Big Girl, Small Strength.

If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

Proverbs 24:10 AMPC

I remember when I was about to write my senior WAEC, my mum sat me down and told me that I had to start praying for my future, ask the Lord what my life’s purpose was and give me clarity and grace to walk in it. She asked me to pray then. My siblings and I were already baptized with the Holy Spirit, she said to speak in tongues for as long as I could.

I started doing it, every day by noon, I would go into the empty guest room and start, I planned to do one hour then, but one hour felt like an eternity, so I would sing songs for 20 minutes, then pray in my understanding thanking God for another 20 minutes, then pray in tongues for the remaining 20 minutes. It was so hard but I kept pushing.

At a point, it got tiring because I didn’t have a prayer point, so I went back to my mum. She said, “pray in tongues, you don’t need a prayer point”. I was like ” E sho pé?” She said “you’re edifying yourself ” Then she gave me the analogy of a man going to the gym, every day. “What’s the aim?” She asked me, “To build his body” I responded. “Good, the first few times, it’s hard, but he is consistent because consistency builds discipline.” That’s how we are built praying in tongues.

When I asked her why I need to be consistent and disciplined to do so every day. She told me I was building capacity, I was drawing strength in case I meet any obstacle ahead of me, it’d be easy to scale through, and I’d have built up so much faith that nothing can shake me.

She was right, when WAEC started, I fell sick, I was a sickly child growing up. It was bad, I needed to do surgery, and the grace to pass through that season with ease was there. It was so easy to pray and believe in God. My results sha weren’t awesome, I only had A’s and B’s in social science subjects because I stubbornly wrote my exam with the sickness.

This morning, I woke up and during commanding your day prayers, a morning devotion my church holds on Mixlr, Rev O the lead pastor of TREMPHC asked us to engage in tongues this morning and while doing that, I was taken back in time. God was saying to me the reason you feel so weak and tired is that you’re not renewing your strength in prayer. You’re waiting for problems and storms of life to come first before you start praying and you’re fainting.

He said “I miss how you’d just fellowship and spend time in my presence, you weren’t asking for anything, you were just enjoying my presence and vice versa” I had tears in my eyes, but physically, I still had no strength to pray, I sat up, stood up, but I still felt flat.

To be continued

Love, Mope and Abba