner pain prevented her from feeling (or even truly believing) the genuineness of God’s personal love for her and she interpreted her lack of feeling as confirmation that she was second-class in God’s eyes. Despite her excellent Bible knowledge, gained through years of faithfulness, she was unable to shake the feeling that it must be because God is forced to love everyone he tolerates her. Every time she heard of someone having a beautiful experience with God, she took it as further proof that God has favorites and she was not one of them.

Ruth had been a Christian for fifty-two years before she discovered www.net-burst.com. Over and over and over, she faithfully and prayerfully read the webpages about God’s love. Ever so slowly the truth of God’s personal love for her began to sink deeper and deeper into her being. The process has been continuing for several years now and it will never end – at least this side of eternity, maybe even on the other side – because there are always deeper levels of understanding of God’s infinite love.

Here’s how Ruth, who has battled for decades over trying to have tender feelings toward God, told me she softens her heart toward God:

When I have problems getting started in my prayer time I focus on my personal list of Christ’s attributes. For example, Christ is beautiful, compassionate, delightful, indispensable, faithful, good, unique, everlasting, kind, loving, joyful, majestic, holy, omnipotent, valiant, wonderful, excellent, awesome.

I have a similar list of Christ’s titles: he is my Friend, Benefactor, Counselor, Example, Guide, Advocate, Bridegroom, Door, Everlasting Father, Wisdom, Priest, Hope, Inspiration, King, Life, Judge, Salvation, Teacher.

Obviously both lists can be lengthened. After meditatively going through such a list it is rather hard to feel indifferent about him. I also find it helpful to try to recall situations where I have experienced those attributes.

Like Ruth, we might long for a soft heart but fear left over from people having treated us with ungodly harshness can make us so tense that we involuntarily steel ourselves whenever we seek to draw closer to God. Our every attempt to feel tenderly toward God or excited about him might seem to us so pathetic that we are constantly tempted to give up. Our heart might seem like stone, but continual dripping water will wear away even granite. With enough time, the hardest heart yields to patient effort. Our attempts to think positively toward God will pay off.

Serenade

Music is a quite powerful way of influencing our mood.

When couples want to make their evening together extra special they often use romantic music. Similarly, worship music can significantly add to our time alone with the Lord. What is particularly romantic, however, is for a lover not merely to play a CD but to tenderly sing a love song to the other.

One day a woman was home alone and feeling close to God. She was about to turn on some Christian music when, despite her voice being quite ordinary, the Lord seemed to say to her, “You are blessed when you hear the music, but I am blessed when I hear your voice.” So she sang to her Lord and thereafter make it a feature of her times with God.

Other Helps

It often helps to pray aloud. Even in private prayer, Jesus seems to have prayed out loud. That would explain why even in the middle of the night when no one would pester him he would go to a deserted place to pray (Mark 1:35; see also Mark 6:46; Luke 5:33; 6:12). In the garden of Gethsemane, the disciples heard what he was praying even though they were a stone’s throw away (Luke 22:41-42; Matthew 26:39-44). In John 17 is a chapter-length prayer that Jesus prayed out loud, and the Gospels give us several other examples of Jesus praying out loud (eg Matthew 11:24-28; 27:46; Luke 23:34, 46; John 11;41-42; John 12:28-29). Praying aloud is a significant aid to concentration and can make prayer seem more concrete.

Similarly, praying while pacing can help mental alertness. I’ve never known anyone to fall asleep while pacing. Praying while standing was common in Jesus’ day (Mark 11:25; Luke 18:11).

Praying with a friend can be particularly powerful. It takes my prayers to a whole new level. I just phone someone, briefly chat until I discover a prayer need my friend has, quickly ask permission and then launch out. Frequently I find myself praying with a level of faith and flow of words far beyond what is normal for me. Whatever you like to call it, something special happens at such times that is most precious to me.

My early attempts at praying with people were clumsy and embarrassing – like most first attempts at anything – but am I ever glad that I persevered!

Concentrated Truth

How special are you in God’s eyes? How delighted with you and proud of you is God? Your answer – not God’s answer – to these questions is the greatest determiner of how exciting you find prayer. The sticking point is not how forgiving and in love with us God is, but the extent to which we grasp just how loving and forgiving he is.

I feel deeply for the vast numbers of Christians who are being cheated out of much fulfillment and intimacy with God. God’s Word unmasks the enemy of our souls as a deceiver who seeks to con us out of as much of our Christ-bought inheritance as we will let him get away with. I have sought to expose some of his lies (and links at the end of this page will further help). I have also sought to develop your closeness with God by suggesting methods that at first sight seem unusual but have actually been successfully used for countless generations to foster relationships. If they work for human relationships it should be no surprise that they work with our relationship with God, since we still retain our humanity when we relate to God.

We have seen that if communication is a chore, it is because a degree of excitement has seeped from the relationship. If this applies to our relationship with God, it is never because God has gone stale or is no longer passionately in love with us. It is most likely because we have lost sight of how exciting God really is. Too often we mope around, waiting for God to pump up our emotions or zap us with a revelation of how wonderful he is, when it is up to us to get our thinking right and keep urging ourselves until our feelings eventually catch up with spiritual reality. We should charge ahead of our feelings, blazing a trail for them to follow; rejoicing in God because he is worthy and because that’s the way he longs to be honored. As we do so, we are positioning ourselves for a miracle. Like Sarah and Abraham trying for a baby, it might take years but God is a rewarder of those who persist in faith.

Our spiritual enemies – the devil and his invisible horde of whispering deceivers – cannot change reality. They are powerless to alter the fact that Christ loves you so resolutely and passionately that he let himself be tortured to death to erase your every failing from heaven’s database. The only thing these cheaters can do is try to mess with your mind; trying to fool you into imagining that the delighted smile on God’s face when he gazes upon you must be false.

If we begin to doubt God’s forgiveness of our every sin, we’ll begin to cherish spending time with him with as much relish as a trip to the dentist. Our problem is not the intensity of God’s mind-boggling love for you and me; our problem is our inability to keep believing it. To us, it seems too good to be true.

We find it as difficult to keep feeling the reality of God’s love as trying to keep aware of what is happening behind a wall that is as high as our head. We might occasionally jump high enough to catch a glimpse, but we soon tire of jumping. Our one hope is to trust someone in a more elevated position to keep us reliably informed. Likewise, our only reliable way of consistently knowing what God is like is not by dependence upon what we see and feel but by trusting a higher source – the integrity of God who has revealed in Scripture what he is really like.

If the most powerful determiner of how much prayer thrills us is how much we accept the reality of God’s personal love for us, the second most powerful determiner is the degree to which we overcome nagging fears that the Perfect One might have a character flaw. Perhaps you worry that, despite God’s rhetoric, he might actually be selfish or spiteful or have a cruel streak or is egotistical or snobbish or cold or hypocritical. These are serious concerns for the very practical reason that we cannot be head-over-heels in love with someone we fear has a dash of Hitler in his personality.

God is warm. He is exciting. In all his ways he is wondrously perfect. Correctly understood, his morality and everything about our magnificent Lord is stunningly beautiful. If our eyes could truly be opened to spiritual reality and our IQ exploded to superhuman levels, we would be so overwhelmed with admiration of God and his ways that our view of him would soar to inexpressible adoration.

If the Lord miraculously gave us an emotional high every time we prayed, how would we ever know whether we pray because we love God or merely because we love getting high? Whenever we, as it were, struggle to paddle out to sea in search of an elusive spiritual wave, it reveals our love for God. It thrills God’s heart and will end up thrilling us, unless we were to spoil the adventure by giving up too soon.

One of the most critical discoveries in this series of webpages is that a key to making prayer more exciting is not to avoid times when prayer is boring. Everything else being equal, the more boring times we go through, the more exciting times we will have, just as, when cycling, the more hills we pedal up, the more hills we eventually get to zoom down. It is equally important, however, never to become content with boredom. We must keep trying to stir ourselves up and push through the boredom barrier.

Dating couples put much effort into their relationship and if they have found the right person, that effort ends up paying rich dividends. No matter how good it starts, however, their relationship will slowly lose its sparkle if they slide into taking each other for granted and seldom bother to do much to make their times together special. The little extras that married couples usually let drop off seem superficial and inconsequential and yet these extras can end up having a surprisingly significant impact on their relationship.

God, the perfect partner, is so ideally suited to us that we were literally made for him. Nevertheless, our humanity is such that even this superb relationship will lose its edge if we let ourselves drift into habits that make our times alone with him seem dull.

Even when young lovers are apart, the very thought of each other lifts their spirits and makes them feel like smiling. It’s proof of the genuineness of their love. And it’s how I am with God. A significant help in me reaching this point in my relationship with God and maintaining it decade after decade is that I have not let myself be habitually solemn when I converse with the Holy One. By such a habit I would be unintentionally sabotaging the feeling of joy that is now mine when I think of the Lover of my soul.

Smiling when thinking of God seems such a minor thing, but imagine if children were ordered to be stony-faced and not permitted to play or act happy whenever grandma or grandpa is near. If this were allowed to become an ingrained practice, how excited do you think they would be when told they will visit grandma and grandpa? The same principle applies to us as children of God. Being forced to be solemn when praying will do much to drain the excitement from being in God’s presence.

Whether we like it or not, all of us develop prayer habits that end up shaping our emotional response to being with God and determining the extent to which prayer is a joy or a hard slog. We can be mindless victims of this subtle yet powerful process or we can turn it around and deliberately use it to intensify our enjoyment of God.

We have mentioned the value of variety in our approaches to prayer and noted the advantages of including in that variety times of intensive prayer with our eyes open, or our faces uplifted, or with a grin on our face, or praying while savoring one or more of God’s precious gifts. We have mentioned singing to God and ensuring a high proportion of our times with him include praise and expressions of love, not just focusing on needs or mundane matters. We even mentioned pacing and praying out loud.

In a flash, we can recall a sunset or some other awe-inspiring scene of beauty, or times when we were happy or at peace. We can let that memory warm our hearts and begin to fill with gratitude and adoration toward the One from whom that pleasure and all good things flow. As we bask in that, we can let our face break into a smile; knowing that our happiness delights the One who loves us.

These are not gimmicks. Deliberately doing such things to deepen your bond with God is a manifestation of genuine love. Dating couples tend to do these things unthinkingly because they are so anxious to please each other, but even they begin to slip into bad habits as their relationship wears on, and then they need to more consciously choose to act this way.

If we truly love God with all our heart, mind and strength, we will embrace anything that has the potential to deepen our emotional bond with our beautiful Lord. Why would the Almighty be thrilled when we have positive feelings toward him that we have no more control over than sneezing, or when the feelings come from him, not us? What moves God is when we so much want to feel positively toward him that we make the effort to produce these feelings. We thrill our Lord and prove our love when we obey him by deliberately arousing our emotions and compelling ourselves to get excited about him. We will lead with our mind and our will, and occasionally our emotions will catch up.

We have not focused in this page on a quick fix for our prayer life. Long-term solutions are best. After all, our relationship with Christ is forever. We need to build positive habits into our lives. For this we need supernatural help. We even need to pray about praying. Nevertheless, it will also take effort on our part. The latter is our chance to show God our love for him.

Resolving Doubts About God

(Each of the following leads to still more pages)

God’s Personal Love for You

God Isn’t Fair?

God and Suffering

Feeling Rejected by God

When Guilt Makes You Feel Unacceptable to God

When God Feels Distant