Tag: prayer

Prayer Meeting

Posted on by euniceo

This evening, as I prepared to leave home for my church’s weekly prayer meeting, my heart felt unsettled. “What’s the point of going?” I muttered within me. I was surprised by this attitude and felt really discouraged. I wondered about the point of praying and the effectiveness of my prayers. But by the mercy of God, He enabled me to go. My plan was just to go and listen to the prayers. I do find it encouraging to listen to others praying, so at least I would be there, I thought.

So I went to the prayer meeting. It began as it always does, one of my pastors — the one leading for the evening, going through the different prayer points, on matters close to home and also across the world. As these needs were being shared, I felt my heart stirred. I felt the desire to pray. This was God’s mercy to me.

At some point during the meeting, the scripture about praying and not losing heart came to mind. It felt like a lifting of my spirits thinking of that scripture. It is in the scripture to pray. I am commanded to pray, and that’s the point! That truth comforted and strengthened me.

“Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.” (Luke 18:1, NKJV)

So at some point, I prayed, trusting that despite my seemingly muddled-up words, I was obeying the Lord by praying, and the Lord was hearing. The Lord hears.

I may not understand how the Lord works through my prayers, but His perfect Word tells me to pray. So, when next I feel discouraged about praying, I pray for the grace to remember what the point is —God commands me to pray, and His commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes (Psalm 19:8).

I just performed a quick exercise of searching for instances where praying is referenced in the Bible, and it is almost on every page. Christ prayed, and He taught His disciples to pray. May the Lord help me to truly pray and not lose heart.

Guitar practice, prayer and everything in between

Posted on by euniceo

So I started my guitar lessons for the umpteenth time this evening. When I mean started, I mean resumed from a long hiatus of non-practice. It’s happened before. I would have a good practice streak for a couple of weeks and then something would happen and the consistency would halt. Weeks, months would pass. The guitar gathering dust and I staring at it and wishing I had the self discipline to pick it up and just start playing; but at the same time feeling bad for not having the zeal to, and therefore shying away from facing myself by finding something less productive to distract myself with. A vicious circle I tell you!

However, this evening I picked it up! A dear friend of mine got me a “8 Chords 100 Songs for guitar” book for my birthday a couple of days ago. Such a thoughtful gift. It contained familiar songs and hymns. As I browsed through, I got excited at the prospect of learning and being able to play them in private singing sessions between God and I. That’s one of the reasons I had wanted to start playing in the first place.

When the lockdown started in March, I knew that I need to actively do something to maintain some kind of routine especially since I would now be working from home. So I decided to set alarms for my hourly activities daily. For example, 5am wake up, 6am devotion, 7am exercise, 8am get ready for work, 8:30am start work, 1pm lunch time, 5pm finish work, 6pm dinner, 7:30 guitar lesson, 8pm journal/blog post, 9pm evening devotion, 9:40pm bed time. Pretty structured if I do say so myself! I mean look at all that productivity! I did keep to it for a couple of days. But then work would spill over to 6 or 7pm, or I would have trouble sleeping and would wake up feeling tired which would have a knock on effect on the rest of the day. Come 7:30pm, I would snooze or cancel the guitar lesson alarm and it became my new habit of snoozing or cancelling these faithful reminders of the habits I wanted to develop. The irony!

So, I am glad I picked up the guitar today, even as I type these with sore finger tips (a reminder that I haven’t played in a long time). I pray to be more consistent. Speaking of prayer, I realise I need to pray more about the seemingly mundane. I do a lot of thinking and I sometimes mistake that for praying. I want to pray more for God to help me. The reality is that I depend on him for everything. He enables my every breath, and He can give me the strength to be more disciplined. So I pray that tomorrow at 7:30pm when the alarm rings for my guitar lesson, I will pick it up and play.